shilton said:
Since you are unfamiliar (and many would say you are lucky)...shilton stands for Steve Hilton, or "Hitman" if you will. Been in this market a long time, although took several years off before returning to the airwaves about a year and a half ago at G101 (101.1FM)
Be forewarned...I can be somewhat opinionated and often manage to set people off although I am not quite sure why, as I have read things on this board where people have said far worse things than I thought came from my mouth.
Serving the community...thats a really great idea, but that means many things to many people. There are broadcasters who will tell you if you mention the forecast once an hour and give the local temperature, you have "served" the community well. I like to think it means trying to make some kind of impact when possible. Get out and push for toys-4-tots and the blood drives...talk about Joe-Pa's broken leg and the game....talk about the things that are making headlines in the CDT instead of acting like the newspaper is the enemy. Heck, I will even quote "Saw this in today's CDT"....put callers on if and when you can, etc. Not everything you do will be "great radio" or sound like "major market radio", but I have always liked to think at the end of the day, if I said one thing that made someone stop and think...or crack a smile...or want to get involved, I have done my job.
Sadly today, I think the idea of "service" is somewhat outdated by many people's standards. As long as they have a million plaques to hang on the walls from all the charities they have given airtime to for this and that...they have served their listeners well. Very sad indeed.
Steve:
Good summarization. I think it helps your image more if you embrace your newspaper competitor rather than try to bash him on the air or out on the street. In smaller markets, it's a detriment to do the latter. Too many sales reps make this mistake when they criticize a client for putting an ad in the paper. It's almost like biting the hand that feeds you.
I don't care how many plaques you have on the wall testifying to your abilities on the air. What matters is what you hear from the local chamber of commerce, civic leaders, the business and professional community, and your listeners.
Everything you just said is what's need to accomplish true localism. Proving to your community of license that you actually care about them by having a local presence will win you friends every time. Not
everything you do on the air has to make money. There's certain 'gimmes' that you owe to your community, and if you can get the event sponsored, hey, it's an added bonus.
Your boss in Tyrone is a great example of that. He uses an outside programming source for most of his stations, but so what? All that's for is music, disc jockeys and national news. Each station is run very lean, but if it were not for him, there would be PLENTY of northern and central PA communities with NO local radio service, or run by operators gobbling up the channels and running them as repeaters, caring less whether they serve the community or not. Cary Simpson still does, and I GUARANTEE that at 10am, at least 90 percent of the radios in Tyrone are tuned in to WTRN to hear Jean Dixon's local news magazine!
We've already seen the ramifications of that now...broadcasters are buying up local stations and are either marketing them to a larger city, requesting COL changes, or turning them into simulcast repeaters of bigger stations. If you're licensed to a particular community, you can't serve it by having your main studio 25 miles away in another town.
The excuse I often hear is that there's no financial support in that community to keep that station going. I'm going to say that that is a bunch of HOOEY. If you can't keep that station local through local sales efforts, your reps either aren't working hard enough or they're not being given enough product to sell. You can't just sell off a ratecard to everyone and expect big results. You need to sell sponsorships for news, sports, weather, remotes (even the community-based gimmes can make you a little bit of change here and there), and even offer specials like sales blitzes...where you lock your reps in the building (preferably the conference room) for the whole day, let them dress down and bring in snacks or food, give them a fax machine, and have them work the phones all day. You offer the airtime at a clearance sale rate for THAT DAY ONLY. This allows smaller businesses who legitimately can't afford to spend a great deal on advertising the ability to do so and get real results.
Local communities deserve their own radio stations...because their communities have shrunk doesn't mean you uproot them and take them away. You just need to get more creative with your sales efforts, and run a more efficient operation if that's what it takes.
