Your Morning Show On TV: How to Get the Most Out of a Cutaway

Whether your talent is already appearing on a local TV morning show or you're attempting to make this happen, your probable goal is to increase your morning footprint and have those TV viewers sample your morning show.

But these cutaways will have the greatest impact if they also add value to the TV station.

Here are four steps to maximizing your TV opportunity:

1 - Make the TV morning show look good. Just as in a multi-person radio show, each player - in addition to being interesting in their own right - needs to give others in the room opportunities to look smart, be funny, etc.  Same goes for you and your TV partners.  If the TV talent look forward to your segment because it gives them an opportunity to shine, the segment will be significantly better.

2 - Prepare something fascinating to share. This is not the time to wing it. You’ll either be perceived as interesting and entertaining or a waste of time – there’s not much in-between. 

3 - Engage the TV talent in your story.  Let them know in advance what your content is so they can prepare, participate and look smart to their viewers (making you look smart too of course).

4 - Always deliver a dual call to action:  “Watch the TV partner and listen to your morning show.”  Give a reason for each.

Have an experience or tip to share?  Leave it here.

Of Course I'm Going to Have A Great Show Monday: 20 Relatives Are Coming Over for Thanksgiving Dinner

It's going to be one of the most asked questions Monday: "How was your Thanksgiving?"

The majority of answers will be mundane - hardly show-worthy material. Yet there is a rich source of content that you can tap into simply by showing up for dinner.

A Pew Research Center Report from 2 years ago estimated that 89% of adults would be having dinner with family members present. 60% would have at least 10 family members at the table while a whopping 27% said there would be 20 or more relatives sharing the stuffing.

Get that many relatives in a room and with just a slight bit of exaggeration and embellishment you can expect to have more material than you can use. You simply have to be listening and watching for it.

That's the key.

A couple of years ago talent coach Tommy Kramer and I did one of those "50 ideas in 50 minutes" panels at the Conclave. Part of the presentation included video tips that some great talent around the country created for us.

One came from B96/Chicago's J & Julian who talked about the value of listening to each other as a way of finding content ideas.

That's good advice for family gatherings, too.

Thanksgiving leftovers can make Monday's show one of your best all year.

And we haven't gotten to Black Friday content yet.

For Better Content, Treat Ideas like Runners in Scoring Position

“Runners left in scoring position” is one of those “relative” baseball stats.

If a team scores a lot of runs and wins big, RLISP (runners who were on second or third base and in a position to score but did not) is an afterthought. But if the game is tight or the team loses by a couple of runs, the number of runners who had the potential to score but didn't takes on more significance.

At its core, RLISP is a measure of missed opportunities, of something that began with great promise but was not brought to its ultimate conclusion. 

A lot of shows stumble with their own version of RLISP: good ideas that don’t get sufficiently developed and simply remain “in scoring position.”

To more get more interesting, unique and fully developed content, try this 3-step, “brainstorm your brainstorming” technique. We did this last week with a room full of morning shows but you can absolutely do this by yourself with great results.

First, we brainstormed the big topics:  things we believed listeners are or were going to be doing or talking about, things that are now - or would in the near future be - impacting listeners' lives, and things the group had heard or experienced that they felt listeners would find interesting. We wrote all the ideas down without judging. The first round is about quantity not quality.

Next we choose one topic from our list that the teams felt had the best potential and did a second round of brainstorming, this time on all the different ways the topic could be approached. Again, we wrote down all the different perspectives, angles, or “takes.”

Here’s what we came up with for our big topic: “school reopens next week.”

Lastly from this list we chose the three approaches the teams believed would be the most fun/entertaining to listen to, that provided a showcase for each player on the show, that we could do stellar execution on, and that offered opportunities for listener engagement and participation.  Then we brainstormed how we’d execute each with the goal of presenting the big topic three times over the course of the show, but each time from a different angle.

“Schools reopen” put the idea on base. 

Brainstorming the treatments put the idea into “scoring position.” 

Brainstorming the execution drove the idea home.

Your content will be richer if you approach your good ideas as if they were simply in scoring position and it was up to you to keep batting (developing and enhancing) until you brought them all the way home.

The 50 Minute Oil Change - 50 Ideas for Your Morning Show

Thanks to all who attended the standing room only panel Tommy Kramer and I presented Friday, 7/16/10 at Conclave 35. And a very special thanks to all the great morning show talent who so generously gave of their time and creativity and created a video for us to share (you're credited in the list below). Your efforts were appreciated by us all!


In creating the panel, Tommy and I wanted to share not only just great turnkey bits, but techniques and philosophies that could make you think differently about your show.

It’s no surprise that we couldn’t fit everything into our 50 minutes, but you can download the complete list at http://albrightandomalley.com/.

Here are a dozen to whet your appetite. And, in the spirit of sharing, it would be great if you could leave an ideas too!

1. Developing an Alter Ego enables you to expand the boundaries of what you can do on your show (Kevin Matthews/WLAV)

2. Keep a diary and share it with other players on the show, using it as a jumping off point for content ideas. For bonus points, have artists who visit your studio make up a song based on your journal/diary entries (Wally , WAY-FM Nashville—using his 6th grade journal.)

3. I am T-Pain iPhone AutoTune App: hilarious for you or listeners to “sing” a song about virtually anything.

4. Your own family traditions can be the inspiration for large promotions (Tim Leary/WCTK)

5. Take the show outside the studio for the betterment of the community/world (Cliff Dumas/KSON and Bob Rivers/KZOK)

6. What’s a guy thinking (male talent gives absurd rationale for dumb things guys do)

7. Just before the break, hold a 5-second huddle to remind yourselves of you point, your close, and how you’re evolving the break

8. Brainstorm with others in the building; you’ll get different subjects and different perspectives on the same subject

9. Morning show team members: listen to each other for potential material (J and Julian/WBBM)

10. Study the art of storytelling and learn to be good at it; this is a life as well as a career benefit.

11. The new rule for evaluating phone calls: “too good not to air” vs. “good enough to air.”

12. Courage is essential if you’re going to go from “OK” to “great.”

Don't forget to download all 50 here and, if you'd can, leave one of your own ideas.
 
Have a great show!