Doing mediocre radio is easy. There are plenty of examples as you spin up and down the dial.
It's difficult to do radio well, especially the overnight shift.
You essentially have two choices these days. Believe it or not, a lot of the alleged "local" stuff has been voice tracked, or recorded, hours before. That leaves the live syndicated talk programs.
There is something about the overnight shift. Listeners seem to form connections to the better hosts out there, more so than the daylight hours. There are a lot of reasons. As I see it, audiences are smaller and the shows are a bit more informal. Staying up all night is an unnatural act. Hosts and listeners share the bond of being out of synch with the rest of the world.
I don't believe in UFO's and conspiracy theories, so that leaves out the largest syndicated radio talk show on the overnight hours.
That takes us to sports. In a stunning example of short sighted cheapness, the company that owns FOX Sports Radio (not FOX, by the way) cancelled it's all night show back in January. Ben Maller was the host, and a good one. He was replaced by a taped clip show, comprised of highlights from the previous 24 hours. It was awful.
As mentioned in other blogs, FSR recently grabbed Tony Bruno for the 10 PM to 1 AM slot. It slid the previous inhabitant, "JT the Brick" to the overnight hours. That's not what today's blog is all about.
FSR re-hired Maller to do weekend overnights. Even though I can't listen because I'm working, I was thrilled. Maller makes sports talk fun, and he knows how to engage the audience, how to form a connection. I sent him an e-mail the other night, and I was tickled when Ben replied.
I've been trying to think of overnight people who have developed that elusive audience connection. Only a couple come to mind. One is Joey Reynolds from WOR in New York. He also has a small network of stations around the country.
The other is Larry King. He used to do a midnight to 5:30 AM show on the Mutual Broadcasting System. The first couple hours were devoted to a guest. The rest was "Open Phone America." This was well before King moved to CNN and went Hollywood. It was a nice, simple, humble show, and audiences loved it.
As King started doing more TV, he cut back on radio, eventually giving it up altogether. I think King's only radio work these days is a simulcast of the CNN show, and TV on radio really doesn't work all that well.
I'm sure the overnight shift is not a big money maker for stations and networks, but I hope the owners realize it is important to a lot of people.
