Do radio stations do live radio giveaways anymore
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Do radio stations do live radio giveaways anymore
- Thread starter Dj mr fresh
- Start date
Yes... I did several this week already.
97.1 in Atlanta (COL Gainesville) does a lot of concert tickets. This year they have 3 "anniversary" concerts that you can win tickets by calling in. Of course they tape and play the winner back. Their sister station WSB does some call in contests but this week their virtual land line has been out a couple of days.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
KRKE does concert ticket giveaways as part of ad buys for same. (Albuquerque gets a lot more concerts then people seem to expect.)
The way we handle it is my recording a promo that plays instead of a liner saying "in the next hour, when you hear (artist) be the (number) caller at (our main phone number) and win a pair of tickets to their upcoming concert on (date)." Then I override the scheduled music log to insert the song, alert the front office of when it will play, and voilá!
(Note: Not "viola", which is one of my pet peeves when people make that spelling error. We're not giving away the larger instrument in the string section of the orchestra!)
The way we handle it is my recording a promo that plays instead of a liner saying "in the next hour, when you hear (artist) be the (number) caller at (our main phone number) and win a pair of tickets to their upcoming concert on (date)." Then I override the scheduled music log to insert the song, alert the front office of when it will play, and voilá!
(Note: Not "viola", which is one of my pet peeves when people make that spelling error. We're not giving away the larger instrument in the string section of the orchestra!)
I learned many years ago from some of the best in the business, only a small percentage of listeners actually participate in contests. The whole point is (or was) not just to hand out a prize to an anonymous listener that the rest of the audience doesn't care about, it's to generate entertainment value on the air and hopefully capture great audio to be used in station promos. To that end, we always turned the contests into very entertaining features and put the contestants on the air, either live or recorded, edited as necessary, and quickly played back. It's yet another formerly great part of radio that has fallen by the wayside thanks to empty studios and out-of-market voicetracks prerecorded hours or days in advance.
What's the point of today's text or email-to-win radio contests? There's no entertainment value to be had from them. You're not capturing good audio to be used on the radio which is an audio-only medium. A lot of stations don't even follow up to announce the winner's name. You might increase TSL by a very few contest pigs who are unlikely to be Nielsen panelists, but for everyone else they're just clutter with no payoff.
What's the point of today's text or email-to-win radio contests? There's no entertainment value to be had from them. You're not capturing good audio to be used on the radio which is an audio-only medium. A lot of stations don't even follow up to announce the winner's name. You might increase TSL by a very few contest pigs who are unlikely to be Nielsen panelists, but for everyone else they're just clutter with no payoff.
You probably should have asked whether they still do them "live live" or "live on tape."
I would suspect most do them live on tape, like this:
As @Theater of My Mind said, hearing contestants on-air was meant to create excitement and entertainment. But having truly live callers also meant the risk of listeners calling into, say, KIIS-FM, and when asked "Who's your favorite music station?!", hearing them shout "KPWR!" To that add listeners who drop constant F-bombs, who sound like they're on quaaludes, who think the station's transmitter is sending secret signals to the KGB, and who lock up like Windows 95 the second they know everyone can hear them. Prerecording callers "live to tape" lets jocks circumvent all that. If the "first" caller #20 doesn't work out, they can dump the call, answer another 19 lines, and congratulate the "next" caller #20. (Notice how the talent in the video above didn't answer the remaining lines to dismiss everybody still on hold until he was certain the "first" caller #20 had worked out perfectly.)
In this whole data tribe, you are forgetting that radio no longer has the revenue base to support the kind of things that you seem to miss. In a post today, Lance detailed the BIA revenue rank of stations in San Francisco. What you can see is that today’s revenue per station is well under half what it was 20 years ago and that is before adjusting for inflation. In other words, radio revenue is down about 75%.
You cannot expect stations to have live personnel 24 seven when so many are not even profitable.
Beyond that, when we did “live” contest and quick playback of listener reaction, we were in an era that predated texting and the Internet and smart phones. Today, hearing somebody win a ticket is nowhere near as exciting as being able to chat with your friends live on your iPhone whenever you want.
