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Stunts and promotions

N

normhill007

Guest
Sorry for so many posts..you guys and I hope gals have given me a chance to rehash some very interesting moments that have lain dormant for 7 or 8 years. John Hancock and I were the "swingers" at WARM..We both wound up hanging from a crane..John did his for love, raising money for Easter Seals..Hanging in a cage with a Lazy Boy for 24 hours or so..Meanwhile, I did mine for MONEY, as Sun Buick had me hanging 180 feet in the air in a Buick station wagon. Made a ton on talent fees for both the stunt and the radio and tv spots. We had to have people to hold the guy wires so I wouldn't feel like I was on a ride at Hershey park and I didn't pay much attention to who was doing it until about 2 in the morning I stuck my head out and saw Phil Condron, our GM, as the guy wire holder. Ate like a king as Ponderosa, McDonalds, and Mr. Donut outdid themselves for an on-air mention. Even my wife's obstatrician, when she introduced me to him for the first time said, "Oh, you're the guy who was dangling in a Buick..Almost felt like going down and buying one. The one somewhat scary moments came about 6AM when I saw a real nasty thunderhead on the horizen and every minute it got closer and closer..I wasn't due to come down until the last minutes of Harry's show, but luckily it stayed away long enough while I swung back and forth on the way down..Someday I'll relate the two biggest promotion debacles of Magic, and both of them concern cars, one of them a Corvette..If anyone remembers that one and wants to pick up on it, be my guest
 
Rock 107's Prospector was entombed in ice and buried in concrete. It was interesting to learn the techniques used for dealing with bodily functions.
 
I remember a Bloomsburg Station once having a live on air giveaway from a Lawn & Garden dealership.. they were giving away two.. thats two seperate prizes of a John Deere Lawn Tractor... now the DJ on the air reaches into the box and pulls out the name (Let's say John Doe)... then congratulates him... then reaches in and pulls out the same guys name again, and says.. "Wow, the same gut won both mowers!".... Didn't immediately say, well let's pick another different winner.. no, the knuckelhead let's it slide... can't believe he didn't drop the name back in and choose a different winner without causing an uproar.. how many listeners were teed-off when this boo-boo occured? talk about common sense on air!
 
If he pulled the same name twice, the same name won twice. Unless the usual long list of contest rules/disclaimers specifically prohibited the same person winning twice, I'd strongly suggest that going fishing for another name would be the clear FCC violation. If he dropped the name back in without, as you say, an uproar, he would have cheated. Therefore he would have exposed the station and himself to being fined. There's common-sense, there's law; they're not always one and the same.
 
Where I work the law is mostly all we have and even that is subject to interpretation depending on who's looking. Commonsense? Face it, if you're in radio you were probably commonsense-challenged to begin with.
 
The brand new 18 month old Magic Corvette with 15,000 miles miles on it.
 
Following up on the lawn mower giveaway story, I'm sure they got around it somehow. When I was at WDLS in 1992, we gave away a Chevy pickup truck via a name drawing live on the air. I had suggested that we choose the name before hand (because there was nothing that said we couldn't do that), but I was overruled. The next day, the woman who won shows up to the studios - strung out on heroin. She was an admitted addict (shaking and sweating and completely spaced out) who had her fast-talking husband (complete with a thick southern accent) show up at the station with her to get their truck, along with the guy who was going to buy it from them for $1,000 (it was a $10k truck). However, the contest rules stated that the winner had to do promos (she couldn't even say two lines, one of which was her name) and had to pay the taxes, tags, and transfer fees for the truck (which they definitely couldn't do - it was around $2k). So, management kicked them out and held another drawing (in the GM's office), after which they came out with a second winning name - someone who could actually pay the money and do the promos. Surprise surprise!

Gotta love live drawings...
 
We did a Magic 93 Bridal Show at the FM Kirby center.. told the sponsors that they were not elligible to win any of the prizes.. the grand prize was a mink coat. Well, we announce the winner live on stage which just happens to be the Wife of one of the sponsors who in the show... anarchy breaks out as the angry woman insists she is the winner and an angry sales manager is having it out with her telling her she's not elligible!
 
For Thanksgiving, someone at WARM got the brainy idea to have listeners send in their turkey wishbones and if theirs was picked...their wish would come true.

People just ripped out the turkey wishbone, put it in an envelope and addressed it to WARM radio.

Thousands of greasy envelopes began pouring into the station. Even got a call from the Avoca post office demanding someone come and pick up all the soiled envelopes because it was making one big mess.

Don't remember the outcome....but it sure was messy
 
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