I love the idea of using liners this way, Rick!
I used to sell a birthday sponsorship - client paid for airtime and provided a birthday cake once a day. If more than one person was having a birthday, we'd draw a name for the cake. Of course, depending on the client and station relationship, more could be done with this. Could easily be adapted by a coffee/espresso stand, donut shop, ice cream parlor, or similar sponsor.
Joel Swanson's point about LOCAL is well-taken. Whether you're making a direct buck or not (and if it turns out to be popular, there's no reason not to offer a sponsorship), it's a way of personalizing the station-listener relationship.
A competitor back in Winona, MN 30-some years ago used to do a variant of a birthday greeting. Don't recall whether a birthday even entered into it, but it was a "Be Nice to _____________ Day." Several times a day, the station DJ's would say something like, "Today we're being nice to ____________. If you see ______________ today, be nice to him/her." Created a lot of buzz in our small market and made people feel good, especially the individual so named (along with friends, family, co-workers, etc.) Could it be monetized? Sure. One could easily sell an adjacency, though I'd be inclined to leave out the formal "sponsored by" designation.
Here is what we are working on. We have started a web site
www.Twounce.com (Rhymes with Bounce) where our listeners can put a 7-10 second twounce on the air automatically. It is free right now but will have a shopping cart in a month or so where we can charge for the twounces with Pay Pal on our Twounce.com shopping cart. They can record their own or our announcers will record it for them. Imagine announcements for Birthdays, anniversaries, Graduations, Just for the heck of it, proposals and of course, political Twounces. Imagine this: "Mr Mayor, I have written to you about the dangerous intersection at Acoma St and Playa Dr. Now I am Twouncing you to do what you can to fix the situation. This is Don Williams". Our shopping cart will charge $10 per Twounce in packages of 6. It will eMail/text you with the times they will play and allow you to post the schedule to facebook (along with the audio) and forward the email to your friends letting them know when to tune into the station. Great cume builder.
Money from right under our noses! MFRUON. Here is the temporary landing page for Twouncing.
www.Twounce.com Tell me what you think. We had 8 (free) Twounces the first day we ran the ad. With 2 Twounces per hour 18 hours per day times 5 stations is $500,000 annually in found money. ...and talk about local.
Our listenership is very rural and we annouce lost pets, ect. We also have day and half day sponsorships, if the day is being sponsored to celebrate someone's birthday we play Happy Birthday for them and personally give them happy birthday wishes, by sharing thoughts from the person sponsoring the day. There are times the person sponsoring the day will personally voice the spot, which is neat as well. People love it, makes our station just a little more personal.
We do birthdays, anniversaries and lost pets both on-air and the web. People are passionate about pets. We've made money here, provided a community service and significantly increased pet adoptions over the last year.
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