Kick-Ass Audio Breaks

Many shows over the years have played the “I Love You Game” where they try to get someone on the phone to reply back that they love them.  Sherman and Tingle, WDRV (The Drive), Chicago have added a few twists to this.  They do a character called Paul the Perv who calls three business of the same type, to see if he can make that happen.  Paul immediately makes things odd because the character is weird and creepy (without crossing the “ick” line).  They then call three of the same kinds of business to theme it each week.  The other element that works is the other cast members of the show have to guess, of the three calls, how many Paul will be successful with the payoff.  This final item forces a vicarious element into the breaks, compelling the listener to guess, too, then stay tuned to see if they are right.  These are fun and this weekly feature is perfectly designed to grab the audience’s attention and keep it throughout the break.  Here’s one of the breaks from a recent airing so you can get a sense of how all these elements work together.

Here’s an idea you can’t do.  Because it probably doesn’t fit your brand.  Drew Steele, 92.5 FOX News, Ft. Myers, FL is a conservative talk show host who recognizes that listeners don’t want to wake up and hear him pounding on the table all day, being angry at the Democrats.  Drew has always been sensitive to the emotional needs of his audience at that time of day and recognizes that having fun with the topics that fit resonates more efficiently with his audience.  The new book “Fire and Fury” is a top shelf topic with Drew’s conservative audience.  From the perspective that there are a lot of holes within the stories of the book, Drew decided to actually put some holes in the book by spending the week giving away to listeners the chance to meet him at a gun range and shoot at the tome.  You own topics by doing big things with them.  This was an idea to cause talk amongst his listeners because it lived on the fringe and captured where his audience was emotionally about the topic.  Here’s the promo that ran all week so they could get credit for doing it.  You can see a video of it here from TV coverage.