Five Ways to Promote Morning Shows in Other Dayparts

A surprising fact from ratings data: The percentage of your station’s afternoon/evening audience that has never listened to your morning programming is high. Why? One major reason is you haven’t created enough awareness for the show outside mornings.

But wait, you say. We run five morning show promos a day! Not enough, when you consider the short average time spent listening to radio.

Can you imagine a classic rock station running only five imaging statements a day hyping “the Valley’s best classic rock?” It’s a radio convention where we promote the bejeezus out of our music position but not our personality show.

You know most of these tactics, but here is a review of five zero-cost ways to create awareness for your morning show through imaging in the other dayparts.

1. HIGHLIGHT PROMO: A short clip of the show that gives people a taste of the fun. Keep these fresh, but it is better to repeat excellent old promos than it is to run a mediocre new promo every day.
    
2. CHARACTER ID: These are short clips that define the character of each person on the show. Here is an example from Heather and Wickett at Lazer 103 Des Moines.
    
3. VOICE OVER INTRO: The morning show promotes something happening on tomorrow’s show, dry voice, and it plays over song intros. Unless it’s for something big like a huge interview or cash giveaway, it’s not particularly effective for appointment setting, but it does highlight what fun the audience will be missing if they don’t wake up with your station.
    
4. OTHER PERSONALITIES TALK UP THE SHOW: Create a show talk sheet for the on-air talent in other dayparts so they can find creative ways to work in a “did you hear what the morning show did” show highlight. Short audio clips will also help them add your fun content to their show.
    
5. REPLACE THE STATION VOICE: Every station on earth uses some kind of imaging voiceover artist, and that’s OK. But the audience has a stronger relationship with your star morning show talent – why not have them voice more of the station promos and contest imaging that runs 24/7 and do it as themselves in character?

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash