The Olympics
Opening Ceremonies
Michael Phelps
Summer Vacations
Chick-Fil-A
The Queen
Batman
Kristen Stewart
The Jackson Family Feud
Dancing With the Stars
Bristol Palin
Modern Family
Aurora, CO Shootings
Apple – Twitter
Fred Willard
Robin Roberts
Madonna
50 Shades of Grey
Kanye and Kim
Dane Cook
American Idol Judges
Jeff Bezos
Mr. Bean
Mariah Carey
We’re in the silly business, right? Here’s a break from Cledus, Dave, and Veronica on WQYK, Tampa which perfectly fuses relatable content with innovation. Dave thought his mom’s outgoing voicemail made her sound like she worked for a 900-number. Listen to how he talks about it and, more importantly, what they do with it to make the audience laugh.
With Mitt Romney’s choice for his vice presidential candidate a few weeks away, every member of your team should endure the vetting process to see who’s the “cleanest” to become a veep. Find a lawyer (or ask a local politician to help if you know one) who will probe very deeply into the backgrounds of every cast member of the program. Make sure all of the highly personal questions are asked. In this multi-day narrative for the show, the lawyer comes on the last day and reveals which cast member has the least skeletons in their closet. This is a very pure and highly entertaining character development bit if structured right.
The Olympics
Aurora, CO Shootings
The Dark Knight Rises
Joe Paterno Statute
Summer Vacations
British Open
Fred Willard
Usher
Chick-Fil-A
Tony Robbins
Michael Jackson’s Mom
Bain Capital
Mariah Carey
American Idol Judges
Apple
Tom Cruise – Katie Holmes
Walking on Fire
50 Shades of Grey
Teen Choice Awards
Sage Stallone
It was 100 degrees in town this week and Mojo in the Morning, Channel 95.5, Detroit talked about it. Here’s a storyline very well constructed to get listeners to hang on for resolution. They received a call from an air conditioning repairman who talked about how busy he’s been. He tells them this story about how, when fixing someone’s unit, a neighbor who can’t get hers fixed approaches him and offers him sex if he’ll take care of things. Instead of finding out if he accepted the offer after he tells his story, Mojo asks listeners what they thought he did, before the guy tells all. These two segments below were separated by a stop set and some music.
With the Olympics starting this week, come up with silly competitions and pit someone from every department in the building against each other in “The Office Olympics”. There are five departments in your building: sales, management, promotions, engineering, and support. Develop five quirky competitions where one member of each department competes for the gold each day to see which group of people in the building are Olympians!
With the Olympics not too far off, a quick fun bit you can do throughout the games is called “Guess My Nationality”. Listeners call who speak with an accent. Have them read something silly within reach (i.e. the directions on how to use a household cleaner at their home). Each member of the morning show then gets to guess what country they’re from. Remember that somewhere on line are cheesy versions of every national anthem – have them ready to spice the feature up!
I love shows who make something from seemingly the smallest of things. Recently, Kim Berk, from Jim and Kim, Fresh 102.7, New York, broke the heel of her shoe. Challenged, her partner Jim Douglas and Producer Craig went to buy some cheap sandals to get her through the day. They took along a recorder and found a fun person in the shop to help. The moral of this story: always record what you’re doing so you can share the experience with the audience and make it come alive.