We’re now done with Halloween and about to enter winter. Which means there are lots of pumpkins no longer needed and listeners will make sure their snowblower is tuned up. I wonder what it would sound like for you to marry the two by running pumpkins through a snowblower to entertain the audience. Wait…there’s a video of it. And you can see it here. It’s great audio for the show and wonderful video to share on social media.
If you target women, you can never go wrong putting cute kids on the show. Sean Henry, B103, Rockford, IL offers up “Back Seat Trick or Treat” where moms call who are taking their kids to school. The kid tells you a funny Halloween joke and you give them, as thanks, exactly what they’re focused on this week, a bag of Halloween candy!
It’d be very edgy and create talk if you figured out a way to give out a hazmat suit. You can qualify people by them telling you their symptoms if they’re sick. Guess what they have then qualify them to win the prize, which could be given out on your Friday show that week. Dark humor, given the ebola scare, but it’d certainly get noticed.
Tired, exhausted, and frustrated with all the political ads you’re seeing on TV? See if any politician will take you up on “The Friendly Four”. If they consent to come on your show and start the break profusely apologizing for their part in all those horrible, ugly, negative ads, you’ll give them a friendly, four-minute interiew without any tough questions.
With Halloween a few weeks away, if you have an elevator in your building, someone from the show can come in one morning that week in costume. Hide close to the elevator and as co-workers arrive at work, scare them, recording all. Then air the best audio on your Halloween show and put the video up on social media.
An intriguing character-building idea would be to make one day on your show “Opposite Day” where each cast member does something which is the total opposite of who they really are. Talent are defined several ways – by the stories you tell about your life which position you as just like the audience or have a relatable component the audience identifies with. Or you could do the opposite of who you actually are, which, if explained to the audience, does the same thing.
Fitz in the Morning, The Wolf, Seattle, does a fun character-building bit on Mondays called “The Peak and the Pit” where the cast shares the best and worst moments of their weekends (peaks/pits) and asks listeners to do the same. What is great about this is they’re short stories centered around highs and lows of real life over the weekend for all.
A terrific character building feature heard last week on The Bert Show is called “Let’s Be Honest”. Each cast member puts a highly personal question into a hat (think: “Which cast member on our team is the most irritating to be around off-air and why?”). Then, each cast member pulls out a question and must answer it for the audience. Conceivably, you could pull your own question! You score points with the listeners when you reveal yourself and you’re honest. This does that.
New features can magically appear if you listen to how people say things. On a listener call a few weeks ago on an unrelated topic, the caller was heard to say that they were a teacher’s kid. When the host asked him to repeat himself, what the listener actually said was that he was a preacher’s kid. Bam, a feature is born. A listener who is either a Teacher’s Kid or Preacher’s Kid calls to tell you about a wild thing they did once when there were young. Running through a few follow-up questions, you then guess if they are a teacher’s kid or a preacher’s kid. This works because it’s alliterative, what you hear is story-based, and the audience is playing right along emotionally.
Listeners always like to play along – if you do things that are vicarious, they’ll lean in, you will emotionally engage them, and you have them hooked for that break. Slacker and Steve, Alice 105.9, Denver, play a fun game with listeners. It’s called “Drunk or a Kid”. Listeners call and tell the show a story about something they did when they were either a drunk or a kid. The show then has to guess. The listeners will do that, too.