With everything opening up, talk to one listener each week through the summer who’s going on vacation with their family. Ask them to bring you back something from the gift shop where they’re going as a gift and that you will reimburse them. Then tell them you have a weekly $5 budget and they cannot go over it. Collect the gift when they return and then, at the end of the summer, give out all the gifts you received to another listener.
Go grab some play-by-play audio from YouTube of a sporting event for a new game called He Shoots, He Scores. You play the audio just until the ball is released. The caller then has to guess if the player scored. Then go back to the audio to finish the play-by-play to see if they guessed right.
Ask mothers to call the show. Then have one male cast member tell them that, for Mother’s Day, his instincts are to buy his mom a kitchen appliance. Ask the callers (all moms) to tell him why he’s wrong!
Need a new feature? How about Today’s Big Decision? Ask listeners to call to tell you the biggest decision they will need to make that day. It could be anything from whether or not to take a new job to deciding what to have for lunch. Every call will be different and the best part is on the more consequential decisions, you can do a follow-up the next day to see how things turned out.
The Academy Awards are Sunday! Challenge every member of the morning show to find someone this week who’s won an Oscar and get them on the show this Friday. It doesn’t have to be a Brad Pitt or Meryl Street. It can be someone who won one years ago for editing or costume design who has a great story to tell around it. After airing all the interviews on Friday, open the phones and ask the audience to vote on social media who brought the biggest name to the show.
An evergreen for your bag of ideas is called Make Us Never Forget You. Ask the audience to call and tell you a story about something that happened to them once that is so bold, you will never forget them!
Need a simple, silly new game to give stuff out? Play Name That Accent. Listeners born elsewhere call the show and chat with you. The team then huddles together to try and guess where that caller is from!
This is web-only digital content to help your online engagement. Jerry Seinfeld posted an odd, but funny video last week where all he did was eat a slice of pizza. That’s it. Which leads to something new: People Eating Pizza. Pizza is the most consumed food in America so make a big effort and ask listeners to send you pictures of them eating pizza. Nothing more. Totally silly and great digital content for your social media channels.
A fun new game for your show! A listener calls and gives you the names of two celebrities they have met. They’re telling you the truth on one, but lying on the other. Call out the lie and they win. They then tell you the story about meeting the other! Call it Spy the Celebrity Lie.
Just by its name, this week’s Free Idea is very edgy and not for everyone. DISCLAIMER: this one won’t fit every brand or show – if interested, run this one by your PD to see if you can do it and how. With the one-year anniversary of Covid upon us, have a bunch of notable people in town write a letter to the pandemic called Dear Covid, Fuck You. They write a letter to the disease, breaking up with it, as though it’s a boyfriend or girlfriend and things are not working out (“it’s not you, it’s ME!”). They then read the letter on-air and the few times the curse word is used, you bleep it. Because that’s how listeners feel.