The listeners love it when Karlson and McKenzie, WZLX, Boston have Kevin Karlson’s mother-in-law on. Kevin just lost 40 pounds. His in-laws call the show to ask questions about it and make comments. This is truly original programming. It humanizes Kevin, we get the essence of his relationship with his in-laws, and it’s very funny!
Trivia always works on morning shows because is makes listeners play along. How you do the trivia, though, determines if it’s entertaining. Jimmy and Yvonne, on DAVE-FM, Atlanta, do “The Waffle House Aptitude Test”. They line up five callers and then ask the person who answers the phone at a local Waffle House five questions based on current events. However many of the five questions the person get right determines which phone line/listener wins the prize (i.e. if they get three right, the listener on line three wins).
Paul McCartney recently played in Chicago. Here’s a call Eddie and Jobo, on KHITS, Chicago, got from a male listener who’d gone to the concert the previous night with his son. Seems like the son didn’t come home, and the father speculated that he’d been picked up by a cougar at the concert. The team did the most logical thing. They teased the listeners into the next quarter hour that they’d call the kid’s cell to see if he or the courgar would pick up. This is a great way to extend listenership through two quarter hours of a program. You might be surprised what happens. Here are both segments.
Kyle and Rachel at Radio Now, Indianapolis, do this fun, interactive thing with listeners on occasion called “I Don’t Believe You”. Listeners call, give a one sentence story about something they may have experienced in life, and the morning show has to determine if it’s believable. Most stories told are true, so they get the details and entertain the audience in the process. It’s just another fun way to get listeners participating in the show around a vicarious feature.
Great games have a vicarious aspect to them which allow people listening to play along. Here’s J & Julian, on B96, Chicago, doing “Pregnant, Pissed, or Happy”. This is where they put a female listener on the air, ask her questions unrelated to any of the three conditions, then, based on her voice, try to determine if she’s pregnant, upset with something, or happy today. If she stumps them, she gets a prize – and all listening are playing along trying to figure it out, too.
Great phone topics come from real life experiences. Tiffany, from the Tiffany and Michael Show, B101, Philadelphia, was convinced by her husband to have a yard sale. This prompted the topic to listeners wondering the oddest item people have ever had purchased from them during a yard sale. PPM always reacts positively to entertaining stories from listeners. You might be stunned at what was said.
Normally I am not a fan of any morning show cooking on the air. There is zero listener benefit to this. But here’s an exception. Eddie and JoBob, on K-HITS, Chicago grill in the studio right before the July Fourth holiday. What makes it work are the sounds they create and the fact that JoBo uses it to get to audio of him asking kids questions about grilling during the holiday weekend, which is really fun.
Back when the Arnold Schwarzenegger scandal broke, Jim and Kim, on Fresh 102.7, New York, gathered some notorious cheaters (Arnold, John Edwards, Jesse James, and Tiger Woods) and asked their listeners to list them from most to least egregious. One of the easiest things to do on a show to create some dimension inside breaks is get listeners to play along with you. In their novel idea called “Stack the Cheaters”, they did just that.
Nothing is better than when you take one of the hottest topics out there and create humor by doing something unique around it. Eddie and JoBo, on K-HITS, Chicago, are legends in the market. These guys are really funny and relevant. Here’s a call they made back when Prince William got married. They called another church in London as representatives, looking to change the venue due to too much media exposure. About halfway through, the woman at the church starts to get the joke.
Back when the Bruins were in the hunt for the Stanley Cup, Karson and Kennedy at MIX 104.1, Boston got an interview with their play-by-play announcer. Not uncommon, right? The goal of an interview is to do stuff inside it for the person least interested in the topic. In this one, the show gets him to bring them inside various aspects of the team, landing as him being authentic and real by revealing himself, too. This is a pretty good interview, geared at all their audiences – those who cared about the Cup and those who didn’t.