So what’s the best radio show giveaway you’ve heard?
I’ll start. Back in Columbus, OH, there’s a station (CD101) that had quite a few. Here are the better ones I remember:
[list][li]They offered a pair of concert tickets to anyone who could solve a certain first-order homogeneous linear ordinary differential equation. I don’t remember the equation exactly, but the solution was x[sup]4[/sup] - y[sup]3[/sup] = c.[/li][li]One of the DJ’s brought in some of her old poetry and Jewel’s book of poems. They would read a poem, and anyone who could guess the author was registered to win a pair of concert tickets.[/li]They had a name-your-own-stunt event, where people would try to come up with a stunt so impressive that it would win tickets. One guy came up with the brilliant idea of eating seven of Taco Bell’s soft-shell tacos in three minutes. It took him three minutes and 20 seconds, so he didn’t win. Not to be deterred, he came back with two gallons of milk and offered to chug them both in five minutes. He actually got through the first one and about half of the second one. Then he got sick, very loudly (in the sense that nuclear fusion puts out a little bit of heat). Needless to say, this made it onto a best-of CD.
WNBC in New York once gave away a $1000 bill to the person who guessed it’s serial number.
It went very fast, actually. Sort of like:
Caller: Does it start with B?
DJ: No. Next Caller
Caller 2: Does it start with A?
DJ: Yes. What’s the rest?
Caller 2: 1
DJ: No. Next Caller
Caller 3: A2
etc.
Also a local radio station planned a big “I don’t like Mondays” contest, using the Boomtown Rats song as a theme. Then someone told them what the song was about . . .
Correction: the solution satisfied that equation. Wanted to correct myself before anyone else did.
On a local station (99.3 The Fox) they had a great contest a year or two ago, entitled “The Toughest Contest Ever”. I can’t remember all of the stunts they made contestants do, save for one. One of the contestants had to legally change his name to Heywood Jablomi, and keep it for a set amount of time, IIRC.
Just a couple of months ago, a station here in Phoenix offered - well, I don’t remember what - to any couple who would run around the block (downtown) wearing nothing but station bumper stickers. As I remember, they gave the woman three stickers and the man two. They (the stickers) weren’t very big. The guy, it seemed, had a much harder time covering up his…junk…than his wife did. But they ran around the block - during morning rush hour, mind you, and won…whatever (I think it was tickets to a show that was a) sold out and b) in another city, so included airfare.)