Just For Laughs

Funny, or annoying?

How funny is your morning show?

laughing

All of us love to laugh. Laughter is one of the key components of human interaction.

But nothing sounds worse than someone trying to be funny and failing, and you can hear it happen almost every day on most stations in your market.

So you need to be honest with your own talent. If you have a truly funny person on your air staff, that’s a great bonus. Let ’em fire away. However, if your talent is trying to be funny every break and failing, you’ve got a big problem.

Look, being able to consistently make others laugh out loud is a gift like any other, and while telling jokes has a definitive process and rhythm that can be analyzed, simply following the steps doesn’t always equal funny.

Truly funny people are as rare as truly gifted actors or writers, so part of coaching talent is trying to help them understand their unique gifts and play to their strengths.

From what I hear on most stations, that’s not happening often enough.

The simple truth is, being relevant and compelling trumps failed attempts at humor every time.

Want proof? Oprah’s not nearly as funny as Ellen, and it hasn’t seemed to hurt her ratings…