How to Be a Successful Radio Morning Show Host

If you have ambitions to be a radio personality, you need to know that there are on-air personalities and morning show hosts. Being a morning show host on the radio requires more than just the basic abilities of introducing and playing songs and doing the weather.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

1. Have the basic skills of being on-air mastered: a pleasant speaking voice, knowledge of the music you are playing, an ability to smoothly segue from talk to song and back again and a basic enjoyment of the work. If you love what you do, your listeners will hear that love and keep listening.

2. To host the morning show, you need to be able to get up early. Most morning shows go on the air at 5:30 a.m., meaning you have to be at the station no later than 4:30 a.m. to prep for the show. Add in how long it takes you to get up, dressed and to work in the morning, and you have some idea of what time your alarm will be set every day!

3. Hit the ground running when you get to the station in the early hours, checking news headlines, looking on the Internet for what's new in entertainment, politics, national and world affairs; in short, everything that people will be talking about during the day. Often the first time listeners hear of something newsworthy on a given day is when they hear it from you at six in the morning.

4. Have a sense of humor and don't be shy about using it. Morning radio shows are traditionally more entertainment-oriented than other parts of the broadcast day. People want to wake up to something they can enjoy, not something that puts them back to sleep. So, entertain, enlighten and inform.

5. Know your audience. What is funny in one listening area might not even crack a smile in another. What is clever and satirical in one town or county might come off as juvenile or stupid in another. If your audience senses that you know who they are and that you are there to inform and entertain THEM each morning, they will tune in again and again.

Tips & Warnings

• Everyone from program directors to your neighbors has an opinion about what works or doesn't on the air.
• Listen to other successful morning show hosts. Hear what they do that you think works and put your own spin on those things. Copying someone always comes off cheaply. But using others as an inspiration can make you better each time you go on the air.

[SmartDollar]

on 10/12/2008 Thank You for the advice