Radio Presenter Training. How To Do A Radio Link As A Presenter. Part 2. Free

Part 2 of How To DO A Radio Link.
If you have not seen Part 1 go back and watch that firt or this will not make any sense.

Looking at the structure of the radio link you can see that you do all the back announcing then move onto your talk content then front announce into the next linked item.

It is often not a good idea to say the artist name and song name at the beginning of the song because you will be back announcing the song at the end again and the repetition is not great. If you are playing three songs or more in a row then its OK because it will have been a long while since you mentioned the song name.

What you should be doing is giving a reason for the listener to stay listening while you play the next linked item even if the next thing is a song.
For example you can mention a competition or an artist you will be interviewing.
Often listener don’t want to hear adverts so when you do a link form a song to an advert they might turn the volume down or even change stations. So you need to give them a compelling reason to stay or at least return.
So for example if you have a competition coming up you could say all your link content and the before you play the advert, say “coming up I will be giving away a thousand dollars in cash to the first caller who can answer my question” or “Coming up the greatest Rock musician in history will be in our studio in just a short will so keep listening to find out who he is.

What ever your reason, it must be real or you will disappoint your listeners and it must be something that will actually keep them listening through the adverts. So for example saying “coming up is my co-host who wants to say something” is not as attractive as “Coming up Taylor Swift is in our studio right now and wants to speak with you so be ready”. Also it is important to not mention the adverts as if it’s a feature.

So don’t say right now we have to pay the rent then play the adverts. Or even worse saying “right now some adverts for you”. Pretty much everyone knows that the reason adverts are paid for is because nobody actually wants to listen to them so it is something you need to get the listener through by offering some thing attractive afterwards. Think about how your mom might have said, if you eat your vegetables I have some yummy pudding for you. This is the same idea. Get them through the necessary to get to the delicious stuff.

If you want to learn more about radio links and more about radio presenting, be sure to subscribe to be notified when my complete radio course is available.

So from the structure you can see back announcing and station ID etc then move on to the content which could be a story or a competition or even some other information you have. Then you front announce into a song or advert or news etc.

Now that we know how to structure the link lets look closer at what goes where.

The basic flow is like this:

Brian Adams Summer of 69 on Best Community radio 98.7 with Taylor Swift before that with I’ll write your name and starting of the triple play with a classic from 1978. The Grand Band with set me Free”

Then you can segway into your content if you can work out a good way to say it. For example if the song mentioned has the word free and the information in your content is about someone being set free, you can do it something like this.
And starting off the triple play with The Grand Band and set me Free. I tell you is happy to be free right now is Bob James or whoever you are talking about. He was just released this morning etc etc etc.

Then you can move on to the front announcing. You can also segway this link by saying for example its amazing to have Bob James finally free. Great news for our community. Speaking of that community feeling here are the Beatles and come together. Try not to segway your back announcing and your front announcing in the same link as this also brings in an element of repetition.

When you do the front announcing of a song you can talk up to the vocals but under no circumstances should you speak over the vocals. Also if the song starts with a very recognizable and important part of the song you should not speak over that either. This, once again is to not anger your listener. And if the intro to the song is very long like a minute or so don’t speak all the way across the intro. It is very irritating for the listener. Also don’t say a station ID and then play a recorded station ID. Either say the station name or play a sting of the station name. Don’t do both.

Even if you do a short link to go to, for example, the news it is important to keep the same structure. For example “Brian Adams Summer of 69 on Best Community radio 98.7 at 5PM and it time for the news” Then play the news jingle.

If you want to learn more about radio links and more about radio presenting, be sure to subscribe to be notified when my complete radio course is available.