Paige Nienaber’s Midweek Idea Dump: Breaking Summer

In July 1989, after five of the funnest years of my life at WLOL in the Twin Cities, I started as The Director of Fun ‘N Games at Kiss 102 in Charlotte. On the first day, I discovered that I’d inherited The 102 Days Of Summer. All I could think was “Geez, that’s an old promotion.” And that was in 1989.

To compound the insult, the competition, Jefferson-Pilot’s Hot AC, was doing The 108 Days Of Summer.

So I’ve kind of carried an intense dislike of it ever since. It reminds me of Family Four Packs and Win It Before You Can Buy It: with so many other options to be creative with semantics, why would we want to trot out something from 1973?

Now, if you do The (Dial Position) Days Of Summer and it works for you, then that’s great. It’s like Bill Murray in What About Bob? – some people like Neil Diamond and some don’t. 

I’d posted about B96 in Chicago and their stab at “Hot Girl Summer” as an umbrella for the Summer of 2025. Someone commented, “Why should we reinvent the wheel?” Why not? As Jerry Clifton once said, “If it ain’t broke, break it.”

I’ve always preferred the words of George Bernard Shaw: “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

And now, on with the Dumpage.

Summer Interns

I have a street team manual if you’d like to see one that you can build from. I saw a Promo Director on Facebook bitching about how he stopped at an event and the staff were vaping. KZIA has always done a great job of making the summer hires and interns “part of the team” and that includes giving them pics and bios on the On-Air page.

They’ve also done a great job of having the kids recap their experience at the end of the Summer.

Cashblast

This is one of the Nuclear Weapons of on-air contesting. It’s been done with cash in Miami, gas in Denver, tickets in Minneapolis and San Antonio, and again with cash at the always-cool Radiowave 96.7 in Windhoek.

At an appt. time, they opened the phones for 20 minutes, and EVERYONE who got through and had Kelly Thompson pick up the phone won $100. Their phone system is still in recovery.

Backyard Parties

Yes, it’s common sense, but a reminder that if you are doing “win an artist in your backyard,” before you announce the winner, MAKE SURE THEY HAVE A BACKYARD. Kind of like the Christmas concert at your house. I think it was WPXY that brought The Goo Goo Dolls to a shed in the woods on a dirt road.

Summer On Demand

This is going to be The Sumbrella sumwhere. The presentation is going to be that EVERYTHING the station does will be because their listeners demanded it. Timmy T tickets? People have been all over FB begging for them. A bus to a casino? Another listener demand. And of course, the request line should be the demand line.

The Actors Breakroom

One of the stations is looking for an excuse to go out and hang out in the offices. When I worked in Portland, the morning show did Leave It To Beaverton; the Cleavers had moved to the Pacific Northwest, Wally had lost his job in the lumber industry, June was a bit of a tart, Ward was a drunk, and Beaver was a student at Beaverton High. They had a new episode each week.

I’ve seen it done with soap operas and also with movies. You print out some lines from a movie scene, say, the picnic scene with the meatless burgers in Vacation and go to an office and you have three or four employees act it out and over the next hour on Facebook, the audience votes on their performance and whether their entire workplace is deserving of tickets to a movie.

The “Somehow I Missed It Film Fest” In Theater C

When Cities 97 started doing acoustic shows at the station circa 2000, they did them in the conference room, which they dressed up by calling it “Studio C.”

So what if once a month, after work, you did a free screening of a movie that one of the morning show hosts has never seen, and invited all of the other listeners who have somehow missed it? I tested “What movie did everyone else see but you didn’t?” on Facespace once, and it killed. And a LOT of people never saw Ferris Bueller – WTH??

Movies are the entertainment universal, and honestly, it’s just an excuse to hang out and eat popcorn with a dozen listeners.

Graduations

They are about to commence in earnest™. Rob from Froggy 92.9 in Santa Rosa suggests:

1. Read comments that people wrote in the yearbooks of the various talent on the show. Or even all of the airstaff. Call and ID it as “Drunk after a hockey game? Had to be Mauler.” Ding it was.
2. Laura Daniels at Mix in Buffalo re-did all of the jock bio shots a couple of years ago so that they looked like they’d be from a high school year book. That’s pretty funny.
3. Or replace your jock bio shots with their senior class photos.

Divorcing A Friend

I have a very funny and wacky friend named Reed who has what she calls a mental shoebox that is under her bed. When a friend has ticked her off or otherwise betrayed the friendship, they go in the box.

I heard this very reminiscent-of-Seinfeld thing on a station yesterday. A listener has a long time friend who had just sucked the life out of her. This person is just a drain on her emotionally, and she doesn’t know how to break it off. So the morning guy is going to.

Backyard Games

Another reminder that Father’s Day is looming™. From Al Smith at Newcap in Charlottetown:

Last year, we ran a Father’s Day contest where 10 Dads qualified and were invited to come out to participate in 10 “backyard games”. After each game, one Dad was eliminated and won whatever game it was they were playing (horseshoes, lawn darts [do they still have those??], ladder golf, etc). The grand prize was a riding lawn mower, and we called the contest “Father Mows Best.”

Shake It, Don’t Break It

For the nth time, Secret Sound has always worked because it plays to the 96% of listeners who don’t play our games and are patiently waiting to hear the 3rd Ariana drop of the week. “Sounds” can suck them in. 99.7 NOW-FM in San Francisco just finished up their second Round ‘o Sounds, and it got some great engagement. The one that “went the longest” was the sound of Apple Airpods being dropped on a table.

Candice at K-Rock 97.5 was decluttering her home and brought in a bunch of junk like teapots and sugar bowls. They have been shaking them, and listeners have been winning swag for IDing the item. They even came up with an intro for the contest.