Archive for month: January, 2018

Many shows over the years have played the “I Love You Game” where they try to get someone on the phone to reply back that they love them.  Sherman and Tingle, WDRV (The Drive), Chicago have added a few twists to this.  They do a character called Paul the Perv who calls three business of the same type, to see if he can make that happen.  Paul immediately makes things odd because the character is weird and creepy (without crossing the “ick” line).  They then call three of the same kinds of business to theme it each week.  The other element that works is the other cast members of the show have to guess, of the three calls, how many Paul will be successful with the payoff.  This final item forces a vicarious element into the breaks, compelling the listener to guess, too, then stay tuned to see if they are right.  These are fun and this weekly feature is perfectly designed to grab the audience’s attention and keep it throughout the break.  Here’s one of the breaks from a recent airing so you can get a sense of how all these elements work together.

There are a handful of shows that get a ton of strategic stuff done in a short period of time and Spencer’s Neighborhood, 106.5 The Arch, St. Louis is one of them.  We believe that discipline is critical with our content breaks on the show.  That means that Spencer and his team must prep more, not less, to make good stuff happen.  In its few short minutes, listen to this break as Spencer does character development (defines himself with a dentist story), ties the break to a pop culture event (the national championship college football game), and gets innovative by having a team member say things a football coach would say with a mouth stretcher, thus creating humor.  There are four critical images to earn: tell stories that make the show relevant, and be fun, innovative, and authentic.  This did all of that.