By Holland Cooke
Consultant
BLOCK ISLAND, RI — What’s “our elevator speech?” they asked. Sales reps at a client station tend to pitch the AC FM with T-Rex numbers, and leave money on the table by under-pitching the news/talk station.
When I wrote, in great big letters on the whiteboard: “Because these are NOT normal times…” the owner proclaimed “That’s it!” and every rep was nodding and scribbling.
By Bruce Putterman
The CT Mirror
Publisher
HARTFORD — I remember the moment I first fell in love.
I’m in college. It’s September 6, 1980… I find my way to WVBR, a commercial FM radio station, in Ithaca, NY, staffed largely by Cornell University students.
I am immediately infatuated with everything about radio: the records spinning on the studio turntable, the red “On Air” sign, the disc jockey introducing songs with casual wit, shelves lined with thousands of albums. But what really stirs my imagination is the UPI teletype machine… rat-tat-tatting news from around the world.
By Steve Lapa
Lapcom Communications Corp
President
PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla. — What is with the plethora of bar graphs showing us what we already know? Do we really need another thermometer “Why listeners consume radio/audio” graph?
I guess we do need another study for the tidbit that is the premise behind hundreds of thousands of daily newscasts. This all started with a caveman pounding out the news on a log, then discovering fire, realized smoke signals attracted a bigger audience and the concept of results from a newscast was established. Maybe some of us are still at the campfire, or still selling like it.
By Holland Cooke
Consultant
BLOCK ISLAND, RI — Talk radio isn’t just different than music radio. It’s better. Talk radio is never on in the background. And streaming has music radio on its heels, because The Sentence Never Spoken is “Alexa, please play six commercials.”
Yet talkers should avoid taking false comfort that we’re less vulnerable to digital competitors, because people are using social media to talk to each other without us. So joining the conversation there is now table stakes. But defending the towers remains Job One.
