To write and produce good imaginative radio and use the power of radio to its full there are a number of tips that might help your Radio Creativity and connect better with your radio audience.
Useful Guidelines For Connecting to a Radio Audience
The number and the choice of radio stations available to the radio listener even in some smaller radio markets are often bewildering. The choice of material in both speech and music they offer their current and prospective listeners and include in their programme offerings is targeted to reach specific and determined audiences. Station Programmers and Programme Directors know or should know their audiences well both existing and the audience they want to attract. They can build the audience they want to talk to in various ways:
- From feedback directly to the station’s websites
- Competition entries and where and when they come from
- Focus group feedback
- Station Marketing Department or Outsourced Marketing and PR Research
The start from any creative process might well begin if at all possible, with a listen to the intended stage for the final project. In the modern technologically available world, this should be a relatively easy thing to do.
Ways to Listen to Particular Radio Stations
If the audience for an intended or planned programme is the same audience that listens to a particular radio station, they’re more likely to listen. There are a number of ways to get an idea of what a particular radio station sounds like, other than spending time listening to it on the internet.
- Phone the station talk to the programme director
- Talk to the in-house production department
- Chat with the producer who makes the station idents
- Talk to the in-house creative department
Never presume that a radio station sounds the way you imagine it should. Presumptions are often wrong. By becoming familiar with the audio being broadcast, you will get a better idea of how any audio programme you might want to make will fit. You will therefore be better able to talk to the audience in their language?
Getting to Know the Radio Audience
As well as contacting the radio station, the stations themselves are increasingly and more often part of radio station groupings. These are larger organisations or groups of radio statio ns broadcasting collective output over larger areas, or controlling a number of different format stations. For commercial stations, sales houses will normally provide a sample of the stations they represent:
- Sales houses will have wealth of information about the audience
- The audience details will include age, demographics, geographical spread, lifestyles etc.
This is all useful information about the audience you might be trying to talk to in making any audio production. The more details you know about your audience, who they are, what they think, how they live and what motivates, excites and interests them, the better able you are to write and produce work that will connect with them.
More Ways to Get to Know and Talk Your Radio Audience
Languages native to different parts of the world apart, it’s often said that language is constantly changing. When looking for ways of writing for radio, and to develop the creative process for radio drama, radio commercials, and radio programming, a good starting point is often to decide on a particular voice or way of communicating. For example:
- Different age groups talk to each other in different ways
- Various regions have their own way of talking
- People’s personalities and characters can be reinforced with the right voice
- Some audiences like to hear people “like them”
- As powerful as an image can be, the radio audience will connect and react emotionally to a particular voice and sounds.
Be aware any audio production exists within this general framework of programming to a particular station sound. Consider the audience, get to know what moves them and you’ll connect better with them. This connection an often provide a good framework to kick start the creative process.
Knowing who you’re talking to, logically, is as equally important as knowing what you want to say. Many radio professionals, writers and producers, actors and sound engineers concentrate on the project details and how to produce what’s written and make it live as a piece of audio. Before this process begins, get to know WHO you’re talking to.
Dan McCurdy - Dan McCurdy is a freelance writer producer creative and lecturer. Dan is one of the UK's most experienced radio writers and producers. ...
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