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This reader reacts to Clear Channel Radio LA's oversold debacle
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John C. Halford
Vice President - Market Manager
Triad Broadcasting
West Virginia / Virginia

How about some spots promoting free radio?
You've heard the spots from NAB and a few big radio groups with recording artists saying that they like radio. But they really don't say anything that tells consumers why they should prefer AM and FM over satellite radio or any other competitor. At Genesis Communications' WWBA-AM Tampa, Production Director "Tool" (Matthew Ternes) took up a challenge from his GM and created this spot pitching free radio against all of the costs associated with satellite radio. The spot is also running on Genesis' WAMT-AM Orlando and the company is making it available for other broadcasters to download from RBR. The voice artist, by the way, is John Young in Atlanta. Genesis refuses to air any spots for XM or Sirius and has its stations cover any satellite radio spots scheduled in syndicated programs that air on its stations.

Download the Spot: To save the mp3 for your stations use, just right click on the audio link above and select "Save Target As"

RBR's challenge: What have you got? There are lots of other creative people out there at radio stations. Create your own spot to promote terrestrial radio and sending us an email ([email protected]) letting us know about it. Then we'll upload your mp3 file and share it with the rest of radio.

Promotion in Philly
Greater Media Philadelphia has promoted Bob DeBlois from General Sales Manager to Station Manager at WPEN-AM.

British viewers the most to illegally download US shows
According to a report from web tracking firm Envisional, 18% of illegal downloads of US TV shows were from within the U.K. It estimates 80,000 to 100,000 people in the U.K. downloaded TV shows from the web. The report also said illegal TV downloads increased by 150% in the last year. Envisional said in its report: "in effect, the Internet is now a global video recorder - - perhaps more accurately, a free global PVR or TiVo."

PBS Frontline Iraq: Would you like bleeps with that?

Max and Mike on the
Movies launches

Problem returns: Advertisers avoiding black radio
If you thought the era of "no-Urban" dictates was over, think again. Radio One's COO Mary Catherine Sneed says she's seen growing instances in the past six months of advertisers excluding black-formatted stations from ad buys, although the discrimination is now more subtle than telling buyers not to place the ads on Urban stations. CEO Alfred Liggins now concedes that trying to make the two big rep companies compete for his business by having Radio One's stations split roughly 50/50 between Katz and Interep hasn't worked out as he'd hoped, and may actually be costing Radio One some national business. But he also notes that he has limited options. He sees a built-in negative from Katz being owned by a major Urban radio competitor, Clear Channel, but there's also the negative that Interep is a smaller player in the national rep business. "We're gonna do something," Liggins said.
02/18/05 RBR #35

Q1 pacings strong for Entravision
You may be hearing complaints about softness from mainstream broadcasters, but the Spanish sector is still growing by leaps and bounds. In his quarterly conference call, Entravision CEO Walter Ulloa said that Q1 pacings are strong, with TV revenues expected to be up 7-8% and radio 10-11%. Asked about the likelihood of English radio giants Clear Channel and Viacom/Infinity flipping more stations to Spanish formats, Ulloa said he anticipated more flips of underperforming English stations, but he also noted that the two companies seem to be focused on just a couple of Spanish formats, so he didn't sound particularly worried about the new competition. 02/18/05 RBR #35

CC Radio/LA apologizes for oversold problem; agencies not happy
Less is More a big problem in LA? Less is making a mess there, say some. The Clear Channel Radio LA cluster was "wildly oversold" to clients in January. A corporate letter went out to all the advertisers, apologizing. And they blamed it on everything, including the heavy rains and electrical blackouts for avails systems malfunctions. Said an RBR/TVBR source: "I heard they completely knotted up the market, I heard through May. I heard they wildly oversold January. A letter went out from one of the cluster managers, I think it was Charlie Riley, there to all the clients, two pages with a full page letter of apology, explaining why they oversold and what they're doing to correct it and what was the reason for it. ,,, I think they have less credibility than...I don't remember anybody with less. Their salespeople, their agendas are so obvious. It's all about them. They don't listen to advertisers, they don't listen to agency needs. They've got big, big Cxxky people at the very top here who walk around with a frickin' entourage like Kobe. CC Radio CEO John Hogan didn't return request asking for comment.
02/18/05 RBR #35

Fritts confirms early exit
Although RBR/TVBR published his early retirement plans weeks ago the NAB's Executive Board let Eddie Fritts pick his own time to announce that he would be stepping down early. Rather than staying through to the end of his current contract, which runs through April 2006, Fritts will leave just as soon as his successor as President and CEO is selected - - allowing the formal search to begin in earnest. The question is will the new NAB chief come inside or outside the beltway. Fritts recommends inside the best avenue since you got to know where the bodies are buried. When we reminded Fritts that he was not from inside the beltway when he got the job 23 years ago, he laughed. "Yeah, they made a bad hire back then," Fritts quipped.
05/17/05 RBR #34

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