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Cumulus' youthful-sounding recruitment spot on WABC

W

wadio

Cumulus is running a spot promoting a jobs open house at WABC later this month. It's a youthful, energetic sounding spot featuring a 20-something young woman who gushes about how much fun radio is.

So far I've heard this spot during Mark Simone's Saturday morning show amid his interviews with William Shatner, Dick Cavett, Ed Koch and other octogenarians, during The Bob Grant Show, and, I presume it will air during Imus' and Rush's shows as well.

Does anyone else see the irony here? If you wanted to make the case that WABC's programming sounds a bit long in the tooth, I can't think of a better way to do it. The contrast between the spot and the programming is more striking than words possibly could be! What is Cumulus thinking?
 
"What is Cumulus thinking?" --- How nieve can you be WADIO??? They are thinking of how much cheaper it would be to hire a bunch of interning low to no paid 20 year olds to replace all of those better paid older staffers they are going to "reduce in force" a week after they get that mound of young cheap resumes!!! Wake up and smell the coffee my good man...
That is the only thing they are thinking!!!
 
Those recruitment spot themes were also played on other Cumulus O&O's like KFOG and KGO.
I know Cumulus is putting the former ABC O&O's in SFO in the toilet right now but I hope all the Cumulus stations can get their act together.
 
Same open houses have run in Cincinnati and one just ran in Knoxville. In Knoxville, it was the GM who voiced it, however and I think it was the GM or Sales Manager who voiced the spot in Cincinnati.
 
TropoDuckie said:
"What is Cumulus thinking?" --- How nieve can you be WADIO??? They are thinking of how much cheaper it would be to hire a bunch of interning low to no paid 20 year olds to replace all of those better paid older staffers they are going to "reduce in force" a week after they get that mound of young cheap resumes!!! Wake up and smell the coffee my good man...
That is the only thing they are thinking!!!
Click to expand...

Different subject my webbed-footed friend. ;)

Of course their primary concern is running the joint on the cheap! But they don't need to call attention to WABC's aging programming in the process. On that level they're not thinking.
 
wadio said:
Cumulus is running a spot promoting a jobs open house at WABC later this month. It's a youthful, energetic sounding spot featuring a 20-something young woman who gushes about how much fun radio is.
Click to expand...

How much fun radio is? Maybe Cumulus should tell that to all the people they laid off in November and December, after they swallowed up Citadel! Maybe they should also tell that to the remaining staff members in various markets who are handling the tasks of three or four people. In Eastern Pennsylvania and Binghamton, they laid off, among others, the chief engineers (who were the only engineers in their station clusters). They now have a single engineer covering everything from Binghamton, NY to Ephrata, PA...a "footprint" of almost 200 miles. Good luck when one of the region's legendary winter storms knocks multiple stations off the air! They also fired many seasoned on-air and production people, substituting inexperienced kids who work for crap wages...and it really shows on the air!

It's sad that the greedy white trash down in Atlanta got their hands on WABC, a legendary American station and the oldest continuously operating station in New York (It went on the air in October, 1921 as WJZ.) After a few more months of Cumulus ownership, someone should take that poor, old horse out back and shoot it to put it out of its misery!

Cumulus definitely seems to have a reverse Midas touch when it comes to the way it operates its stations.
 
The spots need to be positive, it's for sales positions. If you told people what it's really like to start off selling in radio, selling local direct, and how much you'll make the first five years, they'd tell you to shove off.
 
Lol, Border-blaster.

Agree here with Wadio that the campaign is off-beam, but from another slant.

NOW? Now radio wants youth? After the industry has wizzed them off through negligence since before Y2K?

Besides, how are these campaigns supposed to be effective on *AM* radio stations?

Even in the decades before that apathy, radio couldn't make up its mind if they wanted or didn't want sheer youth numbers. Management would go back and forth.

Cumulus would experience more efficiency targeting those out of work in the 30-40 group. That's the only demo radio has had any use for in the past ten years. Obviously, the kids work cheaper than those people in the family way. But putting a Peace Corps recruitment banner on an AM radio station in 2012 goes against the very power-ratio standards and guidelines many of these companies have worshipped since the Eighties.
 
They should have used a mature voice for the recruitment ads on WABC (yes, there are older folks who would be interested; and a retired automotive sales manager with tons of contacts can be just the ticket) and used younger voices for ads on their younger skewing stations.
 
borderblaster said:
They should have used a mature voice for the recruitment ads on WABC (yes, there are older folks who would be interested; and a retired automotive sales manager with tons of contacts can be just the ticket) and used younger voices for ads on their younger skewing stations.
Click to expand...

That might work...until those recruits discover that Cumulus corporate will force them to waste lots of time on corporate conference calls and senseless meetings instead of letting them do their jobs. And, if the recruits become successful despite these handicaps, corporate will reward them by taking away their most profitable accounts, making them "house" accounts, and screwing them out of their commissions.

AVOID THIS COMPANY AT ALL COSTS! You would be better off working in retail. At least management won't mess with your commission income.
 
What I'm really driving at is that, while the spot definitely sounds too young and perky for an AM talker, the larger problem is that WABC sounds too old for an AM talker!

They've made attempts to sound younger by giving people like Jason Mattera, Aaron Klein and formerly Mancow weekend shows, but that doesn't help because those shows are so out of place with the regular program schedule. Compared to KFI or even the current KABC lineup, WABC sounds old and stodgy.

Something needs to be done. The contrast between the recruitment ad and the programming makes that crystal clear -- something I don't think Cumulus had in mind.
 
They've changed it! The spot now better matches the programming. Maybe someone at WABC is reading this board? :) OTOH, Mark Simone is still interviewing Dick Cavett this morning so I guess they've fixed the symptom, not the problem. :(
 
But Simone no longer hosts that "oldies" show - so that has to have curbed the demos in recent years, eh?
 
That youthful recruitment spots heard on many Cumulus stations, including ones here in the NEPA region are so annoying! I think they need to stop airing the ones that contain a 20-something or a high schoolish girl asking its listeners to join their sales team. On the other hand, the other recruitment spot with the company's slogan jingle sounds much better than the gum-chewing girl one(even though the jingle sounds annoying), so it's up to Cumulus to only air those. Even the ones voiced by its sales manager in their respective markets.

The 20-something girl sales recruiting spot, from what I heard, does not mention that Cumulus is an equal opportunity employer.

I tune out this ad everytime I hear it. Cumulus is BEGGING, and I mean BEGGING for its listeners to join the sales team.
 
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