There’s a familiar frustration in media:
You write what you think is a great tease. You create curiosity. You promise something compelling. You tell listeners or viewers when to come back.
And then… they don’t.
Not because the tease wasn’t good. Not because they weren’t interested. They simply weren’t there when the payoff happened. They were at work. They were talking to their kids. They were driving through a dead spot. They switched stations. They got distracted. They had to leave the car. Or, they simply had other things going on in their lives. This is an important distinction because it changes how we should think about teases.
What if the tease itself is part of the payoff?
Too often, we think about a tease as a tactical device with one job: get the listener or viewer to come back for the thing we’re teasing. That is certainly one of its jobs. But if that’s the only way we evaluate a tease, we’re setting ourselves up for disappointment. The reality is that your audience cannot always be there for the payoff. And that’s not necessarily a programming failure.
Our research consistently reinforces the importance of understanding radio from the listener’s perspective, a principle we refer to as Outside Thinking. People have busy, unpredictable lives. They dip in and out. They miss things. They join a show in the middle of a conversation. They hear a promo for something that already happened.
We can’t control that. What we can control is what listeners take away from the moments they do hear. That’s where teases become branding opportunities. I encourage you to think beyond the event and think about the image.
Imagine a radio morning show that has built a strong image around being funny and unpredictable.
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A tease might be: “You are not going to believe what happened when Producer Mike tried to help a listener this morning. It was completely unhinged. But who went off the rails? The listener…or Mike? We’ll tell you what happened at 8:15.”
If the listener comes back at 8:15, great. They get the payoff.
But what if they don’t?
They still heard something that reinforces an important idea about the show: you never know what to expect. The sense of FOMO is palpable.
Or imagine a personality whose brand is built around being connected to the community. A tease about an upcoming conversation with a local teacher, business owner, athlete, or listener isn’t just an invitation to tune in later. It can reinforce the idea that this show knows and cares about the people who live here.
A sports podcast known for where athletes reveal the most authentic things about themselves should consistently lean on those clips in the promos and short-form video, as if every single person is seeing or hearing the clip for the first time.
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The key is to ask a different question. Instead of “Will this tease get them to come back,” also ask “If this is the only thing they hear, what does it tell them about us?” That’s a branding question. The tease can be the commercial for the show.
Think about the strongest brands in any category. Their individual messages may change, but they continually reinforce the same fundamental associations.
If one of the most important images for your show is great chemistry, then teases should sound like a show with great chemistry. If the image is humor, the tease should be funny—not merely a description of something that will eventually be funny. If the image is surprise, give listeners a taste of the unexpected. If the image is emotion and connection, let them hear the emotional stakes. If the promise is being local, make the tease feel unmistakably local. In other words, don’t only tease the content. Tease the brand.
This is especially important in a fragmented listening environment. Old model = assumes listeners will be there for the setup, tease, payoff, and everything in between. New model = listeners/viewers enter and exit frequently.
This isn’t a call to abandon the tactical mission, it’s a call to expand it and make it more strategic. Appointment listening still matters. The payoff still matters. The best teases do two things at once. They give listeners and viewers a reason to stay or come back and reinforce why they should care about the show in the first place. We can’t control if they’ll be there for the payoff, but we can control whether the moments they do hear make our brand stronger.
That’s the opportunity.
Don’t just tease what’s coming. Tease who you are.
