CPR Promotional Check-Up

The Reaction Game

The best, most historic stuff Radio has ever done was the product of a Hall Meeting. It was stuff that unfolded in moments after a story broke. Tucson is an example. Ted Williams is an example.

The Reaction Game is a great exercise at brainstorming sessions and this morning I'm doing it with a room of CBS programmers in San Diego.

You break the group into five teams of four or five or six people each. They each draw a card from a pile and don't look at it until you give them the cue. You set the stage by telling them that it's 10:11 am, they are doing whatever they would normally be doing at 10:11 am, and someone rushes in to tell them (and they all flip over their cards and read):

• Your market was just awarded the pro sports franchise it's been lobbying for for 20 years.
• Your biggest core artist was killed in a plane crash
• The mayor was arrested with a little boy in lederhosen in a hotel room, naked
• There was a school shooting in a suburb
• A gas explosion just leveled a building downtown
• The biggest bridge in town just collapsed
• There was an earthquake in a nearby major city
• Because of a lawsuit by the ACLU, the term "Christmas" can not be used by businesses in your market

Because, again, the best stuff is decisive let's-get-it-on-the-air-and-don't-overthink-it stuff, this is a great exercise in training the staff to think that way. They get ten minutes to plan their reaction to their scenario and then present it to the group. (Steve Jones and I took the sports team card. Our "reaction" to this op included getting a skating arena organist to come in and play our powers for a day: "If you like hockey, then you'll love our organ")