It’s evening and I’m still buzzing from this morning. I mustered up enough courage to call into a local morning show for their daily trivia contest. (I had chickened out on Friday.) The prize for winning - Paul Simon concert tickets.
I got on and I won (dominating the reigning champ ).
I’ve never won anything from the radio, let alone tickets for my favorite songwriter and musical legend.
The best part is the concert is tomorrow, my 25th wedding anniversary. The second best part is I get to play again tomorrow as the new champ.
So, have you won anything from the radio? Tickets, album, cash? How? “Caller 12,” live promo event, contest?
I’ve won two prizes on radio call-in trivia questions.
When I was in grad school, I correctly answered the question: “Which rock star appeared in a TV special in which he played both himself, and his twin, Ognir Rrats?” (It was Ringo Starr.) On that one, I won a cleaning kit for cassette tape decks (a fairly important thing in 1988).
In the '90s, I won a call-in trivia question on WBBM (the Chicago all-news station); the station has run a trivia contest called “Smart Quiz” during morning drive time for decades. I can’t remember the question, or the answer, but I won a $200 U.S. Savings Bond.
I’ve also twice won tickets from a Chicago radio station, though both were drawings which I entered online, rather than calling in.
One was for a luxury box at Soldier Field, to see U2.
The other was to see comedian Ron White at a casino in Indiana.
40+ years ago, I used to call into a college station with such a weak signal that there wasn’t much competition from other listeners. The prizes were good though. I won tickets to at least three concerts (Bow Wow Wow, Fear, and Red Kross) and a great album by Naz and the Nomads which was a “secret album” by The Damned.
When I was in grad school at Illinois I won all kinds of stuff - pizza, gyros, money off at the good campus deli. A smaller radio station had an “identify this song” contest - it was “Love Like a Man” by Ten Years After, which I got a second into the opening organ chord. (I won an album by one of the band members, not Alvin Lee. Bleh.)
My mother was the champion. She won dinner at the Waldorf Astoria to see Edith Piaf, along with a limo ride to take her there.
A very long time ago I won a VHS of Nightmare Before Christmas. It wasn’t a call-in quiz thing, I think it was in response to a piece of art I drew for them.
Way back in 1989, I won tickets to the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour by stumping the local DJs with a music trivia question: Who were the four original members of The World’s Most Dangerous Band? (Paul Schaffer, Hiram Bullock, Steve Jordan, and Will Lee) The concert happened to be on my birthday, too. My wife asked me if I wanted to sell the tickets, but I said, “It could be the last tour of the greatest rock & roll band in history, I wouldn’t want to miss it!” Living Colour opened, and they were great, but the sound mixing for them was terrible. The Stones, however, were fan-freakin’-tastic from beginning to end.
I also won a whole bunch of tickets to a comedy show with Ellen Degeneres, Paula Poundstone, and Robert Klein (I think). This was mid-80s, well before Ellen became a household name, and Poundstone was making the rounds of SF comedy clubs. Klein was the marquee name for the show. The local public radio station was a major sponsor and had several call-in opportunities to win. The fact that I won either 4 or 5 pairs of tickets suggests that the station’s listenership was either very small or not very interested in the show!
It was one of those “Be the ___ caller and win tickets” things. In this case, the radio station would give a pair of Moody Blues tickets to the seventh caller. Well, I was the seventh caller, and won the tickets.
Not quite the same thing, but a station had an interesting contest. During afternoon drivetime, they’d broadcast the location of a gas station, and say that they’d buy a tank of gas for the first 30 cars to arrive. I was driving right by the station they said was the location one day, so I pulled in and got a free tank of gas. Even heard my name mentioned on the radio: “And congratulations to Bill Smith, Sally Jones, and Spoons, all of whom have a free tank of gas, courtesy of 98.5 FM!” Bonus: I needed gas anyway, so even if I hadn’t won, I would have bought some.
