CPR Promotional Check-Up - Jun 10, 2016

Beyonce

While I'm still on the fence about her and consider her to be a fad, 106.1 Kiss-FM in Dallas had a great set-up.

This? Is a win.

This? Is a fail.

Van Tip #264

One of the things we teach the promo team at street school is that they ALWAYS should drive in the left lane and always drive with the headlights on. Why? To be seen. Driving in the right lane, hiding behind the Meineke semi insures that only people directly behind you will see you.

Friday Night Live

I was listening to Q-105 in Tampa last Fall and they were doing a retro music club night that was hands down, without question, the best Radio live-to-air club cast I've heard in a decade. It was live. At a club. What a concept. Conversely there's a station in the Twin Cities that does this but isn't live from the club. It's all pre-recorded and sounds as exciting as a remote from Walgreens.

FNL is very simple and has been done a hundred times at a hundred stations. On Friday night the talent does the first hour, maybe two, in the studio and the rest of the shift is out live, bopping all over the market. Not sold appearances. Hitting grad parties, go cart tracks, cruising strips, basically wherever people are. It's audio accoutrement.

High School Cheerleaders

Let's see how many of these end up in your Junk file.

You really want to, if you are any form of contemporary station, have good contacts in that community.

1. They're the P1's of highschool life. If you need something done in the schools, they're the people who can do it.
2. You can build actual $$$ making promotions around them, like one of the Cumulus CHR's that is doing a competition with all the local squads.
3. There will be times when you will need a LOT of bodies and you will need them FAST. Following the earthquake in Haiti, Power 96 was able to get 300 cheerleaders the next morning for a car wash. A huge massive car wash that raised a huge massive amount of money that went directly to agencies in the Haitian community that could get "stuff done" with it.
4. There will be times when you will need extra bodies to man something like a concert. So Hot 89.9 in Ottawa made a call and had 25 girls in shirts lining the plaza at a Katy Perry concert.

Which Leads Us To...

You should have a database for all the local schools. I used to have a pretty basic, barebones list of every school in the surveyed area, and some basic contact info.

Wild in San Francisco has made a pretty ridiculous amount of money over the years selling dances to schools, which had the additional benefit of getting the station out in front of a LOT of listeners and potential listeners.

Their database, once it was built, just needed an annual update with names.

It covered every public and parochial school in the Bay Area and had:

1. Contact info for the Activity Director
2. Contact info for the cheerleading advisor
3. School colors
4. School mascot
5. Ethnic makeup of the student body
6. Directions to the school
7. Info for the school paper, school website and school social media
8. What times are lunches and when is school let out

It's great info to have and a good project for an intern who has some energy and wants to impress you.