WWFS Reading the E-Mail
There is no doubt that relationships topics always work on female-targeted radio shows. Jim and Kim, Fresh 102.7 New York’s morning team, saw a multiple page letter a Wall Street broker wrote a gal he had one date with that was way over the line. They could have just read the letter (or parts of it) on their show. Instead, they found someone fun in the building and had them read it to the listeners, thus shifting into a position to react, which made it much more fun because of this added dimension.
Reality shows have conditioned listeners to want to be entertained by real life. One place real life happens for some people is in courthouses. Eddie & Jobo, on KHITS, Chicago head to their local courthouse once a week to talk to people about why they’re there that day. What ensues are fun conversations that really entertain those listening.
Sometimes breaks go completely sideways. That’s what happens when performing. How you handle it is what turns it into lemonade. John and Tammy, KSON, San Diego, came up with a fun game called “Golden Globes or Golden Girls”, with our entering the awards show season. They gave a fact about one show or the show and the listener had to figure it out. Really simple and very easy to follow, right? The listener got completely confused with how to play and here’s the audio. Listen as John and Tammy just back up, letting this take on a life of its own, making it even funnier.
I have never been a big fan of Hollywood reports because they tend to be nothing more than the regurgitation of things listeners can find on Perez Hilton’s website or TMZ. In order for it to be great, you must do something with it. Here are two examples of this. In the first segment, with the pending Kim Kardashian-Kris Humphries divorce, Eddie and Jobo, KHITS, Chicago, talked tp a divorce attorney who offered her prospective on why Kris asked for an annulment. It’s very efficient, but more importantly, it engages the listeners emotionally. 
Each year at this time, Karlson & McKenzie, WZLX, Boston, do “Scared Straight Santa”. They take calls from moms whose kids are acting up. Pete McKenzie then calls the kid back as Santa to check on them and then gets the kid to promise to his mom on the phone to behave until Christmas. The best things about this are that it’s not dirty and women fall in love with it.
J and Julian, mornings on B96 Chicago, recently got into an on-air conversation about how parents sometimes dash the dreams of their children. Julian said that he always wanted to be an MTV DJ but his mom discouraged it. Why? Take a listen to this audio of the morning show on with Julian’s mom. After she admits to the listeners why Julian wouldn’t make a good TV personality, know that listeners all feel something for Julian. This is great character development.
Recently, Producer Blaire on the Tiffany and Michael Morning Show on B101 Philadelphia went grocery shopping. As she loaded her groceries into the car, she noticed that a shopper had accidentally left a case of water in the bottom of her cart. Instead of bringing it back into the store, she decided it was up for grabs, so she took it. Which lead to the moral dilemma “did Producer Blaire steal.” Unbeknownst to Blaire, amongst the calls we decided to take from listeners to comment, we set up a call from someone who’d claim that it was her water just to see how she’d react. The fun prank led to a great reaction when Blaire figured out it was a set up.
Boston is long known for it’s cynical, always complaining residents. Which is why we developed a new feature for Karson & Kennedy, MIX 104.1, Boston called “Enough Already”. This is where listeners come on to complain about the topic they’ve heard too much about lately, then exclaim “enough already”. We purposely screen out those calls about traffic (because that’s all we’d get) and end up with this fun!