Notes for owners · Branding and communication
How to write a radio script
A spot is heard once, by somebody at the wheel who cannot look at anything or write anything down. Time the words with a stopwatch, not on the page.
The GullySales team · Updated 21 Sept 2026 · 7 min read
Write the script to be heard once, by somebody at the wheel, who cannot look at a screen or write anything down. So the name goes in the first three seconds and again at the close, there is one offer and no second one, and every word is timed with a stopwatch rather than counted on the page. A script that reads beautifully and runs four seconds long is not a script. It is a paragraph.
Time it, never count it
Radio is sold in ten-second units, and ten seconds is a duration, not a word count. Read your draft aloud at the pace a stranger would understand it at first hearing, record it on your phone, and look at the number. Most English reads come out at a little over two dozen words once the name and the sign-off are in.
Then write the Kannada version to the clock in Kannada rather than from the English one. Kannada carries the same meaning in longer, built-up words, and an announcer reading at a comfortable pace gets through fewer of them in the same ten seconds. A Kannada script translated from English arrives long every single time, and what gets cut at the studio is whatever the artist decides to cut.
Mandatory lines come out of the same ten seconds. A clinic's registration line, a finance scheme's condition, a builder's approval number. If two seconds belong to the small print, you are writing an eight-second advertisement.
The listener's hands are busy
Things that do not survive a car: a web address anybody has to spell, an address that needs three landmarks, a discount code, a QR, a list of branches. Nobody writes anything down.
What survives is a name that can be typed into a phone that evening, one place everybody already knows, and a date. So on radio, the brand name is the call to action. A number belongs at the end, said twice, in groups, with nothing after it. Pick either the name or the number to be the last thing heard and do not fight yourself over the final two seconds.
There is no logo either, and people tune in mid-spot. The name goes early, once in the middle if there is room, and once at the close.
Put the pronunciation in the script as a note for the artist, spelled the way you want it said. A Bengaluru brand with a Kannada name, read by an artist who works mostly in English, comes back with the stress in the wrong place, and the listener then searches a word that is not yours. Decide the pronunciation once, write it into every script, and send it to every station.
Sound is the only set you get
There is no picture, so the picture is built out of sound that means something particular. A pressure cooker whistle. An auto meter. The four o'clock school bell. Rain on a tin roof in Malnad. A generic music bed builds nothing, because the listener has heard the same bed under thirty other advertisements this week.
One voice or two is a timing decision before it is a creative one. A conversation between two people is believable and needs a setup, so it does not fit in ten seconds. Keep one announcer at ten, and save the scene for twenty or thirty.
Film music is the other trap. The station will ask who owns the track before it airs, and the answer has to be somebody you have paid.
What each length can actually hold
| Length | What fits | What does not |
|---|---|---|
| 10 seconds | The name, one offer, one landmark, the name again | A reason to believe, a number and an address in the same read |
| 20 seconds | A short scene or one reason, the offer, the name twice, the number once | Two offers, a branch list, a condition that needs explaining |
| 30 seconds | A conversation with a turn in it, a condition on the offer, the number twice | Anything you would print on a brochure page |
If the draft needs thirty seconds and the budget bought ten, the problem is the offer, not the writing. An offer that needs explaining is the wrong offer for radio.
The format the station can record from
The station needs a script it can hand to an artist and a sound engineer without ringing you. Four columns: who speaks, what they say, what sound sits under it, and the running seconds at the end of each line. Around it, four notes.
Which words are fixed and may not be reworded, such as a doctor's registration or a price condition. Which line gets cut first if the read runs long, decided by you rather than by the studio at ten at night. The artist you want, by language and rough age. The last two seconds reserved for the name, with no music over it.
One script is not a campaign
Radio works on repetition, so the same commuter hears you three or four times in a week. By the second week they can finish your sentences, and the spot stops registering.
Record two or three versions in the same session, with the same voice, the same sign-off and a different middle, and ask the station to rotate them. It is one artist, one studio booking and a much longer useful life for the buy.
What to do next
Read the draft aloud once to somebody who has not seen it, then ask them to say the name and the offer back. If they can only manage one of the two, the script is not finished, and the usual fix is deleting the second idea rather than speeding up the read.
On our own radio advertising work we write the script, brief the artist, sit in on the recording where it helps, and then read the station's broadcast log against the schedule that was promised. If you are booking radio in Bengaluru this quarter and want the script and the buy looked at together, book the free audit.