In Monday’s RBR, (6/30/08 RBR #127), HD Digital Radio Alliance expands marketing campaign, the HD Digital Radio Alliance announced an expanded marketing campaign aimed at converting awareness into buying action…. This executive asks the reason – WHY?
Radio ads within the new $57 million, 13-week marketing campaign.
Why do we keep promoting this baloney? I would say that the chances of a single actual dollar changing hands is slim-to-none. This is stations using unsold airtime. Does this get logged under the heading of a PSA?
Funny, I was at a local SBE cookout the other night, and the majority of engineers, most of whom worked for groups like CCU, Buckley, CBS, etc., just could not understand the HD concept. They seemed to be putting it on the air because Management told them to do it, but there was a lot of concern about co-channel and first-adjacency interference, and the idea of a power increased on the FMs didn’t seem to make much sense to them, if in fact, all of the stations did it. Basically, they would be back in the same mess again.
My guess is that if these operators would spend that money on hiring better sales people and on effective sales training, radio would still be in pretty good shape.
Robert E. Richer
International Media Consulting
