When's The Last Time You Airchecked Your Stopsets? 

When’s the last time you scoped an hour or two of one of your stations?

 

Look, I admit myself. The last thing I want to do after spending all day in the studio, writing, voicing, producing, revising, and answering reconciliation queries from traffic is to even think about radio, let alone listen to it.

 

But I’ve found it’s a good idea.

 

I’m not listening to programming. That’s not my turf.

 

I’m paying attention to the stopsets.

 

I have no control over how they’re scheduled and at what frequency. But I do have control over how they sound and their potential effectiveness.

 

It’s easy to become myopic. Most of us live all day in one studio. PPO’s and orders come in. Half the time they’re last minute. Because we deal with a fairly high volume, it’s only nature to want to do the VO and lay under some music. Call it done and send it on it’s way.

 

And there are some spots where that’s fine.

 

Then, there’s what I like to call the “boiler house fake PSA -we’re on the air because we care” things. But, it’s still our airtime. It’s our inventory. And our number one objective as content creators and production managers is to maintain if not improve the integrity of our inventory.

 

Everything we do is an attempt to prevent tune out.

 

So, what do we do.

 

Here’s an example of what I like to do. 

 

As of this writing, it was just an hour ago. I was assigned two 15 second spots for a lawn equipment retailer. Script was co-op. It was pretty bland. It would have been perfectly acceptable by the retailer and their co-op people who approve the spot to just give it a quick 15 second read and lay down a short music bed.

 

But, being the over-achiever I am, I tell myself that’s boring. It’s just wallpaper. I can’t control the fact that it’s a co-op script that can not be changed. But, I can do a couple of things to make it stand out a bit more. So, this is how I handled it.

 

 

(Open with sfx of champagne cork pop and several party horns, up and under)

Arthur's Electric continues with their 100th anniversary celebrations

 

(insert sfx of lawn mower start and run)

with Toro April Sales event! Up to $30 off select Toro Recycler Walk Behind Mowers.

(Cue short music bed)

Stop by Arthur's at 8910 Brook Road and walk out with a quality Toro mower at a good price. arthurselectric.com

 

Now, will this help sell more lawn mowers or generate more foot traffic to Arthur’s? I can’t say that it will. But what it has done is prevent 15 seconds of wallpaper that’s sandwiched in between a lot of other voice over music bed only spots that come from the plethora of network all of us have to run.

 

That’s just one aspect of it.

 

By airchecking our stopsets, we help prevent being myopic, or failing to see the entire forest for focusing on just one tree at a time. When a spot that we wrote and or produced comes on, ask yourself -what could I have done better. What would have made that stand out more?

 

Respectfully

Mike -The Reel Architect.