Paige’s top 10 selection of greatest radio promotions of all time
Paige’s top 10 selection of greatest radio promotions of all time
When The World Is Watching
Radio is seemingly at its best when we’re “real” and drop any pretense of trying to be cool and funny. The great stations, the truly legendary stations are the ones that will drop everything when some big, important and impactful occurs in their community. So,...
Have You Been Served?
Have You Been Served? One of the obligations I feel we have to our promo staff and even the airstaff, is to give them initial and then updated training on how to greet, meet and otherwise “work” the audience when we’re out at events. As great as giving college...
When Nature Hits, We Still Have Radio
Radio, as an industry, doesn’t seem to play well with others. Maybe it’s because we’re populated with people who were traditionally chosen last in 6th grade phy ed team activities.
When I was a Promotion Director at a station we were approached by the local Boys/Girls Clubs to have our airstaff play the talent from another station in town in a charitable softball game. My PD was apoplectic: “What if we lose?”
I replied, “Fire everyone and actively recruit broadcast students who can drive the ball to right and turn a double play.”
Think about it; when was the last time you joined with other stations outside of your cluster for, well, anything?
After Katrina every station seemingly did “something”, which, don’t get me wrong, was great. But you had ten or eleven different relief drives all competing for dollars, water and attention. Dan Seeman was a GM at Clear Channel in the Twin Cities and successfully brought every station in town together for a morning show broadcast on top of the Washington Avenue bridge, which metaphorically bridges the Mississippi River.
It was large.
So, you may have seen that regions of Europe have been suffering from weather of Biblical proportions, and you probably don’t know that stations from all of the countries affected by the floods, have come together to aid the millions of people in distress.
Reality Check
Great Radio contests and Promotions are not that far evolved from Reality TV which is a genre of programming where people are put into situations and prodded and nudged towards an outcome that will be entertaining and compelling to watch and where “conflict” is a key ingredient.
Showing The Flag
I’ve always been analogy retentive and one of the fallback metaphors I use a lot is that Radio is basically politics. Except we’re ALWAYS running for election. And when someone straps on a 1980’s style pager dealie or sits down at the kitchen table to try to remember...
Anti-Social Media
Radio has, like we always seem to do, take something like social media and look at it with a very one dimensional vision: “Hey Bob, now we have another way to spam and annoy our audience.”
Granted, it would require “work” and “effort” but Twitter and Facebook have given us wonderful ways to court listeners and create fans.
Terms That Need To Be Killed Off
As members of the esteemed Communications Field I don’t think it’s lost on anyone that we fall into traps, ruts, patterns and other lawn hazards when it comes to naming features.
Tommy Kramer had a great line: “”If everyone is doing something, DON’T DO IT.” So why would you have a weekend theme or prize term that’s been used by everyone else in town,
It’s All About The Balls
If you think about it (and I do, late at night, in the dark, playing with my guns, updating my Enemies List) promotionally, great things come in round sizes. Let’s discuss, shall we? We’re in Show Business. If the lottery just had a fish bowl with some...
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