What would be very easy and very simple is to find out how listeners’ holidays weekends went sideways. Eddie and JoBob, KHITS, Chicago suggested a great frame for this phone topic, considering the Thanksgiving holiday: “Turkey-Trasrophes”.
A PD friend recently told me his son put together a Power Point presentation on what he wanted for Christmas. His folks were sat down in the living room and the kid ran through the pros and cons of his list for parental consideration. So…how about getting some kids to put together pitches for Santa? Get a Santa character and kids come on to do the audio version of their pitch on why they deserve what’s on this year’s list!
Here’s a terrific character development bit called “Three Questions”. During one break, the anchor of the show asks the cast three very personal questions (i.e. who in this room has had sexual fantasies of someone else in the room, has anyone in this room ever stolen anything, who here secretly distrusts a family member). Instead of answering, the cast members who would answer in the affirmative just raise their hands. The entire break is being video recorded and placed on the website so P1s can see who answers “yes” to the questions. The next day at the the same time, the anchor rolls down the questions again, but this time, those who answered “yes” are revealed and they give more details on their answer!
Despite the ratings not being too stellar on FOX’s “The X Factor”, there’s still no reason you can’t have fun with it. In the final couple of weeks of this show, do “The Sales Factor” where you have a singing competition amongst the sales staff at the radio station over the course of one week. Listeners will have fun with the sales people trying to sing. Pit two head-to-head in each competition with listeners voting one off. The winner gets a free live commercial on your show for a client of their choice.
Two ideas this week:
Here’s Halloween again. This one’s only good for the day of the holiday. Find a fun gay guy who’ll be your queen. He takes calls from listeners who have no idea what to go as for Halloween night. Using his sense of humor, he offers up the least appropriate, over-the-top suggestions to the listeners calling. He’ll be known as your Hallow-Queen!
What does every kid do when they get home after trick or treating Halloween night? They segregate their candy into two piles – the candy they want and the candy that’s crap. Tuesday morning of this week (the first show after Halloween), put on kids who’ll tell you about the candy they got the previous evening which was horrible, then trade them. Have candy they want and swap it out. It’ll sound cute and play into a memory every listener has!
With the death of Colonel Moammar Gaddafi, it’s time for another thrilling round of the “Colonel Gaddafi Spelling Bee”. This one’s quite easily and exceptionally silly. Tell six listeners you have a prize for them with a mystery question about the Colonel. Load up the phones, and once on the air, tell them to spell Gaddafi. Here’s the fun part, no matter how they spell it (as long as there are a zillion consonants said), they win. Set them up in the phone screening to be in on the joke!
With the new iPhones 4s out to very good reviews, the most talked about feature about the phone will be Siri. No doubt everyone who has one, throughout the weekend, has been playing with this talking assistant. In fact, Apple seems to have a sense of humor. If you ask Siri to do something obscene, it’s likely she’ll offer back a shocked response. Time to get an iPhone 4s and play with Siri on your program. If you cannot locate one, head to an Apple store to record it and/or remember that YouTube (click here to get there) probably has lots of videos posted by now where you can download the audio.
Dave Ryan at KDWB, Minneapolis and Karson & Kennedy at MIX 104.1, Boston just did a very fun thing to give out a unique prize. It’s the “The Great Ball Drop”. They “gave” some listeners a golf ball (assigning each a number). Dave dropped the balls down a stairwell, Karson and Kennedy dropped theirs off a roof. The number on the first ball call caught by the intern below won the prize. It sounded awesome on the air in both cases. Click here to see Dave’s video, click here to see Karson and Kennedy’s!
How about finding the grammar school crushes of all the members of the morning show? Wouldn’t it be interesting to introduce them to the audience and find out what they’re doing now?
Halloween is less than one month away. Plan now on a city-wide broadcast that morning (it’s on a Monday this year) where the rest of the air staff is on the show live from major intersections in town where they’re handing out pumpkins and/or candy the morning of the holiday to people driving to work who forgot to buy either (both). You’ll sound like you own the town and will get people on the air having fun while driving into work!