Please Hold Caller, Bauer’s interactive competition:

It’s always good to try something new. The team at Bauer Radio’s Magic Network across the North of England along with production company Wise Buddah have launched a new interactive listener competition where listeners can compete against up to 20-thousand others at the same time to win cash.

The brand new competition format called ‘Please Hold Caller’ takes place daily at 11am on the networked mid morning show.

How it works?

Before each game of Please Hold Caller the on air presenter, Nick Wright, announces the day’s prize pot and the day’s maximum number of winners.

That could be 20 people winning £50 each, 5 people winning £100 each, 1 person winning £500 or 100 people all winning a tenner.

Listeners call to answer several questions in sequence. Only those answering correctly with their touch pad stay on the line. The questions get progressively harder and once there is only a handful of callers remaining the presenter poses a ‘nearest to’ question before winners are selected.

How does it sound?

Take a listen to this off-air cut from Monday 18th November.

It’s quite funny to hear the first winner get a bit confused and ask for more details!

Does it work?

It’s clear that this new mechanic has some teething problems but generally its effective. The pace is quite quick so that it doesn’t bore listeners who are not playing.

I think it works well for the slightly older target demographic of Magic AM to have an entry point via traditional landline phone rather than online / mobile. Nick does a great job at bringing the game to life during the process, adding in personality and humour during the quiz.

Should it have a place on daytime radio? Personally, I’m not so sure – it has more of a sound of evening / weekend radio due to the nature of the mechanic. It sounds like something post midnight on Channel 5. However, with the older audience and the Magic AM brand it kinda works! I’d be interested to see how long it survives and whether it will appear in any other UK markets or on any other brands.

Thumbs up to creativity

It’s exciting how cross media companies like Wise Buddah are using radio as a space to be innovative with revenue and content generating executions – that should be encouraged more in radio. It’s great to see Bauer take a risk and try something new.

Jonathan Jacob is a Solutions Manager at Global Radio with experience across commercial radio S&P, events, marketing and PR. He was named in the inaugural Radio Academy 30 under 30, is a Student Radio Awards judge and sits on the Events Committee of The Radio Academy. Views are personal.