God im not sure what I hate more...the generation who perpetuates this impression of radio, or the overall impression corporate radio gives anyone who knows "just a little bit" about the business. Radio stations ALL over the country still do call in contests all the time. Just because 2 big companies who own 1100 of the 15,000 radio stations in the country "seem" to not do call in contests anymore, doesn't mean the rest of us aren't. You could also ask "Do radio stations do Tradio anymore?" or "Do radio stations still run news, local sports and obituaries anymore". Just because you either live in one large area of the country, that is only served by big companies, or you hear from websites and message boards that "radio is dead", doesn't mean the overwhelming majority aren't still doing something resembling real radio anymore. It might not be 24/7 like it used to be. It might pivot between call ins and online contesting. But it's still being done. In thousands of small to medium markets all over the country. Just because Z100 or KISS FM don't do call in contests anymore (and I don't honestly know if they do) doesnt mean EVERYONE isn't.
Good points, Mr. Hustle!
The past two years on the way to the mountains I've had to wait an hour to hear country music because the station I wanted to listen to was doing a Swap Shop with other co-owned stations around the area. Ridiculous. That sort of thing should be finished by 10:00, but no, they wait until 11.
But there is a good pop station in the area, with doo-wop and rock and roll.
The social media prize pigs are a problem. A radio station close to me gets little to no attention on most of its Facebook posts, which are local news, event information, bits about programming. As soon as there's a "comment to win a wetsuit" contest post, suddenly 1,200 people come out of the woodwork. None of them listen to or have heard of the radio station. Most don't even live in the area. But there are whole community groups on social media devoted to dredging up competition posts and sharing them.
It doesn't add any value to the radio station because the people reading and posting aren't the audience, their only interaction with your radio station is them opening the post and banging their name on a comment, it's just the "gimme gimme" brigade trying for free stuff. I know quite a few stations that have started to limit contests either to a mechanic where you have to be listening to the station (text in after we play X song) or restricted entry to people living in the station patch.
Something like this happened to me in 1986 or so.
I didn't fully explain all this to the DJ, but when I tried to listen to beautiful music station WSPA at 98.9, I was getting interference from 98.7. I don't even remember the format on 98.7 but it was something like AC. Might have been CHR. Naturally, I ended up getting interference from 99.1 at a stop light at the top of the hill. A station in the eastern part of NC had just improved its signal. It was urban Foxy 99. I thought they might want to hear that I could pick up the station in western NC. The white DJ answered the [hone "Fox: like I had just waked him up. He sounded very interested in my story and then he answered the phone like one would expect a DJ to answer the phone. I said it was still me. He said no, we're going to pretend you're calling for the first time and put it on the air. I agreed, and we did it again, and I explained how I was picking up his station in the western part of NC. He asked if I had switched mine to Foxy 99 and I said when I can pick it up. Well, no, I wasn't telling the truth because it was an urban station. The truth is it wasn't nearly as high energy as it is now. Around that time some urban stations were playing rap and some weren't. This station went on to be the hip-hop station and it ended up number one in its market.
Do you not have a tape player in the '86 Corolla?
I don't have any CDs, no. I'd rather listen to the music on the radio.
And it's a 2004 Grand Marquis.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
That's what we do on KRKE. See post #5. Gotta have the requirement for actually listening and paying attention.
KRKE doesn't have a Facebook page or Instagram account, but I have been discussing it with the owner because I think I could use those to promote programming (e.g. "this week on American Top 40: The 80's, Casey Kasem counts down the hits from June 12, 1986", or "some of Freddy Snakeskin's 'deep tracks' on Flashback Weekend this Friday will be from The Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen and Devo".) If anyone wants to comment as well, that's bonus content to me.
K.M. Richards
Program Director, The Eighties Channel™
If it resonates with the audience for that station group, especially if it has history in the region, it is not "ridiculous". It is programming to the core listeners.
Just because you think it should end by 10:00 does not make it a valid suggestion. Leave the programming to the PDs.
No way. I guarentee you swap shop is making them money or they wouldnt do 2 hours of it. so you want them to cut back on and lose revenue?
Swap shop is still hugely popular on some stations
Instagram and Facebook can promote listener engagement. They are viable tools to use. In today's market, every little bit helps.
I don't know what time it starts, but it should be over with by 10. If it started at 9, that would be an hour. It is possible it starts at 10 and goes to 11. An hour earlier would be more reasonable.
Or better yet, play music. The talk between the songs could be people saying what they want to sell or what they want to buy. I've never heard one of these shows lasting more than 30 minutes anywhere else.