HOW TO AVOID GIVING UP ON A SIGNAL AND JUST TURNING UP THE SATELLITE FADER
It’s a familiar scenario. You run a cluster; in there somewhere is that lower-powered AM at 13-something on the dial. It’s problem? Transmitter’s on but ain’t nobody home. Its format and/or signal cannot compete for audience or revenue. So you make the decision: Flip the switch and take that sad little tea kettle all-sports. Presto: No jocks, no local hosts, maybe no program director. Just 24/7 sports yak from the network. Excellent – except that you may be throwing away a valuable radio station.
There are many more stations in most markets than can ever hope to be competitive. The audience pie is sliced thin, which makes mining for revenue tougher than ever. Radio station owners and managers feel that to survive and thrive, they must concentrate their resources on their major players: the FM music stations and, occasionally, AM talk monsters that pay the bills. What to do with the “leftovers”, the anemic little stations that were included in the deals that brought the bigger, better signals into the group?
“Niche formats” are often the answer. These include Hispanic, religion, bartered programming – and all-sports. Some broadcasters decry the all-sports format but they miss an important point: It works because it provides its listeners with EXACTLY what they want to hear: all sports and access to important guests. Some listeners can actually get on the air on these national shows, which puts them on the same footing as any other listener, regardless of market size.
The major all-sports radio networks (ESPN Radio, Sporting News Radio, Fox and the others) provide solid, big-time programming at all hours of the day and night. What they DON’T provide is the only thing that truly keeps radio local, the one thing listeners can’t find on TV sports shows and the Internet, either: LOCAL CONTENT.
Addressing The Local Content Challenge
Fine, you say, that’s why we have these two funny guys in the afternoon. One goes by his first two initials and the other is called The Coach. They talk about the local stuff after Cowherd or Patrick or Rome
Please.
Isn’t anything other than sports going on in your market? Do you seriously believe you will build an audience of any size that will attract significant revenue by talking only about point spreads on NFL games and what LeBron could have been thinking?
Or do you just want some reason to justify the transmitter's electricity bill?
The challenge is that you jumped into all-sports in order to save money. How can you provide local content without going back to a full staff again and embarking on that vicious cycle of too-much-expense and too-little-revenue?
You already have a terrific set of resources in place to help: the other stations in your group.
Rallying the Reinforcements
Let’s start with local news. You do have at least one person among your “brands” covering local news, don’t you? No, not the “giggle girl” who updates us on traffic and celebrity gossip on the morning show. An actual news person. No? Then it’s time to draft a voice from your roster to take care of news on the sports station.
That’s because the predominantly male, 35+ demographic of your all-sports audience lives in the real world of housing issues, unemployment, taxes, health matters and crime. They don’t just tune in the six o’clock TV news to watch the sports segment. They watch the whole banana. Which makes it absurd to think that just because they want to whine about Brett Favre doesn’t mean they don’t care what happens at city hall or who shot a cop on the west side last night.
And no, your local sports updates don’t count as news. They’re scores. News is news and there’s somewhere to insert it, even if only in one-minute blurbs.
Also somewhere in your jolly band of jocks is a DJ who loves sports, is incredibly knowledgeable about local sports issues and would be a great addition to your lineup, even in short segments. If you’re really lucky, that person might even be one of your female personalities.
Don’t Walk Away From Your Sports Station – Jump In!
When you add local elements such as real news and participation by personalities from your other stations, you vastly increase not only the value of your all-sports station to listeners but to advertisers. That’s because your salespeople now have something to sell that’s local and involved. Which is far more attractive to advertisers’ messages than national sports blab with a few local score and story updates.
Wouldn’t it be cool if, in 2011, your sales force could get away from calling only on sports bars and car dealers and be able to walk into almost any client or prospect with compelling reasons to buy your plucky little all-sports AM?
Why yes. I believe it would.
FRIDAY: A New Year’s Eve when a radio account executive and his client made a big difference to a lonely late-night DJ.
