"We have started a whole new - and extremely important - conversation about Morning Edition and its importance to the success of our station in all dayparts. We are talking regularly about the aspects of the program that we learned about at our seminar: journalism, craft, sound, content. The discussion is overdue, and the MEGS event and follow up are giving us the impetus to wrestle with the issues our own version of Morning Edition presents. We are taking an eagle-eyed look at each element of the program and developing plans to deal with the problems and to come up with improvements."
Prior to their MEGS workshop, few stations had ever conducted a scrupulous review of their Morning Edition format. A thorough analysis of the 7-8am hour was prepared for each station by the MEGS team. These detailed Morning Edition "road maps" identified a number of basic formatic problems:
- Station Identification. IDs were provided inconsistently, not often enough throughout the hour, or not at all in a given quarter hour.
- Time Checks. Some stations did not begin providing time checks once NPR stopped giving them. Others continued to use the old NPR method of saying "It's nineteen minutes after the hour," instead of giving the actual time ("It's seven nineteen") to listeners!
- Weather Forecasts. Stations often devote too much time and detail to weather, giving long range forecasts when most listeners' primary concern is what to expect when they leave the house.
- Promotion. There were problems at nearly every station with the frequency and effectiveness of forward and program promotion. Based on the extensive listening done by the MEGS team, promotion remains a major weakness for many stations.
Many of these issues were corrected easily after they were pointed out at the workshop. Most stations spent time immediately after the workshops mending these small but important formatic flaws.
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