The current issue of my Radio Advertising Letter discusses:
• The perils of reviewing movies that don’t exist
• How to make a phone number in a radio commercial memorable
• How to communicate a strong sales message within the constraints of a 30-second radio commercial.
This post is for my subscribers to use to add their own comments, thoughts, rejoinders, etc.
For the millions (including me, actually) who never heard Jack Benny’s radio program when it was broadcast live….
September 1995 (continued): Here was my travel schedule for September/October/November:
September 6-9: New Orleans, Louisiana
Sept. 15: Tampa, Florida
Sept. 16: Wausau, Wisconsin
Sept. 21 – 22: Warsaw, Poland
Sept. 23: Hamburg, Germany
Sept. 24: Nuremberg, Germany
Sept. 25: Berlin, Germany
Sept. 26: Kiel, Germany
October 5: Hamilton, New Zealand
Oct. 6 – 7: Wellington, New Zealand
Oct. 8: Auckland, New Zealand
Oct. 14: Atlanta
Oct. 17: Philadelphia
Oct. 20: Louisville, Kentucky
November 5-6: Barcelona, Spain
You see the schedule for September 21 through September 26? There’s a word for that kind of travel/speaking schedule:
“Stupid.”
A week after the NAB Radio Show, I flew to Tampa to present How To Create Maximum Impact Radio Advertising for Paxson Communications’ annual sales meeting. (Drew Rashbaum had seen me do a version of this seminar at the RAB conference, and he arranged for me to speak at this meeting.)
This was a lot of fun; I love conducting this seminar for salespeople.
The first speaker of the day began at 7:30AM; I was scheduled to speak at 10:00. A 15-minute break was scheduled at 9:45, so I made sure I was in the meeting room by 9:30 to confer with the hotel’s audio/visual person.
All of the A/V equipment was to the far side of the speaker’s platform. In the back of the very large meeting room, I whispered to the A/V person, “We’ll need to move the DAT player and mixer next to the lectern.” (Remember, this was 1995…)
“Oh, we can’t do that,” she replied.
“Why can’t we do that?”
“It’s permanent,” she said.
“The A/V equipment is permanently placed there?”
“That’s right.”
“You’re telling me,” I said, “that first they built a permanent A/V area and then they built the hotel around it??”
“If you had a certain way you wanted things arranged,” she said, “you should have been here at 7 o’clock this morning to check with me. That’s what I would have done if I were going to be speaking to this group.”
“Well,” I replied, “perhaps they should have booked you as a guest speaker instead of me. But right now I don’t really care about the ways in which you would do my job better. What I care about it is arranging the A/V equipment in a manner that will maximize the experience for the attendees. And that means moving the equipment….Just like it says on that sheet of paper you’re holding with all of the detailed instructions they provided you with.”
What’s really ridiculous about this encounter is she argued about it for five minutes. Actually moving the equipment took one minute.
A morning show host and Loyal Reader who is working without a contract and unsure of his future with the radio station asks:
“If they are interested in replacing me, what signs can I look out for?”
1. Other staff members avert their eyes from you in the hallway.
2. Staff meetings are held without you.
3. The PD or consultant observes one of your shows from the back of the studio, alongside a stranger who isn’t introduced.
4. Everyone’s new business cards arrived. Except yours.
5. The GM stops you in the hallway and says, “I just want you know I really appreciate the effort you’ve given around here,” then walks away.
6. Tell your PD or GM that you’re about to buy a house, but you don’t want to go through with the purchase if there’s any chance your job is not completely secure. If they tell you, “No problem whatsoever; go ahead and buy that house” — immediately start photocopying your resume.
