The week after Christmas is a Stephen Kingish Dead Zone for radio. Nothing but awful, generic auto posts and voice-tracked breaks from two weeks before. As we cruise towards the end of the year, we are looking for ANY and all things that we can sell to pad the ledger.
One option for that week would be a sponsored list of everything happening in-and-around the market for parents to do with their kids, for free, as they count the hours until they go back to school. Similar to what stations do during the Summer as a resource for families.
Or do Retail Rehab. A cocktail party or event for people who work in retail or the hospitality business to take a deep breath before they tackle the final hurdle of 2026: New Year’s Eve. Similar to the Rehab parties that the Hard Rock in Las Vegas has done for the casino workers on Sundays at their pool.
And now, on to the Dumpage.
New Year’s Party Crashing
If you are just at a club, that would be pretty sad. Everything you do on NYE is for the between-the-songs vibe. To accentuate the sound for the 1000s of parties that will hopefully be using you as music. And that’s why crashing a couple of dozen parties and getting calls and pics (up the next morning) is important.
How do you pick the parties you hit? On the website. Come up with a cool graphic and give them a quick form to fill out. In addition to the obvious “where” and “when” and “how many”, you’ll want to spice it up and ask some stuff like?
- Potential of nudity? 0%, 10%, 25% 50%, 75%, or 100%?
- Domestic or imported beer?
- Accessibility to a hot tub?
- Illegal fireworks?
- Have the police ever been summoned to this residence before?
- Describe briefly the array of food our underpaid and overworked staff can expect to find.
Another consideration when selecting locations is the distance between them. Map out the night so you only have 10-15 minutes max between hits.
Chalkboards
Some stations really stand out when it comes to what they put together at concerts and events. Carina with IHeart in Phoenix is outstanding. AMP in Orlando. LFM in San Diego. And Taryn Stephenson, who was with Stingray in Vancouver, is amazing, and most of the stuff she and her crew make by hand.
Here are a few things the station has done to pop on-site:
One of the best things we bought was an inflatable logo that lights up. It was custom-made by a company in Montreal. They even make inflatable tents, which also look really rad.
I LOVE these teardrop banners for so many reasons, but mostly when my team takes them out of the stand and waves them like flags. Our largest is 25 feet high, and I wouldn’t go much taller than that unless you have a super industrial stand, because they catch the wind, and off you go. You can see the team waving them behind our flash mob for BSB here.
Snow Angels
Several stations have hooked up with someone who had a plow on their pickup and went and plowed out listeners’ driveways after heavy snowfalls. Getting someone to work? One of the best prizes you could ever award. What if you created a social media page for listeners to sign up to help shovel out the elderly after snow falls? The sidewalk. The driveway. Anywhere someone slips and takes a bad fall. Sponsor it and recognize one of your volunteers every week.
Party Girl (Or Boy)
As far as I can tell, you all have music features for New Year’s Eve. Cool.
Most of you have social media plans for this very, very busy night. Cooler.
Some of you, like Jammin’ in Denver, have station events that will make them $$$. Coolerer.
Since “house parties” are the real vibe, some of you like WQEN in Birmingham will be out crashing them all night with food and prizes. Coolest.
So, you REALLY want some kind of “outside of the building” coverage of what’s going on. Both Hot in Ottawa and Hot in Norfolk had a street teamer they named “Party Girl”. Her gig (which she was going to do anyway) was to go out to clubs and parties and music events and post tons and tons and tons of photos to social media. Kind of like every other 23 y/o female.
So, she did it for the station and became a character. Party Girl was the trendiest young woman in town and was out enjoying the scene and covering it on the stations’ Instagram and Facebook.
“Party Girl” would be one way to cover New Year’s Eve because I can guarantee you that there are going to be a ton of stations with a syndicated show on the air, no one on the phones or social media, and nothing but auto posts to acknowledge the night.
