Time Person of the Year: Radio lose the tease

Time Magazine Person of the Year for 2011 is The Protestor. Protests around the world have toppled dictatorial regimes, so the decision makes some sense, I guess. I was hoping for Steve Jobs, but oh well.

Terrestrial radio has done something my whole life that no longer makes sense in the age of the Extended Mind. It’s called a tease. News and talk hosts will use time to promote they’ll be telling me something I might want to know, but not yet. I’ll have to stay tuned if I want to know.

I was just listening to Mark Davis host of a morning talk show in Dallas on the Stitcher App for iPad. He did a tease. He said something like, “You may not like who Time chose as it’s person of the year. I’ll tell you who it is and we’ll talk about it after the break.”

By teasing rather than telling, Mark Davis sacrificed some of his value as an information source because I didn’t find out that Time’s Person of the Year from Mark. I Googled it and I’ve written this much of this blog post, saved a graphic to add to the post and Mark Davis still hasn’t revealed Time’s Person of the Year.

If you work in radio, loose the tease and just tell the audience what’s new as soon as the information is available.

I’m hitting publish and Mark is counting down from five. He’s on number two and I’ve published.