The best ideas tend to come from real life – developing ideas from things that happen to you shift the perception from it being a “bit” to something more organic. Karson, from Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston, walked in on his mother-in-law while she was visiting with him, when she had no pants on. Oops! To give out some concert tickets, the show did “Beat That”, where the listener with the best story beating his won.
One of my all-time favorite holiday bits is “Scared Straight Santa” as done by Karlson and McKenzie at WZLX, Boston. In this feature, Pete McKenzie calls a kid who’s been naughty as Santa Claus to call them out. It’s after the holdiays, but the execution of this is flawless. From the fun audio segments they use up front to set the tone to the call with the kid (who was obviously having a good time with all of it), this bit has just enough attitude and fun to make people talk. Hang on to it for next year (or for July when Santa has a lot of time on his hands!).
Family + The Holidays = Drama! Intern Adam Levine, who works each morning with Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston, had some drama with his family about the holidays. How best to maximize his story? Park his mother quietly on the hotline to surprise him as he told the story to see how the drama changes with both of them on the phone.
Just up the road in Baltimore, a school bus driver lost their temper with a student. This lead to a great phone topic about the time you lost it at work. Great phones are always stories. Here’s a break from Pablo and Free, WPGC, Washington, who talk to a listener who defines again the meaning of “going postal”.
How did two Reynolds Group shows handle one of this week’s big topics, Powerball? Jim and Kim, Fresh 102.7, New York got several people from the same office on the line, bought them a ticket, then made them recite a pledge to their boss on the show to resign the next day when they won the money. Sean Henry, B103, Rockford, IL brought the sales guy in who put together the office pool together to figure out how the eleven people who pooled their money would split their winnings, which was eight dollars. Both approaches to the hot topic were novel, unique, and well executed.
What to do with the sultry, almost incomprehensible Chanel No. 5 commercial just done by Brad Pitt? Well, Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston transcribed the script and had people around the building (including some big local stars on their sports station) read (mock) it in their style. Very funny.
The most important thing you can do is personalize a topic. Doing this defines your character. Adding in other elements of personalization also gives you more to play with as a break evolves. Recently, Tiffany Hill from Tiffany and Michael, B101, Philadelphia, realized she never wore the correct bra size. So we decided to bring in a “bra expert” from a Philly department store who measured three of the most fun people in the building, to see if they wore the right bra size, too. Inside of this we have unpredictability and the typical male vs. female perspective of things. Here are the two breaks as they played out over the half hour topic.
There are a lot of marathons in Boston. Thousands of runners. Kennedy from Karson and Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston runs in most of them. Great breaks come from personal experiences and interesting angles. One of them is the weird people who run in these races around Kennedy. Here’s a break with a gal who runs and plays the ukulele at the same time. They had her on and it was engaging because it was from Kennedy’s personal experience and an interesting angle on the topic.
A true focus of the Jim and Kim Show on Fresh 102.7, New York is to be very local. That’s why when there was a big Italian festival in town, they were all over it. But not in a way that just promoted it. They did a fun thing called “Romantico or No Romantico”. With Italian being a romance language, they had someone from the festival on to talk Italian and they and the listeners had to guess if it was romance talk or if they were saying something much less touching. Here are a couple of breaks of its execution.
John and Tammy at KSON, San Diego, reflecting on kids going back to school last month, decided to test the honesty of teachers by playing “Plead the Fifth Grade”. They got a fifth grade teacher on and then asked a series of questions escalating in their level of discomfort, to see how honest he’d be with them and the audience. The teacher got one shot to “plead the fifth” and not answer the question.