We covered this slightly in the last presenting tip, but this saying does what it says on the tin – If you fail to prepare anything for your show, it will be a disaster!

When I first started presenting, I would meticulously plan every single hook, tease & content link I would be doing throughout the show, down to the second (I even made my own Power Intro’s and Sweepers!). This wasn’t a very clever thing to do because if something went wrong with the system, a song was dropped from the system or the adverts ran longer than planned, it would throw everything off!

The most effective method I use to prepare consists of the following;

– The day/night before, I will sit on my phone or laptop and look through all of the major news sources, including tabloid newspapers, forums (mumsnet, believe it or not) and social media, looking for some stories that are light-hearted, peculiar or make me laugh.

– I will open a word document & note down each headline

– After reading the story more than once, I will write bullet points under each headline based around the most important parts of the story that I want to talk about & also make a judgement call on whether the story is going to be happy, sad, strange, outrageous etc

– I will often include a link to the story under the relevant bullet points so I can refresh my memory before the show or during the songs before I am talking about it

– I will also research the artists that I’m playing, because if I can sprinkle in some information about what they’ve been up to recently or let the listener know when they’ll be coming to town on their latest tour, the listener will get better value from your show

Having worked in production on Breakfast shows and phone-in shows before, the topic of preparation is something that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

Without preparing your content, you’re destined to deliver a sub-par performance.