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Basic radio schedule
Here's a very basic radio guide to give you a start when you're considering how to schedule your station.
Schedule into blocks of programming; people will rarely make appointment-to-listen on the radio, and if they do they’ll need more than the four weeks of an RSL to understand your schedule if you make it complicated.
So, roughly the standard schedule I’d start from is:
0700 - Breakfast. Put loads of resources into this, even if not everyone is there at broadcast (eg people setting stuff up, doing pre-rec’s etc etc). This is where you should concentrate your stunts/talkability so that listeners are spending the rest of the day selling your station on your behalf. Link across to drive.
0900/1000 - General daytime stuff. V much depending on your target demographic / type of station your plan to be. But don’t specalise here - this is when the bulk of people will tune in for the first time, and they’ll tune in whenever, so you need to have things that are going to appreciate. Sell the rest of your output here.
1600 - Drivetime. This is your second biggest slot after breakfast, so put the appropriate resource here.
1800 - “Infotainment” shows - put your high information shows between 6pm - 8pm.
2000 - Specialist music/talk shows - This is where you can put all your “specialist” content; so specific-community/music programming etc. People are far more likely to make appointments-to-listen in the evening than during the day. But don’t mix and match too dramatically - perhaps create evening strands which are easy to remember - Tuesday is unsigned and guitar bands, Wednesday is Asian sub-continent programming, Thursday is South American programming etc. Within these you’ll have different individual programmes, which can be different, and you don’t necessarily have to make a big thing publicly of the strands.
Then you could tie it all up with a late night general chat show about 2300 for an hour. If you can get people listening last thing at night, that's what they'll be tuned into in the morning. Don't underestimate the value of your late night slot.
Weekends - Generally, I’d say general stuff on Sat/Sun morning, Sport on Sat afternoon (if you decide to do sport), specialist on Sat evening and Sun afternoon + evening. Remember that Sun morning audiences can be bigger than weekday breakfast; and that Sat/Sun are the times people are most likely to be tuning around (because their routine is less fixed, they don’t rely on a particular radio station). So don’t “dump” your less able presenters to weekends.
Obviously this all depends the availablity of your volunteers, and I’d never suggest that this is the only way of doing a radio schedule. And of course, a lot depends on who you think your audience is.