With Thanksgiving a few weeks away, many listeners will be hosting their families. That means tension, arguing, and wishing they’d leave early. Go grab two nights at the cheapest local motel. Give them out to a listener who can predict they’ll get tired of their family two days into the Thanksgiving holiday.
For us, as kids, it was always the home of the Axelrods, five doors down. For Halloween, they gave out those small bags of potato chips you get with sandwiches at restaurants. Not too far from them, a dentist gave us floss. We were ten-years old and we wanted…candy. The Crappy Candy House allows you reminisce about the home in your neighborhood that gave out the non-Halloween treats. Bonus points if kids talk about the home in their neighborhood that will give out bad treats Thursday night and you have some sort of intervention to fix that for them.
Sometimes shows neglect the younger end as teams mature. A new Monday feature for your program could be called “Hashtag Single” where you guys (or an intern) gather audio of listeners partying on Friday and Saturday nights at local bars and ask them why they’re single. Edit together the most fun responses and you have something new for the show.
We don’t normally suggest simple phone topics on the Free Ideas page (mostly because you probably have no problem coming up with them on your own), but there was an interesting article in the New York Times saying that several states are attempting to enact laws against “revenge porn”. This is where a couple, who once traded salacious pictures but then broke up, post them on the internet to embarrass the other. It might be fun to get the stories of people who’ve been victims of revenge porn when a relationship ended.
They say with the government shutdown, Congress is acting like a bunch of sixth-graders. You might have to script this, but go get audio of actual sixth-graders either yelling at or firing every member of Congress.
One of the more irritating commercials on TV now is Geico’s “Hump Day” spot with the camel roaming through the office asking people what day it is. Load up the phones with a “Morning Show Mystery Question”. Tell listeners you have a question for a prize but won’t ask it until you put them on the air. Play part of the spot to the caller and ask them to identify who it’s for. The first who knows it’s Geico wins.
One of the things listeners keep saying in focus groups is that they love hearing personal drama from the cast on the morning show. We know that this drama is best served up in a story, with wonderful twists and turns to keep listeners engaged. When something goes wrong in a cast member’s life, you can do a new feature called “It Sucks to Be Me”. You can then launch the phones for listeners who have things going wrong in their life right now in a feature called “It Sucks to Be You”.
This week’s Free Idea marries NBC’s Million Second Quiz and the upcoming Emmy Awards. It’s called “The One-Second Quiz”. There are a slew of iconic TV themes out there. Your contestant must identify the TV theme after hearing just one second of it. Great memories and a play-in-the-car quality make this work.
Can we hear your hold music? Goofing off on a conference call this past week, a show was talking about what horrible music they had to hear while on hold to talk with someone outside the building. Ask listeners to critique the on-hold music at their workplace, then have them invite you to call to hear it. This could be a one-week competition to see what local business has the lamest on-hold music.
We had Beyonce tickets to give away and Drex and Maney, KISS 95.1, Charlotte came up with a great idea. Ten listeners qualified to come in on our Friday show. A very hairy Drex went to another room where ten strips of hot wax were applied to his chest. Under five were a pair of Beyonce tickets. Each listener, one at a time, ripped off a strip to see if they won. Drex took one for the team and created fun radio in the process.