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The Turkey ... Santa ... & Me
November 22, 2016
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The holidays are one of the best times there are for air personalities -- the exceptions being evenings or overnights. Personalities can enjoy Thanksgiving and Christmas and not get stuck with those awkward moments with family and friends when small talk runs its course. Just enough work to keep you from developing lip freeze from over-smiling among the happy annual gatherings or a getaway from whatever festivities you are traditionally committed to. Those on-air hours are like meditation; no office workers or management ... just you, the mic, and the listeners.
Tom Turk-kay ... Gobble, Gobble
I used to enjoy working the holidays, it helped cut down on the overstuff-ness of Thanksgiving and on Christmas Eve, it was a chance to wrap presents between songs. There was a bit I did one Thanksgiving which I stretched out over my four-hour shift; the premise was turkeys organizing and disguising themselves trying to escape the last-minute gobble shoppers. Hey look, I was doing evenings.
Those listening under the influence of too much alcohol played along with my crazy imagination filled with Tom Turk-Kay -- a spokesman who would occasionally drop in a gobble between words. My PD encouraged me once I explained what I wanted to do on-air. By the way, no talk-set lasted more than 30 seconds and all recorded items for the running bit never went over 20 seconds; you can have fun and be word efficient. Most of the calls from listeners were funny and sounded great over the air.
My Favorite My On-Air Christmas Memory Involved Santa
Working 6-10p during a weekday on Christmas Eve can be a lot of fun because the request lines are full of people in the holiday spirit. One year I came up with an idea that I took to my PD. I had the idea of connecting with my 18-34 target demos and make those on the younger and older side happy, too. The more I talked to non-radio people, it was obvious moms, dads and teenagers still wanted younger children to believe in the mystical Santa Claus experience. I determined this commonality took precedent over our music format, which was playing the hits mixed with a lot of Christmas music.
I approached my PD and told him my idea of letting little kids talk to Santa on Christmas Eve. My PD had questions to which I had already figured out the answers. First, the recorded promos and liners would instruct parents to call in along with their children to talk to Santa. My plan was to talk to the parents first to make sure of what they were giving the kids and match it to what the kids spoke to Santa about. Fortunately, all the moms and dads were on the same page with their children's Christmas lists.
One of the good things about small children is the ability to trust and believe what parents are telling them. A crucial selling point of my plan was to fake a technical issue with Santa's phone, but solve the problem via Ham radio and Morse Code. I would tell listeners Santa could hear, but could only communicate by Morse Code and that I would translate for the kids, parents, and the rest of the listening audience. Okay now for the truth, I knew it would be hard to get anyone to play Santa and I couldn't do both voices and be believable. For the Morse Code sound, I had this little digital phone device that gave off a beeping sound whenever any number was pushed. Magnified with a mic it worked great because I could hit a series of beeps and simulate code as if Santa could answer back to the kids with me as the interpreter. To increase the theater-of-the-mind, I would pass along Santa's whereabouts in his sleigh as he supposedly made stops around the world on route to the U. S.
The PD loved the idea because my plan didn't stop the music and I had 60-second edited sound bites with a minimum of four separate families at a time. I was able to execute everything because I had a board-op who edited the audio while I did my show and answered the phones like a crazy man. There were three breaks an hour, but the PD let me add a place at the 10 after in place of the recorded promo. I had a Christmas call at the beginning of each commercial break. Because so many parents were calling, I phoned the PD and he extended my show an extra hour to accommodate more families.
My board-op and I were exhausted, but on a high because of how well everything came off. The op discovered, after it was over, that he forgot to pop in a cassette to record the show. But I could not be mad at him and took the blame because he busted his butt with all the editing.
Unfortunately, during my on-air career I never got another chance to do the bit again. Although I have worked with many talented jocks, I never had anyone who I could talk into doing it. The Morse Code and Santa bit taught me a valuable radio lesson; assumed credibility comes from believability.
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