There is a saying in NASCAR: “rubbing is racing.” Stock car racing is a rough and tumble business where bumping and grinding with your competitors is part of the path to victory lane. It's the same in the talk radio business – “if you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the, uhm, studio.” Yet one of the best ways to turn up the heat for your show is to actually get out of the studio and have personal contact with your listeners.

There is a comfort zone that comes with being in the “big chair” inside the studio. The sound is consistent. You know where all the buttons are located. Your internet connection to keep you in touch with what is happening as it is happening is usually consistent and reliable. You probably even have a television set tuned in to an all news station to make sure that breaking news won’t escape your attention even while you are on the air. Talk back with your producer is easy. Last but not least you know exactly where the kitchen and the bathrooms are located.

Unfortunately, that bubble also isolates you from the personal touch with your audience – and fromyour audience. A “real life” connection with listeners helps add an extra boost of vitality and energy to your show and it carries over when you return to the confines of the studio. Shakespearean-era playwrights (including William) sometimes used a theatrical device where they placed actors in the audience. These “plants” would initially heckle the other actors and then become a part of the play itself. It was, and remains, a brilliant way to break down the natural barrier between the stage and the audience. Getting out of the studio and into the “real world” is just as effective for talk hosts.

Talk radio by its very nature is pretty personal. Most listeners tune in with some degree of isolation themselves. They are alone in their car or truck in many cases. They listen with earphones that separate them from others and link them in an even more personal way to the words you put directly into their head. With the hours they spend with you they come to know you. They know when you are having a bad day; when there is a little extra stress in your voice, even if you don’t say anything about it on the air. They also know when there is that little bit of extra spark; when you clearly have a smile on your face and a bounce in your step even if they can’t see it. They know YOU, even if you don’t know them. More importantly, they feel like they know you.

With budget cuts and personnel reductions, a lot of talk stations don’t do remote broadcasts like they used to do – either as frequently or as “big” as the clients and listeners once expected. Now more than ever, it's up to the hosts to seek opportunities to take the show on the road and push to get it done. It has never been more important to do so.

The technology of remote broadcasting has never been easier or better. We have done our own show using cell/satellite phones from the Golan Heights in Israel and from armored humvees in Fallujah and Baghdad. A backpack with a Comrex unit has given us the opportunity to broadcast with studio quality from casinos in Tunica, Mississippi, from the back of a pickup truck at the Jack Daniel’s Barbeque Festival in tiny Lynchburg, Tennessee, and from the New Hampshire primary. Each year the portability and quality of remote broadcasting improves, so why not take advantage of it?

While the business has increasingly become high tech, we have become less and less high touch. With more nationally syndicated shows filling the programming lineup, listeners seldom have the opportunity to actually meet the people behind the voices they listen to so intently. Local and regional hosts have the opportunity to make that connection in a way that the nationally syndicated hosts seldom do.

By making a personal connection with a listener at a remote broadcast, community event or other appearance, you have an opportunity to convert them from a passive participant in your show to an advocate who doesn’t just know your voice but actually knows YOU...and you know THEM. Even those who have the opportunity to visit with you but fail to catch you at a particular event or broadcast will know that you were there – in THEIR space, in THEIR community. That by itself helps to make a better connection with you and them.

Granted, you may be taller or shorter than they thought; thinner or thicker perhaps than they imagined. Once you become a person they know, rather than one whose voice they know, it will be just a little bit harder to turn the dial…even when you annoy them. Sort of like family. So get out of the box…and make the connections that your competitors can’t or won’t make. After all, it’s not just business, it’s personal.