Monday, December 06, 2010

No Exceptions? (smile)

I applaud stations which have a strict "no personal phone calls while you're on the air" policy for air talent. Personal emails, txt's, Tweets, Facebook updates, etc too.

That's because a successful personality simply must wade into all of those pools to mine content for on air use if a station hopes to keep today's listener fully engaged and interactive. You can't be fully involved with listeners if you're chatting with your family and friends.

However, at a client station recently, the reception desk may have carried things a bit too far.

After a midday personality who will remain nameless here got off the air recently, she received a phone message that said:
"Taylor Swift called and wanted to talk to you, but I told her that you were on the air and couldn't be disturbed."

New rules: interrupt me for superstar calls, but only after you've administered the "are you REALLY???" test to the caller.

No one ever said that being at the switchboard at a successful country radio station was going to be easy.

1 comment:

RAILGRASP said...

I have watched radio change, like we all have. Talent would never have a cell phone on their person, if this was the 80's-90's style of radio motif. We had unwritten rules that made us great at the art of focused (by the talent) entertainment based music radio.