When doing a quick search online you can find countless examples of people pranking their bosses. A lot of them are harmless fun, some are very poorly executed, but none of them stand out like the practical joke popular Nashville radio station 107.5 The River pulled off last week.
The plan was simple, diabolical and involved the citizens of Nashville, Tennessee. It started when the program director, Jonathan, was headed out of town for vacation and warned his staff to behave in his absence.
That was basically a green light for mischief for Woody and Jim, hosts of the station’s weekday morning show. Co-host Savannah and producer Zac also got involved in the plan and decided to play their roles as the innocent bystanders.
Knowing that their boss would be on an airplane, unable to listen to the show, but staying clued-in on social media, the radio hosts made a request of all their listeners. Pretend that Woody and Jim said something horrible about Nashville hosting its 51st Annual CMA Awards. Since the event happened the night before, it wasn’t an unlikely stretch for the morning show to discuss that topic, which made the hoax more believable.
The catch? Woody and Jim actually didn’t say anything bad about the CMA Awards. They instructed listeners to use social media and post statuses resembling “I can’t believe they did that, it was awful!” and to act completely outraged, but most importantly, NEVER reveal what the radio hosts allegedly said. Even if other people ask participants what was said, don’t publicly post that it was a prank.
Listen to the events transpire on-air in the podcast playback below:
Well, they asked, and Nashville certainly delivered. Numerous people posted on social media with various forms of the enraged status update, each putting their own spin on it. Within moments the Twitterverse was in flames with the "news." Woody and Jim asked fans to use the hashtag #WoodyandJimCMA to be able to track the progress and so Jonathan would be sure to see what was happening.
Savannah and Zac also posted their own updates, pretending to be appalled, but not making any comments about what specifically happened. Fans of the show who weren’t listening that morning were understandably curious and multiple tweets can be seen of people trying to figure out what was going on.
It was a glorious example of people coming together, even through a digital platform, to pull off one of the funniest workplace pranks I’ve ever seen. This whole ordeal rivals episodes of the TV show Punk'd.
According to text messages screenshots from Savannah’s twitter account, Jonathan fell for it and was apparently very stressed about the whole thing. Poor guy! The following morning the radio staff shared that it was all a prank, and everyone found great humor in it, including fans of the radio station.
Well done everyone! Listen to the Woody and Jim show weekdays from 5-10 a.m. on 107.5 the river or online at https://www.iheart.com
