CPR Promotional Check-Up - Nov 12, 2014

Best Email From A Promotion Director

From Blair at Hot in Ottawa:

For the record, immediately after I emailed you, some random from the UK emailed me asking for permission to use the morning shows pic in their celebrity gossip show.

I also have a blow up doll in a chair facing me.

I've lost all sense of reality with this job.

Perfect!

Best Name For A Cruise Promotion

From one of the PD's: Song Voyage. A mashup of scrambled hooks. ID them all and go for a cruise.

A Morning Show Buzz Bit

One of my favorite Christmas bits was done by Dave at KDWB. In the midst of all the pre-holiday toy frenzy, he started talking about The Phlarmmy. The hottest toy for Christmas 2004. He staged a dozen or so calls from "listeners" who were talking about getting into fistfights at Target over the last Phlarmmy in stock. The story on CNN the night before. How some were going for $5000 on eBay.

Parents all over the Twin Cities awoke to learn that they had somehow missed out on the "hot toy" and terrified that their kids were going to kill them, besieged stores with calls, asking if they had any left in-stock.

A couple of years ago Jo and Twiggy at Trent-FM in Nottingham took it to another level. They invented The Stoydi. A bastardized "Idiots" spelled backwards. They literally created one from glueing together pieces of various toys. They cut a fake German radio spot for the toy. It was great.

So, what is the next level of a fake toy? Creating a fake celebrity...and killing him.

Again, this is the Art of acting as if everyone knows about this Christmas toy. I mean, you saw the Leno bit where he stood in line to get one? In this case, it's acting as if "How could you NOT know who Chris Stangler is?"

Going into the last hour of the morning show, you talk about how "CNN is reporting breaking news this morning about Chris Spangler. He was found dead in his Los Angeles home by his assistant this morning."

You need to act the role. What if Tom Hanks or Jennifer Lopez or Leonardo Dicapprio or Jamie Pressly died? Talk about how much you enjoyed their work in (make up some movies or just make them part of the cast of a bunch of hits.) "He f-ing cracked me up in '40 Year-Old Virgin'. Totally stole the show." "When he was on the Emmys last month and was introducing the nominees for Best Guest Actress with Reese Witherspoon, he didn't look good." "I saw on TMZ that he got really sick when he was in Argentina filming the new Twilight movie and had some kind of blood disease."

Then you start taking calls from "listeners" who talk about how they loved him when he was on "Growing Pains" as the neighbor kid the last season. How his attempt at music, that awful one-hit wonder from 1994 sucked, but that he was always great in the movies. How their daughter wrote him a note and he sent her an autographed SCRIPT from (movie)

The morning show should talk about how they met him at the Radio Music Awards and you all hung out and played blackjack until dawn and what a great guy he was. How he came through and was in the studio just last year when he was promoting (make up movie) and damn it, you JUST had taken the pictures down from the website.

This is like We Apologize or the Flying Cats or (station) is "going away". Why? Why NOT??!!! Your listeners will spend all day trying to figure out just who the Hell it was that died. Oh, and Spence from KLUC suggests creating a fanpage for him and having a "Our thoughts and prayers are with Chris's family and especially his children from his marriage to Gwyneth; Peanut Lily Petal and Argosy Magenta" message on the frontpage. Maybe with a flickering flame.

Never ever NEVER air a call from someone asking who Chris Stangler is. You never say that this was a bit. You do it and move on.