Air Personalities - What should we talk about?

[Nick Gerard]

Much is written today about what a country music radio personality ought to be talking about on the air. A popular dictum says a country music host must reflect the listeners’ lifestyle, share their interests, essentially, channel their daily lives into his/her on-air rap.

Well, that’s certainly one approach. But I want to wave the flag for the country music host who is simply an informed, enthusiastic presenter of the music we love. A warm, exciting human behind the mic who does nothing but communicate a shared enthusiasm for what brought the listener to the station in the first place: country music!

There are lots of great air personalities who don’t have much in common with country radio’s juiciest target – the late 20-ish, early 30-something female. Let’s take me, for example. I’m a radio guy who has a few miles on my odometer. I don’t drive my kids to soccer or ballet after school. I don’t watch American Idol nor the nutso housewives cable channel. I don’t attend high school basketball games and I’ve never been to a parent-teacher conference. I’ll never even attempt to talk about this stuff on the air, because I’d sound like a contrived phony. My station’s target listeners and I have next to nothing in common.

Nothing except an uninhibited, joyous enthusiasm for country music. That’s what I can offer them! Every time I open the mic, every break I do, it shines through. I listen to the artists’ albums, I read up on them. If I can offer an anecdote or two that I know my country-music lovin’ listener will enjoy, all the better. Anytime an air personality puts this great music up in lights, it legitimizes the listeners’ own joy in it.

Plugging in to your listeners’ lifestyle is overrated as an on-air technique. Radio is drippingly saturated with lifestyle babble and reality show recaps. I suggest that listeners have chosen our stations because they kinda like Keith Urban and Lady Antebellum, not necessarily because they want to hear our brilliant “take” on last night’s celebrity mud-wrestling.

If you can naturally plug into your listeners’ “life group” without faking it – great! Go for it! But let’s start acknowledging the often overlooked value of hosts who offer another gift that’ll vibe with those listeners’ hillbilly bone: sharing an unabashed joy in the artists and songs that make up today’s great country music.

Nick Summers
Production Manager and Music Host, KPLM, Palm Springs CA

 

[EclecticInTexas]

With the way that corporate radio is handling things, they are just pushing the jocks that read liner cards and blurbs about country artists. There are a few that can do it really well and relate to millions of listeners across the country, but let's face it, not all of them can.

I think your case of being a country music fan relates much more than some people give credit. While you may not have a lot in common with that early 30's female, she would love to sit and hear you talk about the same music that she loves. That, IMO, resonates so much more than being a soccer mom/dad. They want to hear the cool stories we can tell them about Brad Paisley and Garth Brooks. They've got their friends who can talk to them about their kids. They turn to us to give them something extra.

On the flip side of that, I am still a huge proponent of LOCAL radio. Knowing what goes on and what works from market to market is something that is thoroughly lacking in country radio today. What works in Kalamazoo, MI won't always work in Beaumont, TX. If you are on air in Norman, OK on a Saturday afternoon in the fall and you're NOT talking about the Sooners, then you are missing the boat on what those listeners care about.

In talking about the reality show recaps, and blabber about pop news, I think the easiest way to do that is be honest with our thoughts about it. Personally, I can't stand Kate Goeslin. Anytime I've talked about her on the air, I try to make it into more of a personal bit instead of treating it like real "news." I've talked about how she needs to focus on raising her kids and not being a celeb. That is what I truly feel, and I think you'd be hard pressed to find a country listening mom who doesn't feel pretty much the same. I don't talk about American Idol, because I don't watch it at all. That's something that I would love to my co-host or a guest that comes in once a week or so.