Radio Programming: Tactics and Strategy

 

2

Structuring Your Station and Creating Identity

 

 

 

The Role of Structure

As mentioned in the previous chapter, the essence of programming is establishing—and then fulfilling—listener expectations. That’s what makes audiences tune your station in, listen long, and listen often. The stronger the expectations you arouse—and then meet—the better the result. How can you build clear, concrete expectations of what the station represents in the mind of the listener?

Radio communicates simultaneously at both the rational/conscious and the emotional/subconscious levels—in fact, the same way poetry does. Rational expectations can be built through the use of tools such as descriptive “liners”—simple, repeated statements of what the station offers: ...