Should you attend the upcoming  Talk Media Conference and Talk Show Boot Camp?  Yes.  Visibility and personal connections can play a important role in building a career in the small, tight-knit world of talk radio.  From what I hear about attendance, this event will provide a target-rich environment for meeting and greeting people from all corners of the talk community.  And, it’s possible, given the calibre of panelists already announced, that you might even learn something useful in the sessions.

If you decide to attend TMC/TSBC, take the time to make a plan.  Ask yourself what you hope to achieve during your time on-site.  Who do you want to meet? What questions do you need answered?  What sessions are must-attend?  Bring plenty of business cards, but leave the demo CDs at home.   Chances are they will end up in a trash can somewhere in the hotel.  Better plan: Keep track of all your connections, and follow up with an email that includes a short demo.

See you in LA.

Tim Conway, Jr.

Did you hear KFI/LA‘s Tim Conway Jr. on “The Weekend”?  He’s very good. But even this talented guy with a famous dad had to hustle to get into talk radio. Here’s how the LA Times tells it:

Conway’s new gig is a far cry from “Late Net,” the online talk show he began hosting in 1996 from a storefront studio in Santa Monica, as an early pioneer in Internet programming.

“We told people it was being listened to by 400,000 people worldwide every night,” Conway said — a figure he and his cohorts simply made up. More likely, he admits now, “there were two people listening every night, and their audio dropped out every eight seconds.”

But in those days, when the Internet was still a novelty to many and such claims were hard to verify, a few credulous media outlets came calling to check out the new venture. That attention, and Conway’s ploy to tap radio-station executives as guests on the show, eventually led to an invitation to go on-air at KLSX in 1997.

Talent, technology and smart self-promotion — it’s a potent combination.  If you’ve got the talent, TFM can help with the rest of that equation.

It can be great fun to hear a couple local stations cross swords.  In this segment, the crew at all-sports 106.7 The Fan/Washington is mocking a softball interview with Redskins owner Daniel Snyder conducted by the guys at ESPN 980/Washington, which is owned by the Redskins.  But the 106.7 guys spend so much time getting started, and stepping on each others’ tails, that you have to think they paid a tune-out penalty in PPM.

Give it a listen HERE, and see what you think.

Never talk about the one that got away

Radio and TV talker Ed Schultz is carping about how President Obama hasn’t appeared on his show(s).  Big Ed’s most recent outburst came  at the Netroots Nation conference of liberal bloggers, as detailed in a post on Mediaite.com.

This is a huge mistake; one that reveals an all-to-common failure to understand a core principal of successful talk programming: The show will rise or fall on the host’s own ability to entertain, inform and intrigue the audience.  Complaining about a person’s refusal to come on the show, or their failure to call-in at the scheduled time, makes the host look small, weak, ineffectual and petty.  Talking about the guests you CAN’T book is also a waste of the listeners’ time. When a guest fails to show, or bails at the last minute, the host should simply move on with a minimal explanation and perhaps the observation that the would-be guest has missed a great opportunity.

On a related note… any talk personality who depends on guests to drive his/her show is extremely vulnerable.  As one observer recently noted, Larry King‘s fade to oblivion stemmed from his guest-dependency.  Larry himself never provided a reason to tune-in on a regular basis.  Instead, viewers stopped by only on those occasions when Larry was chatting with someone they were interested in hearing from.  Conversely, while Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Sean Hannity’s radio show all devote significant time to interviews, their guests don’t drive the program. Instead those visitors provide grist for host’s mill — be it comedic or political.

Old Spice just completed a wildly successful social media campaign of  posting short Internet videos responding to people who have blogged or tweeted about the Old Spice TV ads featuring super-buff Isaiah Mustafa.  A clever talk host with a sense of humor could do something similar in response to his email or other feedback. There is precedent for this. Former WGST/Atlanta host Kim Peterson created several videos that drew wide viewing on YouTube including the classic, “Hello, Allah?  It’s Me, Kimmer.”

Read about the Old Spice campaign here. See the videos here.

Metheny

WGN/Chicago PD Kevin Metheny has lots of interesting stuff to say about PPM.  Slurp from his cup of wisdom in this week’s News Talk Edge, my weekly newsletter.  Subscribe for FREE here:

http://www.radio-info.com/newsletters?page=2

Until very recently, talk radio was NOT all about politics.  True, hosts frequently discussed issues that affected their listeners; but they also talked about the full spectrum of things that real people discuss, many of which arose from the host’s own daily life experience.  One of the best talk segments I’ve ever heard was former WRVA/Richmond host Mac Watson‘s explanation of how the wheels fell off when he finally allowed his wife to select the couple’s Saturday night movie rental.

According to KTAR/Phoenix PD Russ Hill, that ability to go beyond politics is essential for anyone who wants to host a local show on FM.  Read and heed these remarks from the June issue of Talkers if you hope to be part of terrestrial talk radio’s future.

“We try to do just enough politics so we have ‘street cred’ and attract enough hours of heavy listening [from political junkies].  AM is all about niches and isn’t growing. It has to super-serve whatever niche audience it has, and hold on for dear life. We’re on FM and can’t play to niches…

“It’s tough to find the correct talent [for FM talk stations] because most [hosts] only know how to talk about one thing – politics. [To succeed] on FM you have to be much more transparent and read different things. If you are living on politico.com you probably won’t do very well on FM. You have to talk more about what it’s like to raise kids and what’s happening in the real world.”

Think you have want Hill and his colleagues are looking for?  Talk Frontier Media help you get into the game.  Let’s talk — no obligation.  404-551-2340