• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

spot a new kind of am

S

STICKBOY

Why not start an am station that has nothing but local news weather and spots
all spots all the time local and national news at the top of the hour weather every 10 thrwo in community calander and just run spots the rest of the time ... It could be the radio version of the cable deal that scrolls ads.

You could even make certian days a catigory

monday is car day all adas about cars
tuesday realestate
wednesday entertainment
thursday insurance and investing
friday food
saturday retail
sunday funday its a wild ride of infomertials and church services
thoughts ideas
if you could bill 1,000 dollars a day
on an am anywhare in the us a manager would be a happy clam
how many ams bill 30,000 a month now
does warm ?? I highly doubt it
does wilk i have no idea
how about wcdl do they????
or even the hazleton station???
It may sound nuts but ....
is it any less nuts then billing 5,000 on a good month.

I bet soon in the office of a manager some whare we will here some one say
Run spot run!
 
To me you sound like someone who has an AM that is losing $$. If that is the case then your proposal might work in your situation. It is certainly a fresh idea if nothing else. I have it on good authority however that at least several of the stations that you specifically mention are billing much more than you might think they are due to innovative programming and similar fresh ideas. If you are running any station be it AM or FM today and using the same business model and programming techniques that you used even 5 years ago you are losing money guaranteed. It's a whole new fast moving world and if you aren't moving with it you are rapidly falling behind.
 
I think consistency in terms of advertising is vital to the client. There is, or used to be, a spot package of 6/rate so you could spread them Mon-Sat, one per day. I'd rather my ad be heard daily, rather than just once a week.

My opinion, as neither an advertiser nor a station operator.
 
I don't know if anyone has ever tired to run a "Pennysaver" of the air. Essentially you could sell all sorts of classified personal ads like you see in the paper and have some sort of rotating clock where automobiles were advertised at :45, appliances at :10 and so on. I think WARD did something like that a long time ago. It really couldn't be any worse than some of the stuff that's out there now.
 
"I think WARD did something like that a long time ago. "

WARD had the WARD home shopper (I believe). I was doing part time on Polka Weekend and I remember Jim trying to get me to be a salesperson for it. He was amped up about it, and said I could make good money. Then again, Jim was the consumate salesperson and was always amped up about what was on the air, but, if my memory serves me, it ran for quite a while.

I'm sure Yonk knows more about it.
 
He was amped up about it, and said I could make good money.
Click to expand...

What did Jim Ward consider good money? Better yet, did Jim himself make good money owning and operating WARD? One more question - does anyone have a tape of Jim doing his morning show circa 72-77? If you never heard Jim Ward doing that show, you ain't lived. Not being facetious here, but bizarre as it was, it was extremely entertaining and unique.
 
I had to think about it, but the figure he gave me was $25,000/year, of course that was possible because it was commision. This would have been in the late 80's. Not great money, but for the area at that time not horrible. Though, I would be willing to bet it would have probably been more like $15,000. Jim had a way of "overselling"might be the right word. However, Jim was always good to me. I really loved working there on the weekends. I didn't have any radio experience and he gave me a chance on Polka Weekend, which had a huge following, so I can't bad mouth the guy.

Just a side note: This really boggles ??? my mind but, in the almost 2 decades since I was some short lived, part time, polka weekend host, I have done many public things, some very public, and many people still remeber me from my short time at WARD.

That's how large and dedicated the audience was.
 
I really am serrious.
Think about it ....
a little news local sports local weather
personals fine .. I would be great ..let the common folk give you 20 bucks to run 20 spots 24 to 24 for a week and a dry read about marys used stove in good condition 20 dolars or best offer. its a kenmore. she only used one burner and its been replaced. she cleaned it every week and it's like new...

someone is going to do it and make a mint.
e-bay comes to the air waves.

call it the 24 hour yard sale.
Just think if people pay in cash !! Cash my air wave friends! How often does a radio owner get to play the cash game . was it 20 or 40 bucks ahhh i think they gave me 25.....
It could be very profitable
 
A format of this type reminds me of a station out West that tried doing all ads, all the time. I think the call was KADS. It may have been in the LA market, but not sure. Even so, in today's brokered fare on AM, if well done and presented the right way, it could work.

Dave Gardiner

WVCH 740/WNWR 1540

Philadelphia
 
I did a show like that in Portugese on a station in Fall River MA many years ago. We were heavy into ethnic programming on Sunday, perhaps our most lucrative day of the week, and had a couple of Portugese shows, one of which was sort of a yard sale thing. The fellow doing it was bilingual, but I could sort of keep up as the board op and know when to dump the phone line to avoid clicks, and could take phone numbers down as fast as they could reel them off. I just had to make sure nobody was selling homes or apartments and we had the usual 7-second delay in case it happened, which it never did.

We triple-spotted 60's constantly during the morning except during that show. I think we exceeded the FCC limit by about 3x.
 
Hey Tom,

Dollars to doughnuts you were on the original WALE 1400 in Fall River? I was chief engineer of WSAR 1480 back in 84....what a trip that was....


