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RADIO CASHES IN ON LOVE

June 23, 2011 – 2:01 pm No Comment

MatchLink is a singles dating network that served the radio industry for many years. The Evanston, Illinois company Spark Network Services provided an IVR-based dating service to radio stations. Radio listeners called a phone number and paid to interact with other singles through a sophisticated voice mail system. Payment was made through credit card or a 900 number. Some stations were earning a half million dollars per year with the service.

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George Johns Thinks Out Loud!

Submitted by on August 18, 2009 – 7:00 amNo Comment

If Babe Ruth had all the special advantages that Barry Bonds and a few others of his ilk had, he would have made them all look like school girls.

Radio of the future is going to be local radio of the past. Not only will radio have to talk about the local community to get some decent ratings but it will also need to send some of its listeners occasionally to a clients place of business if it ever hopes to have any decent revenue.
This is going to be real tough for a background type radio station to accomplish.

JFK said you should forgive your enemies but never forget their names.

J Robert Wood recently told me that because we were raised with good mid western ethics and were taught by are parents and teachers, that if we worked real hard and did a good job we would be justly rewarded.
We both discovered the hard way that we were lied to. If you want something he claimed you have to ask for it or better yet maybe even demand it.

In the mid 90′s I lived in Boston for a few years. While I was there WBCN was the top billing station in town. What the hell happened to them and who do we blame ? I want names damn it!

I don’t know why they think that more minorities wearing more PPM devices will change the results. Minorities, the same as all other people have always listened to all kinds of different stations but that truth just was never picked up by the diary method.

Who gets all the money for all the oil pumped in Iraq, and where does all that oil go ?

I think the songwriters should share their revenues with the performers, just like in the past they used to pay Ral Donner to sing their tunes so they could present the song to Elvis. They paid Ral to sing the songs because he sounded exactly the same as Elvis.
If Elvis recorded the songs they got rich, but Elvis got nothing from them.

My brother Reg told me that the lack of money on radio has less to do with the economy than radio folks think. The car dealers just don’t believe a ton of radio spots with all that legal gibberish on the end of their commercials is going to turn into leads. Reg claims they still have got all kinds of money for leads.

I think Henry Louis Gates arrest had a hell of a lot more to do with his Harvard Professor arrogance than it had to do with the color of his skin.

I think one of the solutions to the Health Care problem in America would be to allow one more person to go on the coverage of everyone who has a family health plan. They could go on as an extended family person.

With radio prices dropping are we getting any closer to the people who should be running radio being able to afford to do so.

Joe Amaturo told me recently that he got out of the ad agency business a long time ago because he had no idea if what he was doing had any effect on anything and the company he worked for didn’t care.

I feel that if you are going to attract a certain demo to your radio station you have to talk the same as they do. I have never heard any demo chanting a radio station’s slogan.

When I was a PD and later a National PD all my ideas were great and all of them got on the air. When I became a consultant I guess I must of lost it because only about half my stuff if that gets on the air.

Bob Christy told me that his wife Jan works for a huge furniture store that has outlets all over LA. The store employs a lot of Hispanic women who speak mostly Spanish to each other. But Jan said all these women listen to a bunch of different kinds of radio stations not just Spanish stations like the old diary system used to claim.

If you have never sold a spot before or ever tried to figure out how to get someone to listen to the radio and you run a radio station, a group, or a broadcasting company you might want consider just getting out of the way before you embarrass yourself. What’s that you say … It’s already too late!

Brent Farris told me recently that if your not at the dinner meeting, your probably on the menu.

I know a lot about a few subjects, but unfortunately just like a lot of other people I have an opinion about a whole bunch of subjects that I know very little about.

When I used to do a lot of jock meetings I would begin with … I would love all of you to participate in this meeting as often as you would like with your comments about all the things you know. But today we do not have time to discuss what you think. That short statement shortened the jock meeting by at least two hours.

When women become Mothers they leave three things behind and don’t want to hear about them anymore. Sex Drugs and Rock&Roll !

It is very very difficult to be #1 if you have never been there before, mainly because the correct path looks like a giant maze in totally unfamiliar territory.

Young women today are very different than their mothers. They drive fast, they talk fast, they listen fast, they walk fast, they learn fast, they become experts on everything fast, they get angry fast, they smile fast, they hug fast, they change their mind fast, they don’t cry as fast, they grow up a way too fast … They even look fast. Their brothers on the other hand seem kinda wussy.

Radio today has no money, no time, and no people. So if you want to sell radio something, you better bring it done with a bow on it.

It’s tough to lie to PPM I don’t think politicians can help anyone with this, even though they are experts on the subject.

When I first met Ron Chapman he had already been #1 years before at KLIF, so my main task was to make him want it again and maybe even obsess over it.

When Jeff&Jer had failed to wrap their arms around other cities they had performed in, Pam the PD of Y95 in San Diego flew them in and said see if you want to dance for this city’s love. They immediately fell for the city and the rest is history.
Jerry had been told years before that if you want to be successful in mornings you have to marry the city. They did that and more, in fact Jerry even married Pam.
But the bad news about that was it took Pam, an excellent programmer out of the game. I think the times are ripe to bring her out of retirement.

When recording artists go into the studio it takes several takes of a song to get it even close to perfect. In radio we do it all in one take even if we are voice tracking. Either we are better than Frank, Elvis, The Beatles, and Bono or we’re just stupid.

Tim Reever told me that Cumulus was a lot more into doing their system of chasing radio money than actually getting the money which he claimed was much much easier than their system.

The great thing about America is we can just laugh out loud at all these corporate fools who run radio today without fear of imprisonment or execution.
Boy I hope that’s still true !

Broadcasters have long said that “Perception is Reality” but Socrates would beg to differ. His claim is … “Truth is Truth.” His claim is, we may live in a world of what we believe but that may not be the real world. Only real truth lives in the real world.

I think two government organisations should be shut down for incompetence, The CIA for not anticipating 911 which changed life as we once knew it plus they still are not even close to capturing Bin Laden. The other is The Department of Justice who never ever anticipated or investigated any of the companies that put us into this financial mess. If they just both went away think about how much money would that save us.

You cant be better than a phenomenon at their own game, so you better do something totally different and become a phenomenon on your own. It pays real well.

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