HOW TO BE A LOCAL RADIO STATION

    • 49 posts
    May 8, 2018 2:34 PM PDT

    Someone hit me in the face the other day with the statement - "YOU NEED TO BE MORE LOCAL"

    I maintain two local stations and provide local news 4-5 times a days, state news once an hour, national updates at the bottom of the hour, weather updates every 20 minutes, a one hour local morning segment inside a five-hour national talk show, a local call-in show daily (Swap Shop), local sports (in season - fall, winter, spring) national and regional sports - basketball, baseball, NASCAR, INDY racing, COLTS and Pacers. Both stations air a 2.5 hour LIVE station sports show on Friday and Saturday night. We offer live election coverage and LIVE coverage of community events and meetings. 

    We broadcast a 15 minute show each week from the State Police and air a 30 minute Issues program on Sundays. We meet our FCC Issues and Forums content many times over.

     

    So when you do all this.....how do you respond when someone tells you "YOU NEED TO BE MORE LOCAL"

    I will confess we have the morning show on from 5-11 (with a half hour of news and an hour of local morning show), then satellite until 12:30p for more local news, then our Swap Shop program until 2p. Satellite until 3p (Afternoon Ag Show) then satellite until 5p (Local news and NASCAR TODAY) then satellite the rest of the night until we have sports or something else. 

    I have a very small staff and often use those hours to do sales, traffic, scheduling, production, meetings, etc. I also belong to committees and boards and have meetings with those groups outside of the station. 

    The only thing I could do more "local" is employee local jocks instead of using the ones on satellite. 

    Thoughts?