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lack of sponsors for downtown Indy events
- Thread starter bigtime
- Start date
Its all because WKLU stopped sponsoring the 4th of July at Hoosier Park.
bigtime said:
Radio is dying. let's just keep dropping things that make radio relevant
I think it does. When you have hundreds of thousands of folks with radios tuned to your station enjoying fireworks synced (often quite well) to your music, you've got something that no number of billboards or TV spots can duplicate. Granted, all of these people will not become huge fans of your station as a result, but if just a few percent of them do, you get better ratings. When was the last time you saw 200,000 people all listening to iPods going ooh & aah? This is something radio can do very well, so yes, it makes radio very relevant, if only for 23 minutes.TheBigA said:
With all the cancellations in Indy, the QMIX 107.3 Musical Fireworks in Columbus celebrates the 21st year in a row Friday night at the Columbus Municipal Airport. Great fireworks, great syncing...from my observation it's 50-60% of what the big city shows provide, but for a city 5% of the size. Funny...it still works in Columbus & Louisville, but not in Indy. Maybe too many Indy stations tried to put on too many shows & killed the golden goose?
Replacing the radio station isn't practical as it eliminates the "sync to music" aspect--a key element that sets the show apart from the others. Part of the problem lies in the size of the shows. Having been a part of the first 20 Skyconcerts, I quickly found out that the actual Fireworks expense (60-75 Grand depending on the year) was far from the whole deal. Police had to be paid for crowd control, electricians provided electricity for the shoot site (in later years, generators were used as a cost cutting measure), Port-O-Lets, ISDN phone lines (for reliable transmission of the syncing commands), trash containers, clean up crews, insurance...the list went on. And then there was the midway where all the food vendors & nic-nac sellers set up. On paper, this was meant to be a for-profit venture, but it was a rare year when it actually turned out that way. Eventually the radio station ate as much loss as it could & the show folded. It would have died earlier, but Jeff Smulyan was proud to present such a grand event to his home town & chose to prop it up for a while longer. Worth noting that another Emmis station, B-105.7 continues to do a 4th of July synced fireworks show in Carmel.TheBigA said:
Also worthy of mention are that at least two (I don't recall if WEBN's Fireworks in Cincy was patterned after Skyconcert or vice versa) copycat shows patterned after Skyconcert--Thunder Over Louisville & QMIX Musical Fireworks--still thrive to this day. Why it "works" in Louisville & Columbus,IN but doesn't work in Indy is a question best left to the sales folks who are faced with bringing in the sponsors.
BobOnTheJob said:
That's what I'm getting at. I'm sure the radio station wasn't the lone sponsor. The 4th of July thing was part of an ad package sold to area businesses, who joined with the station. I imagine that it wasn't as attractive a buy for the local advertisers this year. There's more to this story than a radio station pulling out of a traditional event. The articles in the papers point to weakness in the area economy. Perhaps it's also the fault of the city, who allowed this to become a little stale.
Can't speak for the event in question as I don't have first hand knowledge of how it works, but in the case of Skyconcert & QMIX Musical Fireworks, the respective radio stations hatched the idea & literally owned/own it. The same was initially true of Thunder Over Louisville. In that case, the WENS sales manager at the time (Jon Horton) went to a Louisville station (the one on 103.9) and duplicated Skyconcert in Louisville. 1984 sticks in my mind as to the time frame. Thunder took on a life of it's own & I suspect they now select what station carries the sound track. And maybe the fact that it's being run by an organization independent of a radio station has something to do with it's tremendous success. The Cincinnati fireworks has been known as the Toyota WEBN Fireworks for many years, hinting strongly that the show itself was originated as a radio promotion. In Skyconcert's case, the radio station pulling out of the event (which is what happened) would not be unlike a person's heart pulling out of the body. The end result would be similar to what happened to Skyconcert.TheBigA said:
The downtown Indy fireworks were established well before WFBQ came along. They just use the radio station to play some music while the show takes place. Carmel would do their fireworks whether 105.7 was involved or not. They used to use their local station (WHJE) which has a great signal in Carmel. The downtown skyconcert & the 4th fest actually only existed because of the radio stations involved.
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