Radio: Overkill

In radio, ya gotta mind your gimmick. Last month WFBM, Indianapolis’ “Fun in Radio” station, got bored with giving away cows and staging scavenger hunts. So it declared a 50 bounty on every mosquito brought in to the studios by listeners. The station figured that the promotion would cost only about $100.

Throughout the day for several weeks running, a WFBM executive in the guise of a Spanish-accented, used-mosquito dealer drummed up entries for the competition. Last week the results, and corpses, were in—in the office, to be exact, of WFBM Promotion Man Charley Rogers. One housewife had uncovered a mosquito mating ground near her suburban home; she bug-bombed it, netted 73,225 of the critters, mounted them on toilet tissue, and got $3,661.25. Total kill for all contestants was 225,481 mosquitoes. All told, the station was stung for $11,274.05.