…And the Living Is Easy

The author is owner/president of Sound Advantage Media. His commentaries appear here regularly.

The songs of summer that stand out and are remembered can make your audience feel valued and connected, boosting engagement and fostering long-term loyalty. Emphasizing summer hits now can motivate staff and sponsors to prioritize these tracks, ensuring sustained listener interest beyond the season.

Summer is an ideal time to increase Cume and TSL, as listeners have more leisure time and are on vacation. With the media universe expanding rapidly, standing out becomes more critical than ever. Making a friend today can mean gaining a lifelong listener.

It’s time for summer outings and super-serving your community. Engaging sponsors in these events can foster a sense of partnership and shared purpose, making everyone feel valued and connected.

Consider ideas like sponsoring a local park event, a summer concert series, or a community picnic. Get a sponsor to rent a park where you serve food and soda. Hamburgers, hot dogs and grilled chicken taste great from the grill. Please have your sales reps get started and secure sponsors for food, drinks and the picnic area. Give that sponsor first refusal on naming rights.

Talent provides time and energy for their personal appearance. Air talent ought to have a sponsor for their segment. They’ll have sponsored cutaways during their appearance. Have the station van playing the top 100 summer hits.

Have a salesperson and social influencers in shorts and a T-shirt with the station’s logo, handing out station merchandise, i.e., coffee mugs, pens with the station logo, as well as window visors with your logo.

Imagine seeing 100 or more cars parked at Walmart with YOUR logo on them. That’s quite the visual and costs nearly nothing to produce.

Have listeners register on your website to participate and create an engaging summer experience. Define specific goals, like increased listener engagement or sponsorship, and establish clear metrics to measure success.

This can inspire your team and sponsors to be more enthusiastic about the campaign. It provides you with listener emails to use in other station promotions.

Please make sure your website is clean and easy to navigate. Research from Edison Media indicates cluttered websites are a big turn-off for listeners.

Don’t shoot yourself in your foot right out of the gate. Use the KISS principle, and you’ll build a tremendous opportunity to show your audience how professional you are.

The music is relatively simple to put together. Regardless of your format-whether R&B, country or rock-your music director or program director (brand manager) can research the music online and obtain results. The Billboard Top 100 in any format is easy to use. You’ll need to subscribe, but you can copy reams of information.

Tailor your playlist to match your station’s style and audience preferences to boost engagement and listener satisfaction during summer campaigns. This targeted approach ensures your programming resonates with your listeners and maximizes engagement.

In an era flooded with misinformation, trust and credibility are essential. If all you want to be is a “music box,” the streaming services do it better without the lousy commercials. Commercial copy still has a long way to go in the information age. You’ll find that people respond better to and create what they already recognize.

Local radio still stands apart from the competition. According to Nielsen and Edison Research’s Q3 2025 “The Record, “AM/FM radio still captures 62% of all ad-supported audio listening time, outperforming podcasts, streaming music, and satellite combined.

While it’s true that TSL is down across all formats, stations that diversify and differentiate themselves stand a much better chance of building a listener following. The audience spends more time scrolling than actually listening. Listener attention spans are about 7 seconds. If you don’t grab them quickly, you’ll never will. Radio builds belief.

Suggestions for music stations.

For classic hits or oldies-formatted stations. Some great songs from the ’50s to include: