While the recent wave of layoffs at iHeart Media has brought this topic back into the spotlight, I’ve actually been thinking about it for almost a year. In the last year, I’ve heard two breaks that scream local even though they were done by talent who I know isn’t in the market. The first one happened in September and absolutely made my day. It was done by WXXL/Orlando afternoon host Janna, who also does mid-days on my local AC, Portland’s KKCW, K103. The break was something to the effect of “There’s lots to do this upcoming weekend, pumpkin patches, big bounce, and so much more. Check out the community calendar at K103.com.” The big bounce mention was what made my day, as it was in reference to the Big Bounce America, which was in fact in town that week, and in Salem the next weekend. Had I not known what that was all about, it probably would have gotten me to the website as soon as I finished lunch. It didn’t though, because I had already managed to convince half a dozen friends to go the next night, and continue to watch their site for a return this summer.
The next example came about three months later. By this time, K103 is well into their Christmas music run. This one was done by Toby Nap, based out of WIHT/Washington, DC. The break went “Here’s Dean Martin with Let It Snow. Please, anything but the atmospheric river.” Everyone listening probably would have agreed at the time, as the region had just been soaked with an atmospheric river the previous week, causing major flooding, mainly to the north of the Portland area, but not leaving Portland unscathed.
By contrast, most breaks on the station are either promoting whatever corporate initiative iHeart is pushing this week or generic content that may fit the time period, but not any particular market. A topic of conversation may be what you’re looking forward to about sending the kids back to school, or the first time you decided to sneak out of the house. If more stations had that kind of content, I wouldn’t mind, but the way it’s done on a lot of stations sounds incredibly disconnected from any other content on the station. A typical sequence might be coming out of a song, DJ introduces the topic, then a dropped in traffic report. Those elements are not connected at all, and that’s what I’m starting to get really tired of on the radio. Even Rich Broadcasting’s Star 98 from Idaho Falls has this problem, despite being locally hosted in the afternoons. The movie review or music trivia doesn’t connect to anything else on the station. The host will usually ask for text submissions on a topic, some of which she will read on the air as well, but again, her mic breaks still feel really disconnected from the content around them. Star98 does have more of a sense of place than your average iHeart station because they have a newscast, although it’s the same prerecorded one every hour, and the majority of their spots are local, not the national advertisers you’re going to hear on bigger groups.What radio needs to do is at least sound like it comes from the communities it serves. That means at least a few local contests, and breaks that actually connect to the local community. We’d all like to see every station staffed locally, but that’s not possible in today’s radio environment. The late JJ Hemingway used to say that you can make tracked radio sound live if you put the effort into it. A lot of today’s radio doesn’t make that effort, and that’s what needs to change.
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