Taking a page from Jimmy Kimmel’s “Mean Tweets”, how fun might it be if you find a real character (i.e. the opinionated custodian at work, the boring chief engineer in the building, a very cute, precious kid) and ask them to read Donald Trump’s tweets every few days?
The TJ Show, AMP 103.3, Boston put a new character development feature on called Quick Questions they developed from a video Vogue put on line with Kendall Jordan (here). TJ goes around the room asking the cast questions so the audience can get to know them (the movie you found the funniest/made you cry the most, what celebrity you were most excited to meet, etc.) then he played the audio of Kendall’s answers. Simple, easy, pop culture, and strategic.
There are a slew of Olympic sports. Some atypical. Find a bunch of kids and ask them what happens in the javelin or archery or boxing or shot put. Cute kids will have funny descriptions and explanations of what they think happens during an Olympic sport and could be fun to listen to.
School is back in session soon and every mom is shopping for their kid. As school supplies are being purchased, we beg the question: What’s so special about the number two lead pencil? If it’s so important to test-taking, why isn’t it the number one lead pencil? These and many other questions can be asked if you track down the maker of the Number Two pencil and ask them – we bet listeners will enjoy the memory and resolution to why that is the only pencil that mattered when we were in school.
Have moms you work with who have kids at home call to see what they’re doing. Then the mother starts giving the kid chores to do that day before she returns from work. Record all of this after the show in the production studio – listen as the kid has a meltdown the longer the list gets.
How about you talk to kids and ask them to put together a platform for a political party they could support. You might have to seed the answers, but I would be looking for: instead of one, there will now be four Halloweens a year so I get more candy. My mother has to legally serve me ice cream after every dinner. It’s a felony for my sister to talk after 6pm. There will be no homework once school starts.
School supplies are already in stores to be bought by parents. Let’s help kids get ready to head back to learning by putting them to work. Find a few fun kids and ask one each night next week and the week after, when the GOP and Democratic Conventions are on, to watch an hour of it each evening and write a 50-word book report on what they saw then come on the show the next morning to read it to the audience.
No doubt that people lose their diets in the summer. Here’s a weekend challenge for every member of the show: keep a food diary of everything you eat over the course of the same weekend. Have a dietician in on Monday to hear each person’s food diary so they can determine who the show’s Poorest Eater is.
With the summer Rio Olympics only weeks away, put together Olympics-like profiles for each cast member of the show for character development. These need to be over-the-top profiles (like they run for the athletes) highlighting some kind of inane adversity you suffered as a kid enroute to your career in broadcasting.
I wonder how a friend of yours would react if you called to check on them and said, at the top of the conversation, “I’m naked and thinking of you so I thought I’d call.” Or if you called your folks and confided in your mother, “I’m not sure you know, but I tinkle when I laugh.” Totally silly, and if you share with the audience what you’ll be telling the person you’re calling, they’ll lean in to hear the reaction.