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RKO PSA Madness

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Anyone else being driven mad by the duplicate and triplicate psa's on late nite Bohannon and Coast to Coast shows overnight?

If your sales force is that lame, play carnival music instead!

Maddening!
 
Yeah same psas over and over,or promos(especially on the stream)."April,you know your phone charger still uses energy even when it's not connected,right?" Or the promos for Rush (Days of our Lives) or how the President seeing his shadow on President's Day means one more year of B.S. Or Patrick Warburton (Joe on Family Guy) as a park ranger for Smokey Bear...
 
And then you try to escape the madness and switch to iHeartRadio to listen to WABC and you get the same 5 or 6 "Tech Trends" and "The Core" segments that they were beating you over the head with over and over since last summer. And every time you switch to another channel, it's Costner's "On the battlefield there's a saying", which, while a worthy charity, I don't need to hear it 6 times an hour.
 
RKO was running PSA's during morning drive in the 4th quater last year. I am so tired of the one about the intern who gets hired by the company. Years ago RKO used run ads about rats running over a homeless guys legs as he slept in an alley. That was very pleasant to listen to as your were trying to fall asleep.

I have asked this before but does RKO actually have a PD or is Crooksey the PD, fill in receptionist and call screener for Crazy Kuhner?

Lets face it RKO doesn't care about its listeners, how it sounds or increasing its dismal ratings. I would not be surprised if many around Entercom Boston wished they didn't have to deal with 680.
 
I came to the conclusion quite a few years ago that RKO simply had contempt for their listeners, the cause of which is usually self-contempt. No wonder nobody listens to them.
 
btw wave of the future?Howie Carr unveiled a line listeners can call to hear his show anytime..and those who have smartphones with unlimited phone minutes can listen without using data.Will we see stations doing the same thing..you may be out of signal range but you could be in your car,pair up your smartphone to your audio using bluetooth or plug phone into aux jack..

Not that it'll be a huge number but more and more people may be able to take advantage (as it is now,listeners can do this via tunein, iheart, live365etc but that
does use data.Again for those with
unlimited phone minutes and you can't pick up the signal normally...)
 
You know, of course, that lots of PSAs, promos, and other fillers mean unsold ad avails.

Your comments say a lot about the continued viability of the programs those fillers are appearing in.
 
K.M. Richards said:
You know, of course, that lots of PSAs, promos, and other fillers mean unsold ad avails.

Your comments say a lot about the continued viability of the programs those fillers are appearing in.
Click to expand...

It says a lot about the continued viability of AM radio....and the Talk format in general!
 
Then again, consider the time at which these PSAs are running. I don't care how good your sales staff is...it's hard to get a local sponsor to buy time after midnight. They want to be able to hear their ads.
 
TheBigA said:
Then again, consider the time at which these PSAs are running. I don't care how good your sales staff is...it's hard to get a local sponsor to buy time after midnight. They want to be able to hear their ads.
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I think you hit the nail on the head with that one. Some 10 years ago (or so) WTIC in Hartford carried a show from Jones Radio Network from 10PM-1AM called The Dream Doctor and the vast majority of commercials were PSAs. (Including one annoying one about drugs with a little kid singing about it to the nursery rhyme Ba Ba Black Sheep). WTIC now airs Hannity in the 10PM-1AM time slot. I don't like the show so I can't tell you what the stop-sets are like now. I also can't tell you what the stop-sets are like during Coast-to-Coast AM because I can't stand the show.

Things must be different North of the border however. Until WOR canceled the show CHML 900 in Hamilton, Ontario used to run Dr. Joy Browne 2AM-5AM 7 nights a week and there were plenty of local commercials. (Unless they were bonus spots).
 
MarcB said:
Until WOR canceled the show CHML 900 in Hamilton, Ontario used to run Dr. Joy Browne 2AM-5AM 7 nights a week and there were plenty of local commercials. (Unless they were bonus spots).
Click to expand...

A long time ago (1989) when I programmed a talk station which ran a lot of satellite feeds and replays in the evenings and overnights, I made the decision to run bonus spots for all local advertisers in the unsold avails. Sure made us sound better, the audience doesn't know whether they're paid or not, and it created goodwill with the businesses who got the extra spots.
 
My question remains: Are these PSAs originating from the station or are they simply on the feed from the syndicator? I understand that it doesn't matter to the listener, but it could explain why it happens.
 
At WLYN, we replay some of our local programs on the overnight. It is added value for our customers,
gives us more of an overnight presence (without sounding too canned...) and exposes our customers
to a different audience, who may not hear them during the day, normally. As somebody who has worked
every shift possible during my career, I can tell you that there is always SOMEBODY out there who is
listening!
 
I am reminded of one night when I fell asleep listening to Coast to Coast and woke up listening to Tom and Todd. They were making fun of C2C and its listeners. Cooksie even admitted that he did not listen to RKO while driving in to do the morning show.

Did it not occur to them that C2C was actually their lead-in show and that at least some of their audience would be a carry over?

When a station disses their own programming, they are also dissing their listeners.
 
The Boston Food Bank PSA that RKO ran over and over for years was a local PSA.

Sure selling overnights is difficult especially since Boston is not a 24 hour city. I have been in some markets, Atlanta for example that ran spots for the all night dinner and supermarket from 2a-6a.

I have never heard of syndicator that requires you to run the PSA's they send. They drop them in for stations in small markets with small staffs. RKO is in a major market and should run NC spots for local advertisers. Although, given the small number of local sponsors they have, I could get tired of The Belmont Medical Supply or Hanover Street Chop House spots rather quickly.
,
As I said RKO was running AD Council PSA's during Crazy Kuhners show 3 weeks before Christmas.

Given the sloppy editing they do when they haven't sold an hour to a snake oil company and have to run a rebroadcast of The Crazy One Show and the dead air I hear regularly hear, quality production and programming is not a priority.

Not to beat a dead horse but I will say it one more time, you don't have to look at the PPM's to know how RKO is doing, just listen to the local clients they have on the air and check out the rates they charge for a :30 or :60 in morning drive.
 
john garrett said:
Given the sloppy editing they do when they haven't sold an hour to a snake oil company and have to run a rebroadcast of The Crazy One Show and the dead air I hear regularly hear, quality production and programming is not a priority.
Click to expand...

Hate to break it to you, but they could have the best production and the best programming, and they'd still get a 2 share. That's just how it is for AM radio. Not just in Boston, but pretty much everywhere. This is not an RKO problem.
 
Really Big A? Tell that to WPRO in Providence, or BBM AM and WGN AM in Chicago or WSB AM in Atlanta. KFI AM in LA is holding its own in a competitive market. I could go on and on. Sure an AM is not going to get big nummbers but RKO could be doing much better than they are. The AM stations in New Bedford and Fall River sound 10 times better than 680.

And before you ask why do I listen. I go to bed listening to Jim Bohannon. I like shows with guests especially Authors. Before WRKo picked him up I listened to him online via KMOX or KDKA. I wake up to Kuhner like he was my alarm clock. The sound of his voice and the insipid things that he and his callers say get me out of bed to turn him off. While in the car, I occasionally turn on Carr when Felger and Mazz or my Sirius program is in a break.

Just one question. Are you posting today from home or from The Entercom offices on Guest St? Just curious.
 
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