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.

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