There is stuff out there every day that we can take and play around with for content. During their 20-year reign at #1 in DC, Jay Stevens at WPGC would do The Newspaper Game. He’d get everyone around the conference room table and give them each that day’s Post. He’d have a prize for the person who found the best “thing” that the station could run with.
The market manager for Hubbard in the Twin Cities’ mission statement to his team is that he doesn’t want to miss anything, or, at least, he’d like to be able to see if they have time or room to acknowledge it. Anything could be fodder for an acknowledgement.
Ken Benson with KINK in Portland jumped on a statewide ban on cell phones in schools that goes into effect on January 1st. It’s already kicked in in the city schools. With John Frost, he quickly pounded out a couple of parodies.
And now, on with the Dumpage.
Veterans Day 2025
It falls on Tuesday, November 11, this year, but will also be honored on the 10th. One of the Cumulus stations had every hour jocked by a vet. Stations have also focused in on women who are vets.
One of the best 4th of July features is to run pre-recorded messages from listeners to their loved ones who are deployed and serving overseas. They both get a time to listen/stream and hear the message as it airs. Easily morphable for Veterans Day.
TrikTok
Want to focus on Halloween online as opposed to an event? Have listeners debut their costumes to music via TikTok. (My daughter’s costume from 2017.) Award candy for the best.
The Winning Dead
We’re in show business, so Prize Fulfillment should be exciting when we can do that. One of the stations is going to be doing a couple of weeks of tickets to the local theme park’s Halloween attractions. Great prizes.
The idea is that every Friday, a promo person or people will get dressed up as zombies and go and deliver them to the winners at their school, home, or offices. You know that the people will take shots and share this weird diversion to their workday.
Picture Find
I focus-grouped this on Facebook, and it tested better than an auto-post about Cardi’s new lipstick.
Not that you’d want to stick something on your site or social media that would suck people in and have them staring and dissecting it for hours, but what the heck. “Highlights” magazine had a “find the hidden images” page that sucked in a million kids as they waited at the doctor’s office. But then Gallant had to go and get all holier-than-thou, and I stopped reading it.
This has 72 artists that the station plays in this image. Good luck.
For Halloween
One of the stations has stumbled upon a lot of shirts to give out next month. I believe we’ve decided on “We’re going to scare you shirtless!” Passes to a haunted attraction and a new shirt.
Prize Value
One of the morning shows reached out and wants to revamp a contest that has gotten stale. The prize is a gift card to a client. The value seemed really low, so I asked, “Can you actually get anything for that amount at (client)?” and was told no.
Two quick reminders.
- We never want to give away a prize that costs money to use.
- Or that the cost in gas to come and pick it up is worth more than the prize.
Open House
The little plaza in Scandia has a bank, pizza place, liquor store, and post office, and last week they hosted an open house. You could get a tour, play games for prizes, have some free pizza, wine taste, etc. I’ve always thought it would be great if a station did a once-a-year open house.
Have some food, allow people to record themselves reading the weather and introing a song, play Name That Tune, and basically open the doors so people can meet the airstaff and see behind the scenes. Which, for the average listener, is still pretty damn cool.
One Note Wonders
Clear Channel in the Twin Cities has KOOL 108, which is a pretty great station. They’ve freshened up the imaging, and one of the new promos talks about how instantly identifiable their artists are.
What if you did “One Note Wonders” on the morning show? Play ONE note or beat from a song. First to ID athe rtist and title wins whatever tickets you have.
Dance Your Gas Off
I lobbed this out once, and KZIA got a club client out of it. Chris the night guy hosted a “night” with a dance competition that awards gas cards. The finals will pay off with a $500 gas card. “Dance contests” would seem to be very 1991… until you see what’s on TV almost every night.
Sewable Swag
AMP in Calgary is one of the stations that has done patches as swag. Less than a buck, and the listeners can put them on hats, pants, jackets, backpacks, whatever.
Brush With
One of the PDs was asking about daily/weekly features for the morning show. “Brush With” has always juiced the phones, and they just change the item/event/theme every time. Brush With Food Poisoning. Brush With A Crappy Hotel. Brush With A Perverted Boss. Brush With A Brush. Whatever. It will blow up, most assuredly.
Wheelbarrow Wednesday
One of the stations has a client who wants to do a weekly food delivery to an office. But Taco Tuesday and Fajita Friday are out because they want it on a Wednesday. Because of the client, this won’t work for them, but feel free to steal.
The premise would be that the money budgeted for a Food Truck for the station has been taken off the table because the morning show did something stupid. All they could scrounge up was a wheelbarrow, but it’s a really NICE wheelbarrow. Get it wrapped and every Wednesday roll a ‘barrow full of food into an office.
Sidewalk Chalk
This came up in an email stream over the weekend.
With venues like concert arenas and sports stadiums, there will always be policies about signage on site, but I’ve never seen a station get spanked for chalking the walking routes from parking garages and remote lots all the way to the venue. With a couple of promo teamers and spray chalk, you can do a lot in a couple of hours.
The Dreaded Morning Show-On-Vacation Week
If I had my way, the lazy, overpaid, good-for-nothings would get NOTHING. And LIKE IT. But, on a semi-regular basis, you need to let them free to rehabilitate and detoxify their systems. Here is some imaging that I wrote for The Morning Hot Tub at Hot 89.9 in Ottawa. File away for the next time the morning show scatters.
- The regularly scheduled program, The Morning Hot Tub featuring Mauler, Laura, Rush, and Josie has been pre-empted to bring you a special Spanish-language rebroadcast of the exciting 1978 World Cricket semi-finals of Peru vs. Indonesia. The Morning Hot Tub will return at its regular time next Monday. Thank you.
- Today’s Morning Hot Tub is a special guest-hosted episode, with the parts of Mauler, Laura, Rush, and Josie being played by various food items we bought on clearance at (budget grocery chain). Honestly? We do it all the time, and no one seems to notice.
- The Morning Hot Tub is on vacation and will return next Monday at its regularly scheduled time. Vacation? Those people? There’s some irony for you. Sorry. I digress. Please enjoy whatever budget programming has been chosen as a substitute.
- The Morning Hot Tub featuring Mauler, Josie, Rush, and Laura are on vacation and in other parts of Canada, stealing bits from other morning shows to bring back and, oh, uh, they’re using this time off to refresh their creative juices and prepare some of the best and most original morning programming found anywhere. That’s our story and we’re sticking to it.
- The Morning Hot Tub is off this week. They wanted to take a vacation, and the boss said, “Take as much time as you like. I could get four monkeys in here and they could probably do your job better than you do and for a helluva lot less money.” And so far, he’s right.
- The Morning Hot Tub will not be in this week. Their dog ate their show.
- The Morning Hot Tub featuring Mauler, Josie, Rush, and Laura is on Summer hiatus as they prepare for another season of drama, car chases, cliffhangers, taboo love, illicit romance, unfulfilled dreams, and a special appearance by Mayim Bialik as the Boss’s Niece! The fun starts this coming Monday at 6 am.
- The Morning Hot Tub has taken this week off as they wrestle with the decades-old questions: what’s bothering the Beaver? The answer to that and more zany hilarity this coming Monday as they return with a new season on Hot 89.9.
The Short Attention Span Countdown
It’s kinda like the ADD Countdown. No lead-up. Just play whatever is #1.