Dave Gardiner
WVCH 740/WNWR 1540
Philadelphia
 
I'm sure Yonk knows more about it.

Well, here's what I know. Jim began the Home Shopper in the early 90s. The deal was the sales person went out and sold a package on the home shopper. The advertiser paid no cash but got their ads as trade. Example: If Alfredo's Pizza gave us $1,000 worth of food coupons, they got $1,000 in ads during the WARD broadcast day that ran from 6am to 8pm. We never wrote anything after 8PM because of the signal. Then, WARD would make up certificates and sell them on the air. When the check came to the station, (and keep in mind WARD sold them at a reduced rate, if two pizzas at Alfedo's were fifteen bucks, WARD will sell them for about $9.50.) Then when the actual consumer paid, the sales rep got about 40% commisasion on the sale. But you had to make sure you had clients who wouldn't cancel, honor those coupons and keep the thing going. A major problem were the WARD customers themselves. These people would sometimes abuse the certificates, like having a couple go into a high priced restauraunt and sitting at two seperate tables.
Last week, as I was cleaning my attic, I came across a whole reel of WARD spots. One spot had Sam Laqouri warning WARD listeners to heed the rules of the certificates or else good businsess places would cancel.
I made half decent money but being a fulltime sub at Hanover at the time and being a fill in board op, I really wasn't trying that hard. Others, like Dave "I never Met A Strip Mall I Never Liked") Stroud made great money mainly because Jim and Buzz Boback were very fair.
Jim in the early 90s was fighting for his life with cancer. So when I was there he was kind of pre-occupied.
As far as Jim Ward broadcast stories, God, I have so many. I have one from the 1988 election when Ward had his "Town Meeting Of the Air".

Yonkstur
 
"As far as Jim Ward broadcast stories, God, I have so many. I have one from the 1988 election when Ward had his "Town Meeting Of the Air".

Yonkstur

Hey Yonk,

You should start up a new string with Jim Ward stories. We can't be the only two with a bunch of good memories about the man.
 
Dave...

Yep, WALE Radio, the world's worst toilet, underneath an abandoned theater (1970-73 for me). I was CE for a short while when ours got fired, literally in the middle of the night. I got a call the next morning from Ray Cheney, the GM, informing me that I was the CE 'cuz I had a First. Not bad for a weekender and primary relief op. Told him to get someone else ASAP, as I didn't want to preside over that dump.

We got inspected once. Once. The FCC guy looked around, said something to the effect of, "What a s***hole," and never came back for at least 25 years.
 
Tom,
Speaking of toilets , I was actually on the air from what used to be a men's room in a former X-rated theater. This was when 990 in Providence, before it became WALE, was MOYL WEAN. The air studio was in the former men's room of the theater. I did overnights there for awhile. At the time the station was 50 kW day using the original RCA
Ampliphase. It went to 500 watts at night.The night rig was one of WPRO's old aux transmitters, with a 990 crystal and the low power tapped down to 500 watts from 1 kW.

Dave Gardiner

WVCH 740/WNWR 1540

Philadelphia
 
I thought 990 was WLKW-AM (L=50, KW=you know what), which dumped at local sunset. Anyway, I almost worked there. Stand-up at the time, standards adult format, but not MOYL. Fall River's WALE was in a pool hall in the basement of an abandoned movie theater. The city wanted to tear it down for a new city hall and our @hole manager didn't get around to it, so the city issued an official eviction notice.

When your dumpy station gets evicted from a former basement pool hall under an abandoned theater, you know you have pretty much hit bottom.

Oh, and the fried rice from the Chinese restaurant around the corner came up, with its water, thru the drain in the men's room floor and occasionally made it to the studio door.
 
Dave...

Additional note. During the time I was CE at WALE, a friend built a hideaway out of an old chicken coop in the farmland behind his house. He wanted some carpeting, so one day I said, "Let's go." He asked, "Where?" I said, "I got the keys to the theater, 'cuz our stick is on the roof and I've got a box cutter in my pocket."

So we went there; I opened up the joint, we climbed up to the balcony and cut out a nice swath of fairly good carpeting. Nobody said anything as we took it out of the theater and put it in our station wagon.

God understands and forgives.
 
Tom, 990 was indeed WLKW; that call is now on the 1450 in West Warwick. In the 1980's, when the FCC began to break down the clear channels, daytimers could apply for and get post sunset authority. WLKW had a presunrise authority of 500 watts. That power level was granted to them to run at night. Reason for the original sunrise-sunset operation is that 990 is a Canadian clear channel . The protection rules of the time mandated no more than 250 watts toward Canada. WLKW had to protect the 990 in Winnipeg and Newfoundland if I remember correctly. WVCH uses its post sunset authority from that time; it's all of SIX watts...and that power level on 740 gets out about an 8 mile radius from the Brookhaven studio/transmitter site. Any further out and you hear CHWO Toronto.

Dave Gardiner

WVCH 740/WNWR 1540

Philadelphia
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom