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Talent Promos – The Importance of Getting Them Right

By David Kidd, BPR

Most stations play promos highlighting their key talent. The promos are an ad for the show and your station. I cannot state strongly enough the importance of selecting only the best bits of the show to play in a promo. You’ve usually got less than 30 seconds to reinforce to the listener just how great the show is to existing listeners or to tell new/lapsed listeners why they should be listening.

A great promo for your top rating morning show creates engagement; the most compelling segments will grab the audience’s attention and keep them engaged.

Selecting only the best bits helps create a positive perception of the show’s overall quality. It’s a way to communicate to the audience that the content is consistently entertaining and worth their time.

Promos are essentially teasers designed to pique interest and curiosity. Including the best bits provides a taste of what the show offers, encouraging listeners to tune in for the full experience.

Very few listeners listen to the entire show even the die hard fans. There’s a good chance many did not hear the compelling bit the first time it went to air.

In a competitive radio landscape, where sometimes your only USP in your competitor set is your station’s talent, creating sizzling promos for your show sets both the show and your station apart from the competitors.

Playing truly compelling content in promos helps to reinforce why the show is so great in the first place. Repetition of these highlights enhances recall, making it more likely that listeners will remember and talk about the show.

Of course, the above is easy if you have a great show. For those stations with lacklustre talent, shows that try to be funny but just aren’t, the process is much more difficult.  In some ways, playing mediocre bits from a try hard show just reinforces the weaknesses in the content.

Don’t rely on others to make the judgment call…… as a programmer, you should listen to the promos before they go to air to ensure that they are truly compelling. If they’re not, it’s back to the drawing board.

It’s important to note that the definition of “best bits” can vary based on the show’s format and target audience. What works for a morning show on a CHR station will differ from what works for that on a talk station. The goal is to tailor the promo to showcase the strengths of the specific content and appeal to the intended audience.