biggguy said:
You know, I understand cutbacks, belt tightenings- these days I'm a victim of that myself- but, can it go too far?
It sure can. I saw on another board where people were noting how very odd it is that 95X is promoting a contest where the winner gets tickets to a Kenny Chesney concert. It's bad enough there are rumors aplenty already in the air about 95X flipping to country, and at first glance, this seems to give more weight to those rumors. But the contest is also being promoted by 93Q.
Look at the Citadel cluster... no country station, so there's no "obvious" station to give away these tickets. Aside from wondering what moron at the record company or fair authorized giving the tickets to a cluster without a country station... where would
you give the tickets away?
My first choice would have been Lite Rock 105.9, since AC and country listeners often overlap... as do their artists. I'd think a much greater percentage of WLTI listeners would be familiar with Kenny Chesney than WAQX listeners. But, where would you promote the contest on WLTI? The station is on the bird for Bob & Sheri, it's on the bird for "Jayne" and it's on the bird for Delilah. Somewhere in between, you've got a whopping 3 hours of local programming. You can't realistically expect to impress clients with that, even if the promotion is the only thing the jock talks about every time he cracks the mic for those 3 hours.
Sure, you could produce recorded promos that run during the local break windows during satellite programming, but that's eating into actual revenue inventory. You could have the satellite talent record custom liners to support the promotion, but depending on program clocks, those liners might run only once an hour, it can take several weeks to have the liners delivered, and in some cases, the talent wants a cut of the action anytime specific sponsors are mentioned.
Next choice, believe it or not, might actually be ESPN Radio 1260. I do think that WNSS listeners would still be more interested in Kenny Chesney tickets than WAQX listeners. But again, it's on the bird almost all day, with the exception of 3 hours in the afternoon.
So that leaves Citadel with no option but to push these tickets on 95X and 93Q, regardless of the fact it sticks out like a sore thumb. (Well, 93Q is at least
somewhat compatible, especially in this region of the country, but you'd
never see a major market CHR or rock station giving away Chesney tix!)
In any event, there's your textbook example of a radio cluster cutting back too far. What if they were Bette Midler tickets instead? Citadel would have to turn it down... there's NO way they'd ever pull that kind of crap on 95X.
Listeners like having that "real" person there. They like being able to call the station and have someone answer the request line, and maybe even put the call on the air if the jock deems it entertaining enough. They like being able to call in for contests. They like having jocks who talk off-the-cuff, even if they occasionally stumble. They like jocks who can give live updates on bad weather because they're actually live. As much as radio execs think they're "fooling" the listeners, the listeners can tell the difference when someone is tracked or syndicated. Obviously, the big giveaway is when the automation crashes and the station goes dead for even just 5 minutes. Or the local request line that's suddenly replaced only at night by a toll-free number. One of my favorites: the EAS weekly/monthly test that automatically fires mid-song, rather than being manually delayed until the end of the song. But even more subtle things are still detected... the absence of request hours or spontaneous phoners... the absence of contests outside of drive times. Jock breaks that sound "too perfect" to be live, because the jock kept re-recording that voicetrack until it was flawless.
