Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Format Clock Appears

One of the first things a radio show "needs" is some clue of what will be happening when. Usually diagrams called format clocks are drawn up. So I made one.



So one can see at a glance that a typical opening segment will be 14 minutes. The longest segment is 19 minutes (assuming one guest or topic per segment). On rare occasions if really needed, we could cross over a break and talk with someone for 25 minutes or so with a short pause in the middle.

So much actual content in a show is scarce these days. A format clock for a commercial station's typical talk show would have the BREAK sections five or more minutes each. Ours are just a minute long. THANK YOU station members for making such coverage possible. We rely on your contributions rather than long commercial breaks to fund this.