Onboarding new hosts with a zine

Onboarding new show hosts is tricky. There's a lot of technical stuff someone's got to learn, while also maintaining and building the creative confidence to broadcast on the radio.

After experimenting with a bunch of different approaches, Sydhavnsbølgen Radio created a short zine that new hosts receive at their onboarding session. They go through the zine, page-by-page, together with their onboarding-buddy (a more experienced host that they've been paired with). Following this, they fill out an agreement form and produce a short trailer of their show, which they upload into our systems as a way to practice going through the motions. The new host gets to keep the zine to use as a reference later on, if they need it.

After the initial onboarding session, their onboarding buddy also joins them as backup for their first episode.

Please by all means take inspiration from this in your station's own onboarding process.

This resource was made with support from The European Union, through the Erasmus+ supported project Radio Radio Radio.