Creating Fresh Content
Randy Lane • September 30, 2019
One of the top challenges for radio shows and podcasts is creating fresh content. That’s why we created a comprehensive daily planning checklis
t to help jumpstart new content ideas, features, and benchmarks.
Here are a few nuggets from the list:
- Start your planning meeting with the “ Post Show Review ”:
- Plug-in your regularly scheduled benchmarks and features.
- Include Humor/fun:
- Interactive games listeners can play along to
- Out of studio interactive games like Bailey & Southside Rock 100.5 Atlanta’s Smarta Marta
- Stupid/weird news type stories
- Ask: What’s trending
nationally and locally?
- Tell Stories – personal from the cast and external (such as good news stories).
- Generate conflict, drama, dilemmas, relationship content: from the cast or correspondence from a listener.
- Use Interactive phone and social media topics : Ask people with interesting posts and texts if they’ll go on air.
- Create Serial content : Set up a cast or listener storyline that pays off today AND sets up a continuing mystery that will be resolved at the same time tomorrow to boost TSL.
- Create a video that will potentially go viral.
The most successful shows have a balance of predictability and familiarity from their benchmarks AND unpredictability from the generation of innovative fresh content.
Photo by J. Kelly Brito on Unsplash
Recent Posts

By Randy Lane
•
September 29, 2026
When I start coaching a show, talents often say:“Nobody calls anymore.” Or: “Listeners in this market don’t call radio shows.” My response is, “That’s interesting, because several of our shows get more calls than they need.” The difference isn’t necessarily the market. It’s often how the show invites people into the conversation. Airing callers and text […]

By Randy Lane
•
September 21, 2026
Jerry Seinfeld wrote every episode of Seinfeld longhand, on a yellow legal pad, with a blue Bic pen. He still writes that way. He’s said the flashing cursor on a screen makes him anxious, like it’s asking, “So, whaddaya got?” Why Start With Pen and Paper?Writing by hand slows you down just enough for ideas to […]

By Randy Lane
•
September 15, 2026
In the era of loud, fast-talking announcer DJs, my radio mentor, Todd Wallace, asked my fellow DJs and me, “Would you talk to your neighbor over the back fence like a pukey DJ or just in natural conversation?” Of course we all said we’d talk to them conversationally. Todd concluded, “Talk to listeners on air like […]
