CPR Promotional Check-Up - Mar 31, 2014

Tomorrow

This is going to be a good one. Can't wait to see what Google does. You can make AFD a big theatrical production, as one US CHR morning show is but it can also just be simple and easy.

"Random" is a good litmus test. Just something random and unexpected and out of left field. No one has ever done a morning show in reverse. First break would be the sign off at 9 or 10. There are a couple of stations that are putting stuff together on the fly today. It could, again, be as simple as now, right now, calling the University, getting four students and doing each shift tomorrow in a different language. Jamz in Birmingham, which does better AFD then pretty much anyone, was the first station to do this. Mornings in Japanese, mid-days in Sri Lankan, afternoon in Thai and Nights in Russian. No pre-hype. Just...done.

And the key, as always, is never ever air callers asking what is up. This is normal. This is business as usual.

For The Morning Shows

• I once heard Dave at KDWB do "I Caught The Babysitter Doing (Blank)" as a topic starter and it blew up. Jack Diamond in DC will semi-regularly do "Babysitter Confessions": things his listeners did when they were younger and babysitting. Stole booze. Ate all the pot roast. Lost the kid for an hour at a mall. Gold.
• The morning show at Power 96 in Miami does two things among many that are noteworthy. They do "Black, White, Hispanic Or Other" as a contest. They'll read stupid criminal news and the caller has to ID the crook as one of those. Lucy's been reading listeners Instagram bios on air, the trade off is that the listener then needs to follow the station on Instagram. It's her style of doing it that kills. Like Nick Offerman reading tweets from young female celebrities.

Dance Your Cash Off

When I worked at Wild in San Francisco we sponsored an AIDS Dance-A-Thon at UC-Berkley. It was large. This is from the lovely and talented Jackie Donovan at Pamal/Glens Falls:

We sponsor the South High Marathon Dance....for 24 hours, about 800 high school students assemble in their gym and dance their asses off to the tune of.....wait for it approximately $350,000 that gets donated to 40 people in need.

The first time we got involved was 1996 when my GM looked at me like one of my beagles and said "why do you think we should do this?"....uh duh? We do the opening ceremonies with 800 kids dancing....all with parents and siblings supporting them....probably in front of about 3,000 people over the course of a day....better exposure than "let's take caller 10 for the girl scout cookies" but what do I know....he no longer works here.

This thing is 36 years old....I'm attaching the highlights from last year