Dateless DJ Auction
Stace is one of my avid readers from back in the All-Access days (the other guy was a hotel night auditor in Bismarck), and she’s now made the big segue from Yakima to Nashville. With her husband still out west, last year she had no one to take her to the station office party, so she opened it up to bidding, with all of the money raised going to buy phone cards for troops. The winning bid got a steak dinner courtesy of Stace and got to take her to the party. Cool bit. Steal it.
Treelivery
Happens this coming weekend at one of my clients. First, a good tree is $50 bucks. That’s a nice and topical prize. With 99.98% of stations making, you drive down to the station to get a gift certificate, and then drive 25 miles to a lot, and then drive home, how do you beat that?
You get a Ryder truck, fill it with barrels of ammonium nitrate mixed with dies–…whoops…wrong column. You fill it with trees, stick some promo people dressed as elves in it, and dispatch them to winners’ homes. This has never NOT been an “11”.
N.F.L.
This stood for “No (Extremely Profane Term for What Is Actually a Beautiful and Romantic Act) Losers” at Live in San Francisco had Raiders tickets a couple of years ago. It was very simple and easy to win. If the DJ answered the phone, you won. So, basically, whenever he/she felt like it, they would answer one of the flashing rows of phone lights and tell the caller on-hold that they’d won.
Flipping Fiancées
For Valentine’s, one of the stations is bringing “Runaway Bride” over from the UK, where it debuted on BRMB. Two women in wedding dresses and NO money have 24 hours to get as far from the station as they can, to win a $25,000 wedding package.
Reality TV learned long ago that mismatching people is fun to watch. One of the stations has a $10,000 diamond ring for contesting. What if you took two engaged couples and swapped the women for a week? Have them on the air every morning (“Brian sits in his dirty underwear and drinks beer and plays Call of Duty until 4 in the morning!”) to talk about the other woman’s soon-to-be-spouse. Webcamming would be best. They EACH get rings.
Name That Carol
I heard a station in Vegas last year doing some kind of bonus word thing: in honor of Hanukkah, the secret word was “candles”. Hear him say it, text in, and get 2000 bonus points in their listener club. One of the CHRs was shooting for a forced-listening thing. I was playing around with things you could feed the audience, hour by hour. Like bingo numbers. What if you did a word an hour from a Christmas carol? 9 am: “All”. 10 am: “Right”. 11 am “You” and the first person to call in and warble the Chipmunk song wins. It’s like Scrambled Jamz or any of those promotions you play along with vicariously. Once the first two words are out, whether they want to or not, they’ll be sitting at their desks messing around with those in their head and Googling like mad.
Ornaments
The Paigettes did the tree on Monday night and since we have accrued a million swag ornaments and other danglers over the years, they set up a system, so we rotated, each getting a turn to pull one out until we all had our favorite five to go on the tree. Ornaments are special. They have meaning. The Moose in Saginaw once tapped into that. Share a pic of your favorite and most special ornament for a shot at $1500 at a client that specializes in Christmas “stuff.”
Hackey New Years
The week after Christmas is a dead zone of Radio. Zip.
You could have the night show, and the engineer go out and turn a listener’s home into a nightclub. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z06tKQ9ZMHU
You could do some vid hacks for the holiday. How to clean up puke. How to get a reservation when all the restaurants are booked. How to talk your parents into watching your kids. How to talk free drinks out of dudes. How to effectively pull off the walk of shame. What types of alcohol give the worst hangovers? Beginner’s bartending.
Toy Drive Incentivizing
I heard a station that’s tied into a toy drive with a chain of five, big, “gas station/car wash” locations. Bring a toy and get a free car wash.
You can overthink prizing. In the summer in dusty markets and in the winter in slushy markets, these are great prizes.
Parodying A Very Parodyable Genre of TV Ads
Ryan Smetzer knocked it out of the park with this video to promote their December contesting with a twist on “Christmas CD” spots.
White Elephant Gift Exchange
This is brilliant, and from a guy named Charlie: the two weeks after Christmas, they’re going to have people swap the crappy Christmas presents they got (like shampoo or “The Cutest Cats Of 2024” calendar) for whatever is available. They’ll start with some items from a discount store, and when one gift is taken, it will be replaced on the list with whatever the caller gave up.
