CPR Promotional Check-Up

The Reaction Game: The Home Edition

One of the exercises I do on the road and at things like Morning Show Bootcamp is The Reaction Game. You divide the room into "stations", deal them a card that remains facedown on their table. You establish that it's 11:03 on Friday morning, you're filling out TPS reports and Debby from Sales sticks her head in the door and says "Hey, turn on the TV..." and flip the card. Each "station" has ten minutes to get their response on the air.

Radio will remain viable because it can react quickly to this kind of stuff. These are the events that move the needle. Not remotes or shooting the stunt boy with a paintball gun.

It was cool to do it at Bootcamp because you could see the people get energized and excited at even the faux premise of doing something tangible and compelling when "something" occurs.

Mark Anderson at Clear Channel is actually going to do that with his staff in St. Louis on Monday.

Michael Martin and the folks at CBS/SFO have been doing it for real since last night.

Reminders:

1. The Red Cross sucks. They're horrible to deal with and since everyone ELSE will have a link on their homepage to them (the epitome of : we are too busy with the Birthday Game to really acknowledge this tragedy), then focus on finding a church or a school or a specific family you can help.
2. TV can't film people clicking on a Red Cross link. They can however film Street Teamers with firefighter boots soliciting change at intersections and people throwing pennies in the back of a pickup
3. It needs to take over your website. If 99.999% of the people in your market are talking about it and you have a little banner underneath a photo of Taylor Momson, that's offensive.

Already, both Live and Movin' have announced they're matching prize money in the station's respective cash contests, with donations to specific relief efforts in San Bruno. They have a fundraising stunt about to pop. They have jocks out all over the area covering it. Basically, they've been on it all night. This was the original email to the entire cluster from Michael Martin at 10:01 pm

Hey all,

So you all know by now there was a massive blast and fires in San Bruno. Jocks on the air now are doing a great job giving out info and directing people on air, via twitter and Facebook to KCBS for in-depth coverage and keeping people informed.

This will no doubt continue to be a hot topic in the morning. Having no idea what will happen through the night we need EVERY morning team to be up to date, give out information, talk about it, air people affected by it and of course direct people for more in-depth info to KCBS. If this becomes a once in a while thing it will send a loud signal we are not connected to the audience so please remain pro-active on this.

Depending on level of this in the morning be PRO-ACTIVE with ideas as well on how to get involved. Is this the right thing for a blood drive? Do they need water? Do kids need clothes? Even like with a quake all of the above can be true AND people just want to talk openly. It's healing and brings the audience together.

Webmasters please make sure the sites are up to date with headlines and again direct deeper links to KCBS. Even making a dynamic lead that clicks right to the KCBS site is important.

The key thing is to be PRO-ACTIVE, TOPICAL, INFORMATIVE and QUICK TO MOVE on any ideas you may have on what to do to help raise money and/or awareness.

Share ideas. Be a wall of ideas and information.

Thanks all.

Michael Martin
VP of Programming
CBS Radio San Francisco