Creating Authentic and Meaningful Specialty Programming: 4 Things You Can Do Today

Authentic. Meaningful. Relevant. 

As a radio programmer, you’re familiar with those words. You probably keep them at the forefront of your mind. After all, you’re constantly thinking about how to better connect with your current audience and how to reach out and attract the audience you WANT. So, yes, of course! Creating authentic, meaningful, and relevant content is really important.

So...how do you do it?

It’s one thing to say that you (or your station) is honoring, for example, Black History Month. It’s quite another to follow through on that promise with programming that touches some part of your audience’s heart and/or mind.

In other words, if your “specialty programming” for Black History Month does nothing other than leave your audience scratching their heads and thinking, “What am I listening to? Why does my favorite radio station not sound like my favorite radio station right now?” … Well, you’re probably not hitting that specialty programming out of the park.

Here are four things you can do…to do it better.

1. Plan ahead.

2. Include new and different voices – the authorities and the experts – in the planning and the follow-through.

3. Share the plan with your on-air hosts and with your producers.

4. Explain to your audience what you’re doing…and why. 

Let’s break it down.

First, plan ahead.

How are you programming? Are you doing it a week at a time, a day at a time? Or, are you using a programming calendar to create a comprehensive overview of every quarter – or every year?

The farther in advance you can identify the days and months you want to highlight, the more time you’ll have come up with compelling, interesting, and, yes, relevant programming that’ll help you (and your hosts) connect with the audience. The advance planning also gives you time to vet your ideas with people in the community. Take the time to widen your circle of advisers. Whose perspectives are you missing? How could you get them involved?

Plus, if you can plan ahead, you’ll be that much more flexible and nimble in the wake of sudden changes – you won’t have to scramble as much to adapt to news stories or world events if you already have a plan. 

Second, don’t expect that you or your staff is the expert in whatever you’re choosing to celebrate, especially for culturally specific holidays. Doing something to acknowledge Juneteenth? Wonderful. What Juneteenth celebrations are being planned in your community? How could you spread the word about those events? Could you collaborate with those event planners to create some relevant and well-informed new programming?

In short, expand your network. Be open to learning and don’t be scared to open up your world a little bit and invite someone new in to share THEIR expertise. Keep in mind that the expertise of others is valuable.

Keep this in mind, too: Don’t ask community leaders to work for free, either helping you to plan new content or reviewing your content plans!

Before you decide that you can’t afford to pay a contributor, think broadly about ways you COULD afford to bring someone in. Do you have an education or development budget? Do you have access to a network of content contractors? There are ways around budgetary constraints; you may have to look a little deeper to find them.

Third, tell your on-air, digital, marketing, membership, and production teams about your programming plans. Why?

Well, why not?

If your on-air hosts don’t know what’s going on, they can’t share anything special with the audience.

If your digital team is in the dark, you won’t be able to get any traction on your website or social media.

If your marketing team is unaware of all the great things you’re doing to celebrate, honor, and include your audience…well, how can they tell anyone else about it? 

This is also an opportunity to discover new expertise among your staff members. Maybe someone you already work with is already deeply involved in planning a local Black History Month event, for instance. 

In short: invite everyone to contribute to the plans. Not all of their ideas will make it to production or to execution, but each person feels included and invested. That goes a long way to create authentic enthusiasm versus “I’m doing this because my boss told me to.”

We see (and hear) far too often in public media that teams are working in silos, that teams aren’t sharing and collaborating, and that teams aren’t working together to create authentic and meaningful programming for their audience. And that, public radio friends, has to change. It’s time.

Rather than keeping all your great ideas to yourself, share them! Let others participate and get excited about the cool things you’re doing when it comes to programming. More engaged teams = more engaged audiences and listeners = potentially more donors.

Finally, it’s important that you let your audience know what you’re doing – and why you’re doing it. If your special programming is very different from your regular programming, it’s likely that your current audience won’t appreciate it – unless YOU explain what’s going on. Make sure you’re giving your audience context around what you’re doing so they can appreciate it.

And, of course – if you aren’t making the effort to promote your efforts to your current audience – and trying to reach your new audience, too – then your efforts are, frankly, a waste of time.

I want to point to WRR Classical as a station that’s doing a really good job of explaining what they’re doing during Black History Month – and why they’re doing it. Their on-air hosts are sharing information about the music they’re highlighting in an open and informative way and, honestly, I’ve been learning about composers and musicians I don’t know about. Plus, they’re also offering up some info on their website. Tip of the cap to WRR Classical.

Another station doing a great job incorporating specialty programming this month? Folk Alley (side note: I work with Folk Alley as an on-air host — not a programmer — and have for many years). What strikes me about what Folk Alley’s doing this month is that they’re incorporating specialty programming across ALL their platforms. They’re acknowledging Black History Month in their weekly newsletter, in their weekly radio show, in a special “Classic Folk” sidestream at FolkAlley.com, and in the content they’re featuring on their website. There’s a nice sense of collaboration between all departments – and, again, as a listener, I’m engaged and learning a lot. 

Another station I’ve noticed recently? NPR. For their State of the Union coverage they, for the first time, offered coverage in English and in Spanish – and the on-air team did an incredible job of regularly mentioning the coverage, and WHY it’s happening. 

There you go – four ways to think about specialty programming a bit differently. What would YOU add? What stations or media organizations do you see excelling at out-of-the-ordinary programming?