The MIX, Chicago Show Biz Pop Quiz 100th Episode
Much like Steve Harvey does special-themed Family Feuds, it’s totally fine for you to take your tenured, signature features and do something different with them on occasion, too. Koz and Jen, The MIX, Chicago, do the Show Biz Pop Quiz each afternoon as listeners are driving home. This Hollywood trivia game is widely done and immensely popular with an audience because it’s vicarious, easy, and centered around a cast character in efforts to help define them. Here is their 100th episode of the feature. As a special treat for both Jen and the audience, Koz had her play against someone who is 100 years old. This quirky turn is geared at those just tuning in to play along, helping heighten how fun it is for them.
How hard is this? Not very. Tapping into the biggest stories of the day radiates relevancy to the audience. When tragedy happens, shows need to only think – what would Good Morning America or the Today Show do here? Sherman and Tingle, WDRV-FM, Chicago think like that. So the morning after Southwest #1380 is in the news for an engine blowing up at 30,000 feet and an emergency landing happening in Philadelphia, they’re faced with three choices: not have it as content on their show (big mistake), talk about it based on what they saw on TV and read online (just okay), or have someone on who was on the plane when it happened (amazing). No one tells a story better than the person who experienced it. The team got one of the passengers to come on to paint the picture of what it was like. While we won’t give away the secret of how they got her (it’s way easier than you think), these guys did a break no one else in Chicago did, thus winning the moment.
March Madness is done, but there are a couple of breaks I thought you’d enjoy, both from Two Men and a Mom, WRAL-FM, Raleigh. The first is a simple break where Sarah tells Kyle and Bryan her bracket strategy. She is an NC State alum and knew little else about the teams involved in the tournament. That didn’t prevent her from picking winners, although her logic was odd, in a funny kind of way. The takeaway on this break is that when you are honest with the audience and comfortable to share that you have no idea what you’re doing, a playfulness and organic sense of humor appears. In the second break, the team crowns its winner of their parody, Starch Madness, where they looked for the most popular potato-based food item. After all the voting, the team decides to insert in the break a little unexpected Easter egg by using a personality from their sister TV station, who had an investigative bulletin. Surprises are nice in breaks and this is one of them to capture the imagination of the audience.