Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

There is fun all around you.  Often, we lean on phone calls to play games – yet, we are getting fewer of them because less people are inclined to call and listeners are more engaged to interact with their favorite radio stations and shows via social media and texting.  So, use the fun people you work with to help pull things off.  Stacey and Jonah, 106.5 The Arch, St. Louis wanted to give a patriotism quiz to their audience around July Fourth.  The idea took off when two big decisions were made:  first, we were fearful listeners would not only not call to take it because they’d be reticent to prove how little they know.  So, we decided to give the quiz to three fun co-workers, who’d be more inclined to step up.  The other big decision was making it a competition amongst these co-workers spanning three days at the same time to generate additional occasions of listening.  To add spice to the idea, Stacey and Jonah found a middle school teacher on summer break to help administer the quiz, giving them more to play with,  The goal is relevant fun, and the listeners don’t really care if that laughter comes from other listeners or people in the building.  Here are the three episodes of the narrative, all airing close to the holiday last month.

Here’s a fun, new feature that highlights two important attributes of a show – music and fun around pop culture.  The Ty Bentli Show, Nashville (syndicated) has access to hundreds of artists being in the mecca for country music.  Each morning, they bring in a different budding artist (they’re screened for a sense of humor) and given a topic right out of the headlines and tasked with writing a quick song around the topic in ten minutes.  There are some terrific attributes of this feature:  it reinforces the contemporary nature of the show’s content, it’s intended to be funny and highlight the music images of the program, and proves an advocacy for the struggling artist because they get the show’s platform.  The other item that stands out is its design and name – given we all want things right now, a show with a feature as unique as this starts and pays off in ten minutes, possibly getting more listeners who want to follow it from topic choice to completion to stay for a few more minutes.