With the election now over, plan on doing the No Politics Pledge as Thanksgiving approaches. Write up a silly “repeat after me” pledge and have listeners take it, committing to not talk politics at the Thanksgiving table when the family gathers!
Do you guys play Christmas music? When will you start? We all know that Christmas really doesn’t begin until Mariah Carey’s “All I Want For Christmas Is You” airs. Why not make a big deal over it? Complete with a countdown clock on the website and the airing each hour as to exactly how many minutes away the audience is from you playing it
Let’s bring two topics together – Halloween and the election. Have kids explain the election to you in their own words. Like their description? Give them some discounted Halloween candy!
Lots of people are feeling lots of stress because of politics. How to deal with all that stress? Eat your feelings! With Halloween coming up, talk to people feeling some stress from life, then become The Enablers. Give them total permission to have as much Halloween candy as they’d like to get through the stress!
Here’s a fun one. Tell the audience you’re posting something innocuous about the election on Facebook (“I’m looking forward to voting in a couple of weeks. Still undecided.”). Then guess at how many replies until things go south and someone says something about one of the candidates.
Normally when you do a March Madness-type grid, you’re looking for the best of something. Not this time! Put together a list of everyone’s least favorite Halloween treats and crown The World Series of Worst Halloween Candy. It’s a double-topical idea! Thanks to Kyle, Bryan, and Sarah, WRAL-FM, Raleigh for the idea. Let the voting begin!
Bet you have a bunch of haunted houses in the market for Halloween. Not the homes people think have ghosts. The ones put together by local businesses who aim to scare people as they walk through. What might be fun is to bring the show’s grandmothers through some of them, recording the entire thing. Those would be social media videos that’d get tons of views.
Triple True or False is a fun game that can be played a few different ways. #1: get lots of true/false trivia questions. Then work the phones. The first person to get three true/false trivia questions right in a row wins. The key is to never repeat a question (every caller gets a new set). Or ask three true/false questions to caller 14. If they get them all right, they win. If they miss one, caller 15 gets the prize. Make sure to conference callers 14 and 15 together on-air so one can root against the other. Hear it in action on the audio page here.
Here’s a new Letterman-esque idea you can put in the grab bag and do on occasion. Get a quirky What Did You Have For Breakfast jingle (AI can do that for you) and open the phones, asking listeners what they had for breakfast. Sure you’ll get the standard answers of cereal and eggs and bacon. But what you’re looking for are the people who have the off-menu items like bags of potato chips and beer.
Shows that ask listeners on Friday what they’re doing that weekend are really smart. It’s a question all co-workers ask in the office that day. With some phone screening, you air the most interesting. Then, for one that grabs you, ask if you can talk with them on Monday to see how it went.