This week’s idea comes compliments of Jim Day from Jim and Jeane, WIL-FM, St. Louis. It’s called “The Five Dollar Story”. Tell the audience you have five bucks and you’ll give it to the first story you hear that grabs you. Open the phones, but once a story is being told, if you get bored, the story is over and you go to the next caller, until you hear one that’s so engaging and entertaining that you give them the money.
The win when giving out something is not the prize, but how you give it out. If people not calling in are having a good time playing along, you gain positive imagery. Music-based features always score well. Stitch together the hooks of several songs on the station – the first listener to name all artists and titles of the songs wins. Call it “Frankenstein”.
If you have a fall fair in your town, convince someone from the livestock part of the show to name an animal after each member of the morning show. Rob and Joss, Froggy 92.9, Santa Rosa, CA do this each year and call it “Give Us the Name, We’ll Give You the Fame.” Then check on the person who consents each morning to see how your livestock are doing!
Someone attending last month’s Morning Show Bootcamp shared a fun, new idea: making a funeral director laugh. The marriage of these two opposites is intriguing and this might be a fun bit to do at the same time each day for a week where you get on a different funeral director and then someone on the show has thirty seconds to get them to laugh out loud.
Almost every person you’ll encounter the day you read this has something gnawing at them. An item in life that, if they were to just unload or talk with someone, they’d be free to have a better day. Guess what? You’re that person in a new feature called “Let It Go”. Remember, if you offer frivolous items as suggestions for the feature, that’s what you’ll get on the phones. Thanks to The Big Dave Show, B105, Cincinnati, for this one.
With back to school happening in your market in the next few weeks, and with back to school shopping the big topic, invite mothers to come on to just read you the laundry list of stuff they have to buy their kid to get ready. New backpack? Check! Five subject notebook? Check! Protractor? Huh??? The mothers with the longest list of things the school is asking them to purchase will have some of the odder items, producing your most relatable and fun break.
Kids are gearing up to get back to school over the next couple of weeks. Now’s a good time to find the most matronly sounding woman in the office who can act as your “teacher” on the air once a morning who’ll quiz kids, asking them questions about things they learned in the grade they were in last year to see what they forgot over the summer. Let’s see who gets detention!
Hard to believe that back-to school is upon us in the next few weeks. Jimmy Fallon slow jams the news. How about you getting all the elements in place to slow jam the school lunch menus?
July is the month for vacations. For those who’ve yet to take their summer break, they are mentally in countdown mode, ticking off the days until they don’t have to work. Open the phones to find those people to catch that vibe on the air. Then create a personalized countdown clock online for each person. You can put them on your website. Then check with those people on occasion until their vacation to let them know how many days/hours/minutes/seconds they have to keep it alive in on-air breaks.
Summer brings a much different lifestyle for the audience than the other three seasons. The next two months signal vacations, grilling, and hanging out with friends. Through the run of the summer, put in a phone topic each week called “Boats, Bikinis, Beer, or Bikes” where listeners must call you with a story that contains at least one of those words.