With even a lot of the big News-Talk stations running mostly if not entirely syndicted shows, it's harder than ever to get started in talk radio. How abut this approach. First, find a small station that either has a talk format, or at least does a lot of talk oriented programming and get acquainted with the people who run the station. Small town statons and rimshots are a good place to look for stations. Then record short form dialogs on your computer, convert them to mp3 or WAV files and email them to the station. The closer your topics are to what the station does the better, but most stations and even most talk show hosts, like to have a certain amount of variety in their programing. Even Sports-Talk stations, and maybe even some religious stations if they're into "Life Style" program elements they think would appeal to their audience, might run them.
If the station is on a satelite, you'll need to keep your dialogs to exact multiples of thirty seconds (or at least fifteen). And you'll need a program like MP3Gain to normalize the level to whatever the station uses.
I've been doing short form dialogs on KSEY-AM for almost a year. The license and transmitter are in Seymour, Texas. The studios are in Vernon, and the largest concentraton of listeners is in Wichita Falls. It's an ESPN Radio affiliate but has some local talk shows that aren't sports oriented. Some of my dialogs are sports but most aren't. Most of them are two-and-a-half minutes, but some are two minutes or three minutes. I try to do one or two a week. I also do a two minute high school sports report once or twice a week. That will go away during the summer, and it'll return in a different time frame in the fall, mostly with high school football schedules and scores. I try to keep them exactly the same length at lest through an entire season so they can be put into the schedule by just replacing the old report with the new without having to shuffle other spots around to fit ESPN's local breaks.
I started by sending in a response to a call I heard on a local call-in show. They ran it, and I just kept sending them in. Incidentally, the station's policy is to air pretty much any listener opinion. They can be sent in letter form and read by someone at the station, or recorded the way I do. I've only had one listener response to any of the ones I've done.
If the station is on a satelite, you'll need to keep your dialogs to exact multiples of thirty seconds (or at least fifteen). And you'll need a program like MP3Gain to normalize the level to whatever the station uses.
I've been doing short form dialogs on KSEY-AM for almost a year. The license and transmitter are in Seymour, Texas. The studios are in Vernon, and the largest concentraton of listeners is in Wichita Falls. It's an ESPN Radio affiliate but has some local talk shows that aren't sports oriented. Some of my dialogs are sports but most aren't. Most of them are two-and-a-half minutes, but some are two minutes or three minutes. I try to do one or two a week. I also do a two minute high school sports report once or twice a week. That will go away during the summer, and it'll return in a different time frame in the fall, mostly with high school football schedules and scores. I try to keep them exactly the same length at lest through an entire season so they can be put into the schedule by just replacing the old report with the new without having to shuffle other spots around to fit ESPN's local breaks.
I started by sending in a response to a call I heard on a local call-in show. They ran it, and I just kept sending them in. Incidentally, the station's policy is to air pretty much any listener opinion. They can be sent in letter form and read by someone at the station, or recorded the way I do. I've only had one listener response to any of the ones I've done.
