A gravy boat? New throw pillows for the sofa? A subscription to a jelly-of-the-month club? With Prince Harry and Meghan Markle marrying in less than a month, you will certainly want to have your listeners help you figure out an appropriate wedding gift so you can get it off to Buckingham Palace, right?
We keep hearing in the news that Michael Cohen is Trump’s “fixer”. Who’s yours? Who do you know who has sway and did a major favor for you? Like a neighbor who got you a great deal on new gutters. Or the cop/friend who got you out of a ticket? Closer’s names remain anonymous, but let’s hear what happened. Time to open the phones for stories.
Be honest, is there someone at work you think is an idiot? That co-worker who always seems to get in the way, who makes meetings longer, who clicks “reply all” on every email? Mark and NeanderPaul, KSLX, Phoenix developed a feature called The Work Jerk where listeners come on and out that person in their office on the show. We’re careful because all we really want is the story and the raw emotion of what the person does because it’s so relatable. So we only allow callers to give the initials of the person before launching into their tirade!
Many shows bank audio of them making on-air mistakes. With March Madness wrapping up, their annual tradition is to put video highlights of the tournament over the song “One Shining Moment”. It might be fun to place audio screw-ups of the cast from your show over the song to create some humor.
I recently battled my bank to get a refund on a BS $5 service fee and realized that this brought me immense joy when I succeeded. So here’s a new occasional feature for the show called Little Victories. Let the audience call to tell you about the small victory they recently had in life just like that (doesn’t need to be money based). You’ll need to offer up an example before opening the phones so they get what this is all about.
Today’s Free Idea comes compliments of Chubbs and Tara, KHITS, Tulsa who do a feature called Accordion to Chubbs (play on words) where he plays a hit song on the accordion and the listener must guess the song to win.
With spring training in full force, why not bring some women from the radio station (including any gal on your show) to a batting cage in town and record them taking a crack at hitting 85-mph baseballs. Audio for the next day’s show and video for the web could be fun.
A talent was telling me in her weekend journal that a friend is suing her ex for taking all her money and leaving. Given our penchant for one-upping stories we hear, we came up with a new feature called “Oh Yea, Well I Have It Worse Than You” where listeners top what they just heard.
Many listeners have given up something for Lent. Start this as a simple phone topic asking people what they gave up and how it’s working out for them. Then invite a few on your show on the day Lent is over to let them end it on the air.
Most shows go very conventional on ideas for Valentine’s Day by giving out flowers or chocolates. Or securing reservations at area restaurants to give to male listeners who forgot to make them (done a million times!). How about something with an edge? Take a ton of single women who won’t have a date that night to a drag show. That could be fun and different.