SHOW PLANNING

Planning your show is a very important part of producing a radio

show and thus running a successful station.

1. Start by writing down a brief for your show. For example: ‘A specialist

music show focusing on 90s Europop. Each week will showcase music

from a different period, supported by speech explaining the brief

history of the music’.

2. Make a list of the features you’ll be broadcasting in the show. For

example: This Day in History – a collection of events that happened on

this day, Blast from the Past – a presenter brings in an item from their

past to talk about followed by a song from the period.

3. Determine how the show’s airtime will be divided up (see ‘Making a

show clock’)

4. Type this show clock up as

a linear plan template (spreadsheet’s are good for this). You can

adopt the formatting of your show plan template to a style you’re

comfortable with.

a. In this script, simple one-line bullet points are used to remind

presenters of the link material, song titles are stated on the right

hand side.

b. Make sure you include the following:

i. Two columns: one to describe link material, one for song

names.

ii. Enough space to put three or so lines of text for each link.

iii. Space to put the name/ artist of the track (or CD if

applicable)

c. Different presenters prefer different styles of show plan, however

all presenters have one thing in common: they plan their shows.

A show plan must be able to show you what to talk about in

each link and w

d. hen to play a song. You cannot simply ‘grab a load of songs’

and turn up in the studio to ‘wing it’. No matter how good you

are you’ll quickly find that you’re so busy trying to run the studio,

you won’t have time to invent link material as you go along.

e. Show planning needn’t be an arduous task – 30 minutes spent

planning content for an hour of airtime is sufficient, and can be a

lot of fun if planning with a co-presenter. So get creative and

always plan your shows!