CPR Promotional Check-Up - Feb 5, 2014

Some Of The Bests Of 2013

It would be very easy to listen to all of the boring imaging and the lame social media posts and wallpaper contests and not get a little depressed. So off the top-of-my-head™ here are a few highlights to send you into the new year with a sense of optimism. These are just random thoughts so if you or your station didn't appear on the list, I blame it on dehydration, exhaustion and an adverse reaction to prescription pain medication.

Best Character In Group Contest Imaging "Artie Shenckman", a chainsaw wielding Las Vegas ticket broker whose iHeart concert sales were getting killed by Kiss in Poughkeepsie's insistence at giving the tix away.

Best Dance Version Of A Fad That Pretty Much Everyone Parodied Laura Daniels got Irish dancers and did "Shamrock Style".

Best Free Concert 50,000 people who came out in downtown Boston to see 103.3 AMP-FM's Birthday Bash would probably agree on that.

Best Talent Find The farm system is dry and all of stations we used to raid for talent are now vt'ed. So kudos to Phil Becker and Oasis Radio Group in Ft. Wayne for finding a 17 y/o local blogger and turning her into a phenom that's now doing stuff on E! and Nickalodean. She has more hits than pretty much every station in the group, combined. 32,000,000 at last count.

Best Concert Promotion The Blind Date that AMP in Calgary sent a woman and two guys, all blindfolded, 11 hours each ways to Vancouver in a limo.

Best Concert Ownership A tie to Kiss in Phoenix and 99.7 Now-FM. Consistently and over and over and over they crush on-site and digitally before, during and after. Now's ownership of the JT stadium show was historic.

Best Concert Audible By C-95 in Saskatoon. Pink cancelled 6 shows and rescheduled for this Spring. So on about 5 hours notice Chris Myers snagged a trip to her next confirmed appearance....Lincoln, Nebraska and all of the imaging was done by Debby with the Lincoln Bureau Of Tourism.

Best Weekends There are SO many lame weekend themes these days. The weekends are your best chance to be topical and stupid and have some fun. Kiss in Dallas consistently does better weekends than anyone else. Hands down.

Best Awareness Campaign Q-102 in Cincy does probably the best Breast Cancer campaigns in Radio. Keke Luv at 103.5 Kiss-FM does "Live For 175" every year and that campaign, not contesting, not stunts, has made Kiss #1.

Best Car Contest Of 2013 Hands down. "Truck Tag" at KAJA in San Antonio. Ratings went up, which I think we all agree is kind of cool, but their digital and social media numbers exploded, which then keeps people off your back so you can focus on getting the ratings up.

Best Station Produced Video KLUC in Las Vegas with Spence directing, makes some ridiculous stuff. But I have to give the nod and the Paigey™ for 2014 to Russell Rush at Mix in SA. http://www.therussellrushhauntedtour.com/main.html

Best Charity Drive Chet Buchanan's toy drive in Las Vegas. No one comes close and all of the collections stay in Las Vegas. Can Diego at 94/9 in San Diego is right up there too.

Best Charitable Audible Great quarterbacks call audibles. If they didn't, they'd end up being fed from a tube. Great stations will change the game plan on a moment's notice, like CBS in Houston where they were quickly on the explosion that leveled a nearby town. KDWB in Minneapolis filled five semis with bottled water for Moore, OK the day after the community was destroyed, and the airstaff drove them south and covered their mission on social media and the station site. The opposite of this would be a morning show who was told by their consultant that the disaster was "A one day event. Cover it in the news, hit the Red Cross code, interview a TV weatherman but stick to our scheduled features."

Best Use Of $1000 By Radiowave 96.7 in Windhoek where they did Last Prize Standing; the best way to take a medium amount of cash and make it sound like a million bucks.

Best Use Of Listener Incentivised Marketing Island 106 in Panama City had maybe the best Fugitive™ in a couple of years and Jammin' 107.7 in New London brought back "Live With" for another historic run.

Best Morning Show Bit That Went Global To Rat & Zero at Y-94 in Fargo whose Halloween call from a listener who was going to give fat kids notes instead of candy, trended in Tajikistan.

Best Morning Show Playing To The Cameras To Pablo, Tati & Heat at WPGC in DC when they went down to the courthouse as fans of Chris Brown, for his arraignment.

Best Use Of Ducttape By A CRS Winning Morning Show Some people would over-think "Let's ducttape Sunny to the building." Not 'VOO in Tulsa.

Best Morning Show Head Fake Dave, Steve-O and Falen at KDWB who had a physician from the U of M come in and test treatments for cuts and bleeding, on interns who they cut up for the morning.

Best Morning Show Character Derk Motomato at The Peak in Colorado Springs http://pro.kkpk-fm.tritonflex.com/common/page.php?pt=Derk+Motomoto&id=481&is_corp=0

Best Morning Show Event Series Booty Cruise at KDWB where they regularly score the highest traffic in Clear Channel in the days following the event. And Ted & Amy's slumber parties at 93Q in Syracuse

Best "But You Can't Just..." F.U. Every time the Lost Digit promotion comes up, some Selector Geek will throw out all of reasons why you can't do it. Ower 96 in Miami proved that this is still one of the great curveball promotions of all time.

Best Promo People The Promosapiens at 94/9 in San Diego.
Best "Stupid For The Sake Of Being Stupid" Broadcast The Turkey Takeover at 94.9 in Cincy where the shifts are done by turkeys on Thanksgiving Day.

Best Use Of A Cat By Jackie Donovan with Albany Broadcasting who took a stuffed cat, tied it to a rope and then to a pole and used it as her wind gauge during a winter storm.

Best New Version Of An Old Promotion Secret Santa as done by G-105 in Raleigh and Power 96 in Miami.

Drum roll please

Best Station Promotion A tie to The Panic Room at AMP in Calgary: 10 listeners living in a glass room in the middle of a mall to win $10,000. And to Q Almighty in Halifax where the morning show picked a listener and controlled her life for a month.

I'll be here and will be expecting a lot of hate email. I'm used to it.