Not a radio show, but I won a Twitter giveaway. Famous pitching coach Tom House gave away three signed baseballs, and I won. Cole Hamels, Randy Johnson and Nolan Ryan!
I’ve won pizza and movie tickets to see “Princess and the Pebble”* for being like the 25th caller. And I’ve won pizza for an oldies “Name That Tune” contest. And I’ve won pizza and Gallagher tickets for another 25-caller-type call in.
For the record, I’ve never had any of the pizzas I won nor have I gone to either of the shows. One pizza I gave away, as with the Gallagher tickets.
*This was around 1995. I can’t find a movie by this name then, and “Princess and the Pea” was 2002. So maybe it was “The Penguin and the Pebble”?
Thought of another one. A local Top-40 station ran a contest where you wore a pin-on button with the station’s name and frequency and if their reps spotted you while out and about, you won an album. So I wore my CHUM 1050 AM button, was spotted, and I won the Sylvers’ album Showcase, featuring the hit single, “Boogie Fever.”
Late 60s, I won five LPs for guessing correctly the titles of three 50s songs they played. One LP was “Underground” by the Electric Prunes.
Back in the 60s, this same station used to have a “Battle of Music” in which callers would choose between two songs - the winning song (after about 15 minutes of calls) continued the next day. Several times, I called in so often that I affected the results (the “score” was announced after each “battle”).
I never won, but this station also awarded a sum of money if they called you at random and you answered the phone with “I listen to ____”. A number of office switchboard operators were known to answer this way.
Fun thread. I have no story even close to you folks’ (Voyager’s mom is the thread winner so far, IMHO).
I did “win” free CDs on two occasions from KPFA (Bay Area of California), and 30 years later they’re still my two favorite “early music” albums: Portuguese Polyphony performed by Ars Nova, and El Sabio performed by Sequentia (songs supposedly by King Alfonso of Spain).
Oh, and I “won” a wonderful romantic-era-chamber-music CD when I was at Penn State for a semester in the early 90s – piano trios by Clara Schumann and Fanny Mendelssohn (Felix’s sister). The latter is still one of my favorite 19th-century compositions – I was thrilled to finally hear it performed live many years later, in an intimate setting.
Heh. My Mom won such a radio contest. Loblaw’s (a Canadian supermarket chain) sponsored it, and if you answered the phone with “Pride of Arabica coffee” (Loblaw’s house brand of coffee), you’d win $500. Mom answered correctly, and won. It was the 1950s, and Mom used her $500 winnings to buy a car.
There was a period during which mrs. dirtball had a knack for being the “nth” caller to win concert tickets from the local public station. Two shows I remember seeing as a result were the Blind Boys of Alabama and Pat Metheny.
Local TV station that was airing Star Trek (TOS and/or TNG) had a “send in a postcard” contest - I sent in 25 and won an aluminum clipboardy thing autographed by Gene Roddenberry This was the 2nd place prize – 1st place was some videos – maybe a VHS set of the movies? Anyway I was much happier with 2nd place.
Our local station used to give cash prizes if you were the seventh caller when they played the money song.* My ex-husband won the cash a couple of times, which was great because at the time he was playing video games and calling radio contests instead of trying to find a job. I think the prize was a hundred dollars.
The money song was “I Wanna Be Rich” by Calloway, and I’m still happy to hear it.
Back in the late '80s, the local Wichita rock station had a daily trivia question, with the prize going to the first caller to correctly answer the question. I listened to the station on my 30-minute commute, so I would never have the opportunity to be that caller. However, one morning the question stumped the listening audience, so it was still unanswered when I arrived at work. When I got to my desk, I immediately called the station with the correct answer. I won two tickets to an upcoming Wichita State basketball game, which turned out to be an incredible snoozefest.
The gist of the question was: This was President Kennedy’s favorite Broadway musical, and it was sometimes associated with his Presidency.
(dominating the reigning champ 
).
This was the 2nd place prize – 1st place was some videos – maybe a VHS set of the movies? Anyway I was much happier with 2nd place.