Each person on the show should write one New Year’s resolution for every other cast member on the team. Put them each in envelopes and tape them to the walls of the studio (a good visual for social media). Then once a morning all week, take a few off and have the person the resolution is about read it on-air and then let the fireworks begin. This is good character development content at a time when everyone is doing resolutions.
Sometimes you get a real crappy gift and have to open it in front of the person who gave it to you. Here’s where you conduct the Crappy Christmas Gift Acting School. Get a lame coffee mug or T-shirt from someone? Role play on-air with listeners how you can fake being all excited and touched that you got it.
Got some fun prizes to give out? The Christmas Carol Mash-Up is where you lay the hooks of three holiday tunes over one another. First listener to tell you all three songs wins.
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday, some of your listeners will have already finished their holiday shopping. Invite those who have to call so they can rub it in with the rest of us in a new feature called Go Ahead and Make Us Feel Like Crap!
Thanksgiving is this week, which means everyone will eat everything in sight. Be the Dessert Enablers! Let listeners call and then give them permission to eat as many desserts on Thursday as they’d like. Bonus points if they take pictures of the ones they consumed, which then get posted on your Facebook page.
The holiday season means shopping is in full force. And for local mom-and-pops, what happens this time of year makes or breaks their business. Do Shop Local, Listen Local. Let locally-owned businesses comes on to tell your audience about themselves. Then ask them to listen local – to put your radio station on in their shop so you each can be supportive of the other. If you do this, make sure you offer it to the local clients of the station first.
With Thanksgiving a few weeks away, find the three most fun people in the building and have each of them prepare their version of mashed potatoes like they’d serve at Thanksgiving dinner. On a day before the holiday, have the entire airstaff (or others that you work with) do a blind taste test and then crown your first annual winner of the mashed potato contest. It’ll be fun audio for the show and a great video for your socials.
With Powerball expected to be worth $1-billion, consider doing My Ex Made Me a Billionaire. Find a divorced couple and bring them on the show. Explore what happened in their relationship. Then each person gets to choose half the numbers. Buy a ticket with those numbers and give that couple any winnings the next day.
You have a super power in this new feature called The Color of Your House: Halloween Edition. Listeners call and tell you the Halloween candy they’re giving out Monday. You then tell them the color of the house they’re in. The twist – get the actual color offline so every guess is right. The audience will be astounded (and probably figure it out). Thanks to Sarah Pepper and Jessie Watt, MIX 96.5 Houston for this idea!
Despite the fact that it’s mid-October, some stores already have their Christmas stuff out. How about finding a listener who’ll host you in their home this week and you all put up their Christmas tree? Lots of video for social media with an on-air component of finding and getting to know the family.