For most stations, recording listeners live at concert or remote events is an afterthought. Here are 2 incredible things that will happen to your station if you record listeners more often.
Make sure you take your portable mp3 flash recorder to every concert and every remote. Make it a habit of recording all kinds of recordings from listeners!
Advantage ONE: Getting a "man on the street" recording will always beat a phone recording any day.
(That is of course just my opinion.) I absolutely love to hang out with listeners at concert events and get recordings of listeners. There is a liveliness and excitement that you get with a "man on the street" bit.
The main reason most stations don't gather listener clips this way is that it takes way more effort than snagging a phone recording. But it's worth the effort.
In over a decade of producing the Airshow Christian Radio Imaging package, the only listener recordings I've ever used have been live "man on the street" recordings.
Advantage TWO: You'll get to actually DISCUSS with listeners their thoughts and deeper insights.
You'll get quite a few insights that will never show up in a simple online questionnaire. I even believe that online questionnaires and their results can be misleading.
For example: Ask a listener, "What do you like about our station?" Often you will get the answer," It's good for my family." (Leaving the impression that people listen mainly because of it's positive family influence.)
Pretty cut and dried right? Go further. Probe. Let them ramble a bit more,
You get the reasons WHY it's good for families? "It's clean..And it points them toward God? ..The songs sing about biblical principles and it reinforces what they are learning in church?"
Yep. That is what most of them mean when they say, "it's good for my family." This is what I got out of hundreds of person to person interviews with listeners through the years.
These valuable and important insights usually don't show up in simple on air Questionnaires. Even marketing books teach that person to person discussions and interviews will reveal things that impersonal surveys will miss.Oh- and based on all my interviews- the #1 reason people listen to Christian radio? Because it's "Christian."
-Rick McConnell
(Articles provided by Rick McConnell. Starting in Christian Radio in 1978, he has been doing voice overs since 1986 through his company, Monumental Studios in Denver Colorado. Find out more about the Imaging Package called "Airshow", The Rick McConnell Show and more, by CLICKING HERE)
