Don’t get me wrong, weather and traffic are extremely important to many radio stations, but how you tease those features could end up making your station sound old and outdated.
A majority of listeners can get traffic and weather on their phones or computers faster than you can tease it. I find it especially annoying when a jock will say “going to rain all weekend. I’ll tell you the latest forecast in fifteen minutes.” Hold on! You just told me the weather and I don’t have time to wait to hear anymore.
Same goes with traffic. Teasing me to wait for traffic will force me to turn on the AM news/talker, or just go to my smart phone to get whatever I need quicker than you can give it to me. Plus, many medium/smaller markets that do traffic don’t need to. If you are in these markets and do traffic and you’re not making money from it, I would think about dropping it. To your listeners it’s more likely useless clutter. Let real listeners call in and give you traffic reports when things are bad. 97 Rock in Buffalo does a great job with this. They call it “blowin’ in the fuzz” and it’s extremely popular and useful. Plus, they have real people, using real language giving the reports.
Today, people don’t expect or want to wait for traffic and weather. It’s an “on demand, give it to me now” world. Continue to give traffic and weather to your listeners. They count on that, but to avoid sounding outdated, be careful how you tease these elements.
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