Seems like most people we know all have side jobs. A small thing they do in their spare time to earn a few extra hundred dollars a month. Might not be a bad idea to find out what these are by asking listeners about their “side hustles”.
In a conference call this past week, a morning show and I were talking about our summer vacations and, more specifically, airline travel. Each of us had a story to tell about how much we hate the airlines. That’s when we went in the opposite direction to develop an idea. Let’s let the airlines complain about us! This show happens to be in a market with two hubs (American Airlines and Southwest) so we have a large body of flight attendants and pilots who can tell their horror stories; the ones they tell their fellow airline employees about how bad we are. You don’t need that to do this. Generate great stories around the Hot Topic of summer vacations with this idea.
This one is way too easy. Give a list of celebrity names to your partner once the listener is introduced to the audience to play “The Celebrity Name Game”. They must name eight of the celebrities in sixty seconds with your partner giving clues to win. That your partner sees the list cold will give added tension to the execution.
Ask lots of moms and dads and they’ll tell you their kids watch the movie “Frozen” over and over and over and over again. And privately, they’re in hell because they have to watch it, too. Create, with an appropriate production value, “Frozen Prison” and invite listeners who are also there to call to tell you. Assign them a prisoner number and place them in a cell, under protective custody.
We’re in summer mode with lots of families headed for vacation in the next ten weeks. Ask the kids of coworkers to leave you a voicemail before they go to sleep while on vacation each night reading you the list of things they did while on break that day. You’ll get everything from the mundane (“went to the pool”) to exciting (“went horseback riding”). Produced right, you’ll have a fun lifestyle feature to play each day for the audience who can relate.
With the World Cup on now, there’s lot of talk of other countries participating. Write up a bunch of sentences, some done with romantic language, intended to seduce someone of the opposite sex. Then write up another group of sentences, intended to insult the person hearing it. Run each through Google Translate from English into the language of a World Cup soccer team. Play each to a contestant who must decide if they’re being seduced or insulted!
Ever think of camping outside a Walmart, BJ’s Wholesale, or Costco and go up to guys leaving and ask them what they’ve purchased? The disparity in items people purchase at places like this run the gamut and would be fun to listen to, especially with the innuendo in the name. You can call it “What’s In Your Sack?”
Did you haul several truckloads of mulch over the weekend? Re-roof the house? Power wash your driveway? Then you’ve committed an “Act of Man-chievement”. A new, occasional feature for the show where guys get to come on and boast about the manly thing they did.
With graduations upon us, walk around the building asking co-workers to give advice to their younger selves. If they knew then what they know now about life, what would they tell their 18-year old self? Record all, edit the best (most touching, weirdest, funniest) lines together. Put “Pomp and Circumstance” under it and play it for your audience!
As we shift into summer content, many of your listeners will have Saturday morning yard sales to get rid of the stuff in their home they no longer use. Most people having these advertise them by tacking a sign on a telephone pole. Set up a regular Friday feature through the summer where listeners having these yard sales can feel the power of your show by promoting them on the program. They give the location, the times, and can highlight the oddest item they’re selling. The marrying of these two items (your big show with the smallness of a yard sale) could create fun lifestyle content.