Everyone has saved voicemails on their phone – even the cast members of your show. If you have a fun prize to give out, play a voicemail from a cast member (with their name beeped out if it’s in the audio). The caller must guess Whose Voicemail it was from – then we get the back story on the voicemail, which is character development.
As we approach October, more and more products will include that most-Halloween of flavors, pumpkin spice. Deputize a small fun group as your Pumpkin Spice Squad. Their job is to find the odd products with pumpkin spice (pumpkin spice dog food anyone?) and report back to you what they find throughout the month.
If you’re a rock-based station, the Guitargasm is a new, fun way to give out a prize. We always remember that how you give something out plays to the 99% of the audience who don’t care to win anything, but still want to be entertained. String a bunch of iconic guitar riffs together and the caller must identify artists and titles to win.
This is dumb and silly! With schools back in session, challenge area teachers driving in to call you and, based on their voice alone, guess what subject they teach.
How about grabbing two fun kids and have them compete in the studio in a pencil sharpening contest? Two kids, each with 100 pencils, and an electric sharpener (because they make the best sound). Have a teacher in who’ll judge each pencil as it comes out of the machine to deem it properly sharpened. Whoever does their 100 first wins. It would make a great Facebook Live. Thanks to Christine and Salt, 96 TIC-FM, Hartford for this idea.
Trump wants to buy Greenland. Who knew you could do that? (Actually, we did, from history class – remember the Louisiana Purchase?) Mount a one-week campaign to “buy” the state next to yours that listeners like the least. Do a Go Fund Me, have an online petition, see if your governor (or an elected representative) will come on and agree because they get the joke. Of course you won’t be successful, but you will have fun trying.
New feature for your show called Best or Worst where you travel around the room and, where appropriate (if cast members have something), that person tells you about either the best thing or the worst thing that’s happened to them in the last few days. Choose great stories and you have some character development.
Remember the “what I did on my summer vacation” essays we wrote when we went back to grade school? Find your three most entertaining co-workers and get them to write theirs (50 words) then come on your show, and with an appropriate music bed, read them to the audience.
School is back in session in the next few weeks and teachers are a prime demo for a show’s success. Why not figure out a mechanism for teachers to call to enter a promotion where the winner gets their teacher’s lounge pimped out with station swag and a few months worth of snacks?
Lots of kids get reading assignments from teachers before heading back to school. Why not talk to kids who have to do this, find out what book they have to read, and if they’ve read the book yet. If they haven’t, get a cast member to read the book for the kid and then all come back the next day for the cast member to give the student bullet points on the book so they don’t have to read it.