With Halloween this coming weekend, it’s time to come clean. In almost every neighborhood, there’s usually one family’s home that was abused that evening. This was always the family responsible for calling the cops on Halloween. If you were one of those mischievous kids who pulled these pranks, it might be great radio to find these families now (very easy with Google) and apologize as an adult on the air for all the mayhem you brought many years ago.
Here’s a new topical feature you can do when the mood strikes. It’s called “The Hat of Inappropriate Jokes”. Write an inappropriate joke for the biggest news item of the day (i.e. the Chilean miners – make sure you choose a news item where no one is hurt or dies, of course). Place the joke, along with blank slips of paper in a hat. Each show member chooses a slip of paper from the hat. Whoever chooses the slip with the inappropriate joke must tell it on the air. There will be tension because no one knows who’ll get it. And for a moment, all eyes are on that show’s character to see how they deal with it.
Here’s a new game to play called “My Friend Said it On Facebook”. Grab some of the dumb, inane things friends posted on your personal Facebook page. Note the friend, and read what they said to a listener who has to guess if a friend actually posted that inane thing or if you made it up. Three of five right and they win. This easy game allows you to play off the stupid things people post on their walls on Facebook.
With the strong debut of William Shatner’s new TV show “S&#@ My Dad Says” (from the highly popular summer book about the writer’s dad), time to get a show member’s mom to do the same in a feature called “S&#@ My Mom Says”. Have a show member’s mom offer up some sage “mom advice” with a carefully placed bleep to lend the impression she’s cursed. These are slightly produced and stand alone packages (yes, you should introduce them) which can run the next few weeks to play off the new TV show and popular book.
With Lady GaGa having donned a meat suit at the VMAs, how about dressing someone from the show in just a swimsuit, lathering them up in meat juice, laying them down in a pen at the local animal shelter, and then letting in a bunch of dogs? The dogs will start licking and the person from the show will start laughing! If it works out, hilarity will ensue and you’ll have a segment listeners will walk away talking about!
With this the start of high school and middle school football, it might be great for each member of the show to adopt a high school or middle school (preferably in a hot zip code area) and track its progress all season. You don’t have to target teens to make this viable (as you can do it to appeal to parents, too). Ask listeners who you should choose, let there be web voting, ultimately grabbing one in an area of your metro you do well in. Then, follow the team all season, have players and coaches on, and appear at their big rivalry game. You’ll accentuate your “local” images, make stars of the team, and be rewarded with more listening by all.
If you have a major football team in your area (NFL or college), why not do on each Friday morning what they do in the locker room before the game? Pray to win! Find a nun (by either soliciting on-air or by asking on your Facebook site) who’ll come on each Friday morning and say a prayer that your local team wins each week. There are two keys here: you must find a nun who likes football and you must play it straight. The goal is to spice up the show with something unpredictable (a nun praying for a football game) and not to get into religion or make fun of her on the show!
Here’s a fun, recurring feature called “Ex-Boyfriend Poker”. Invite women to call about their ex-boyfriends. Put them on in pairs, giving each a sentence to tell you about why they dumped an ex-boyfriend (i.e. “I dumped an ex-boyfriend when I caught him cheating on me with my sister in our bed,” verses “I kicked an ex out for charging $1000 on my credit card without asking permission.”). Award a prize to the more intriguing of the two stories in each pair (because they have the better poker hand) and know that there are lots of follow up questions to make things come even more alive once you choose the better of the two.
Here’s a new feature being done by Candy & Potter at KMPS, Seattle called “Good Samaritan”. You must have three excellent prizes (all the same) and four listeners. One listener is your good samaritan. Offer them one of the great prizes. Then, the other three tell a quick, but emotional story as to why they should be given the prize (i.e. dog just died, about to get married and they’re not having a wedding). Make sure they’re coached off the air to heighten the impact of their story. After hearing the stories, the listener who you’ve given the prize to must make a decision; keep the prize for themselves (and the other three who told these quick stories get nothing) or give the prize up, thus becoming a good samaritan. If that happens, you then award the other two story tellers duplicate prizes. There’s great tension in this as the original listener must make a decision that others listening will play along with.
With kids going back to school, here’s a relatable idea for your entire audience. Have kids call a special phone line you set up (could just be your direct extension at the station) and give them 30-seconds to tell you what they did while on their summer vacations. Invite parents do do the same thing. Kids are always cute and the disparity against the adults will be amusing. The more you promote the line (on your show and throughout the day) the more you’ll get to air. This is better than a straight up phone topic because you won’t be at the mercy of what you just get that morning if you roll it out then.