Monday Memo: Subliminal Sleigh Bells
By Holland Cooke
Consultant
By now, a music station in your market – hopefully in your cluster – is all-Christmas-music-all-the-time, a great perennial franchise.
How other stations can sound in-tune-with this special season: Hang a strip of jingle bells in the studio. Or set up a hotkey.
Associate that sound with your weather forecast, a hook valuable to a station of any format, especially news/talkers, which should own the market’s information images. In local hours, you might ring ‘em as you announce the present temperature at the end of the forecast. In non-local hours, have ‘em in the background under your standard forecast intro language.
HOW special is this time of year? People are singing “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” in every country on Earth…except one. In Panama, it’s “I’m dreaming of a wide isthmus.”
Holland Cooke (HollandCooke.com) is a consultant working the intersection of broadcasting and the Internet. Follow HC on Twitter @HollandCooke and connect on LinkedIn