Let no work begin! We are now inside Amazon Prime Days – open those phones and ask the audience for the initials of their co-workers who’ll get absolutely nothing done because, for both days, they’re shopping on Amazon, looking for deals!
One of the pillars of success for your show is that, never having actually met you, the audience feels like they know you. Play “Do You Trust Us?” with them. Wonder out loud if they trust you and ask that they call, but don’t give them this question until they’re on-the-air with you. Then, once on, ask if they trust you enough to give you one of their passwords. Hear the discomfort, then if they step up to the test!
The Dominican Republic is in the news. And not for good reasons. Few of you can do this idea. You must have an edgy show on a brand where you can very much color outside the lines, without fear of getting in trouble. On occasion, do The Dominican Republic Death Toll, where you give the latest number of people who’ve died while vacationing there. Told you it was edgy.
Reddit had something on its board a few weeks ago that is tailor-made for digital hits and on-air content. You put a picture of a cast member on social media with the words: go ahead, roast me. Then the next day, find an entertaining character (a kid?) who’ll read the funnier things said as listeners have playfully scorched you.
Relationships content is the most universal you can do – they come in all varieties (boyfriend/girlfriend, boss/employee, you/your neighbors, you/your mom) and are quite relatable. On occasion, open those phones and ask listeners to read you what they recently got from someone they broke up with in a few feature called The Awkward Text From Your Ex. Thanks to radio great JJ Kincaid for this idea.
With Father’s Day this Sunday (June 16), find a single dad and spend the week on a narrative arc finding him a blind date for this weekend – then have both on next Monday to find out how it went. Important: if you do this, run it by your PD and legal to make sure all is cool and definitely make plans to chaperone the blind date this weekend so you can both get audio and see things to add to the conversation on next Monday’s show.
With summer just about upon us, HVAC units will fail and listeners will need to call HVAC guys to come to their house to fix them. These people, because they go to customer’s homes, have tons of stories to tell about what they find. Here’s a feature for the summer called Tales From the HVAC Guy.
Oftentimes, it’s the kid who stays living with their parents until they’re in their 20s. But sometimes the script is flipped. Especially when it comes to things like Netflix and Spotify, where the parents might be using their kid’s log-ins. Let’s have some fun with this in a new feature called My Mom the Moocher.
Somewhere out there in Listener Land, a fan of your show forgot to call their mom on Mother’s Day. Life got in the way, and they didn’t remember. Which is why you can use the first few days of this week to get those listeners on, conference call in their mother, and we can hear the apology on the show. Bonus points if a cast member forgot to do this, because that would be character development for them.
With Mother’s Day this Sunday, step back from the traditionally over-used ideas with something different. Find the mother of a local star or celebrity in Hollywood or your format. Get them to come on to talk about their kid, by you wishing them a great Mother’s Day. How would you find them? Check that person’s Wikipedia page to see where they grew up, then, like a super sleuth, start Googling until you locate them. It’s some work, but would ultimately give you something unique around the Hot Topic and be an idea your competitor might never do.