THE PRODUCTION TRIBUTE

With Michael Jackson's death came a flood of audio tributes throughout radio. Some say this idea has been overdone and should be deleted or overhauled.

What to do? Go with the critics and skip it, or stand on tradition and risk being the old skooler? This is difficult because so many radio conventions are coming under fire. Revenue is down and it's easy to say that whatever radio is doing isn't working. When faced with this type of issue, we turn to the audience. Do they think it's tired? Is it a tune out? Let's start by taking a look around.

What we're observing is deep coverage in all media to feed the ravenous appetite of a huge fan base that wants to remember and celebrate Michael in many different ways. 30% of twitter's traffic became about him. Artist The Game released a song with Chris Brown, Diddy and 5 other aritsts as a tribute. Every info outlet from the New York Times to TMZ covered the story as well as the vigils that followed.

In contrast, Farrah Fawcett and Ed McMahon tributes were tougher to find. Audio clips were played and mentions were made but more elaborate, produced tributes were scarce. That puts it in perspective. It doesn't seem that radio is tribute happy or has beaten the relevance out of the concept. When something big happens, radio, like any other broadcast medium, airs relevant content to address what's top of mind for a large part of the audience.

Maybe the beef some critics have is that tributes can tread a fine line between reverent and cheesy. Point taken. Sometimes quality can suffer when you're producing against the clock to feed the immediacy beast and a tribute is a delicate piece of production. Preparation is key in these situations.

We would suggest asking yourself a question or two for starters. Do you have a plan for production when major events break? What are your go-to resources that you can rely on for quality material?

On a broader scale, we'd like to say that good is good and audiences rarely tire of high quality entertainment. Ok, Sarah Connor Chronicles was canceled but, on a personal note, we think of that as the exception rather than the rule. Consider that movie trailers have been around a long time and have followed a fairly narrow formula. Nobody is saying "trailers have to go...the formula is tired". Many websites are dedicated to nothing but trailers because people don't seem to tire of them.

It's our opinion that a well crafted tribute piece is still a powerful programming element that deserves all the attention and resources you can give it. It's another area where imaging jumps to the front and becomes the radio station.