My New Radio Program - Let's Hear Your Suggestions!

Now that Ana has left our house, I have had to rethink my commitment to breakfast radio. When Ana was there, she was able to ensure that JD (my 12 year old) had had his breakfast and was ready to catch the bus to school. But now that it's just JD and me, I've had to look at changing my radio program to a time during school-hours, rather than trying to drag a grumpy "almost teenager" along with me.

The station manager and I have discussed my programming options and I've decided to start doing an entirely new program from 9am till probably 11 or 11.30 from Wednesday to Friday, that is until my training course finishes in a few months. At the moment my course is most of the day Monday and Tuesday which only leaves me with the other three days for announcing.

I've been thinking hard about what to include, since the Manager suggested making it like a magazine style program. As one of the station's main aims is to present only positive programs and music, I'm not 100% sure what to include as yet.

I've love to hear your suggestions.

At the moment I will continue with one of my older segments from the breakfast show on thrifty tips: saving money around the home. 

A new idea that I had already been working on is positive stories about ordinary people who have made extraordinary achievements or have battled to regain their lives after tragedies. This will take some research and rewriting, but could be included as a special spot, perhaps on a Monday to help us to feel motivated for the week. It could be called something like "Motivational Monday." What do you think?

Previously I had considered petcare, but came to the conclusion that only a qualified person such as a vet should do that, and I used to have a vet come in once a month for a few years, on my old breakfast program. This was a very time consuming thing to do, so I was happy to let that go when the previous vet got very pregnant and was unable to do it anymore.

I will probably include upcoming local events once a week, possibly on a Wednesday or Thursday, which was also something I included in my breakfast show. This way our listeners can book tickets or plan to attend events on the weekend.

At one stage I spoke to a local fisherman about whether he might be available once a week to talk about how things are looking on the waterways, since Gladstone is a popular spot for the local anglers. I may just get back in contact with him again to hear his thoughts. One of the things I'll need to do first is to see how well mobile phone-calls can be recorded in our system, and then we can either pre-record the spot or talk live. It will depend on his availability.

My other thoughts for segment spots:

Perhaps there's a local gardener who might like to come in once a month or even once a fortnight, since gardening is always such a popular topic. We don't really need to chat for more than 10 or 15 minutes at the most. We have the local botanical gardens, so maybe somebody there might be available.

I guess I could include a cooking spot, though I'm certainly no cook! Perhaps I could focus it on healthy options that don't cost much after I give them a trial at home. I figure that if I can cook it successfully, ANYBODY should be able to. But then, I'm sure there are other people who are much better at this segment than myself, so I might put some feelers out there.

There's another person I've had on the breakfast show before who matches local groups, charities etc with volunteers. If he's still involved in that area, I could perhaps get him in once a month and see what kind of volunteers people are looking for.

Here so far are my thoughts for the weekly program:

Motivational Mondays:
Positive story
Positive quote

Tuesdays:
Thrifty tips:

Wednesdays:
Cooking or gardening

Thursdays:
Local events

Fridays:
Fishing

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

HECK! I've still got to come up with a name for the new program yet!  Aarrgh!