Radio Life is about stories. It’s about friends and coworkers and rehashing the highs and lows of our careers. And just about everyone has had their own disaster tale, and when someone tells me that “Nope, never had a contest calamity”, I’ll suggest that maybe they’re not trying hard enough.
Great homerun hitters go up to the plate and they swing. And they usually have the most strikeouts on their team but, when they connect, the stands erupt and they’re mobbed at home plate.
This is not one of those moments. This is the kind of experience that, years later, you still kind of get involuntary full-body shivers.
This is….The KDWB Blimp.
“Hold on…I am vomiting in my mouth…give me a minute” – Buck McWilliams, July 2020
It had it all. Mystery. Intrigue. A cast of characters. Prizes. Prizes, I tell you! An attempted hit on one of the principals in the promotion. It just didn’t have a blimp.
“That blimp idea cratered the radio station…there was no blimp! WTF?” – Greg Thunder, July 2020
In the Summer of 1987 I was Promotion Coordinator at Emmis’s CHR in the Twin Cities, WLOL. It was literally and figuratively a monster. The previous winter we’d actually cracked a 10. The station had a legendary morning team with Hines & Berglund, a booming signal, we owned the streets and because it was Emmis, we did BIG promotions. Read more…