The National Association of Black Owned Broadcasters can cite two presidents who have ordered the government to do business with small, female and minority owned businesses, and wonders specifically why its members aren’t seeing much in the way of DOD advertising.
Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama have issued orders to the federal government to make sure smaller companies are getting their fair share of government contracts.
NABOB specifically looked at the Department of Defense and its $500M advertising budget. Along with Black newspaper organization National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), it met with Deputy Secretary of Defense William Lynn.
It was astonished by what it discovered. First of all, DOD has no information on how much of its budget goes to Black broadcasters, who are primarily in the radio business. That is because radio gets a scant 0.6% share of the budget to begin with.
NABOB speculated that one reason there is no specific information on Black radio is that the number is too small to bother with in the first place. But there are similarly no break-outs in the television or newspaper sectors, either.
As for its immediate plans, NABOB stated, “We are in the midst of a heated Presidential election campaign, and this is an appropriate time for the White House and members of Congress to demonstrate positive identifiable results from the Executive Order and the Presidential Memorandum. NABOB is going to embark on a campaign to obtain more Federal advertising dollars for Black owned stations to obtain the benefits promised by the Executive Order [from Clinton] and the Presidential Memorandum [from Obama].”
NABOB also issued a reminder that its 36th Annual Fall Broadcast Management Conference is coming up. It will be held September 26-27, 2012, at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington DC.
RBR-TVBR observation: This calls for action from the entire radio industry, not just NABOB. Not only does radio make sense from a dollars and cents perspective for the budget-conscious US government, the medium’s ability to accurately target the precise audiences that will yield the DOD its greatest recruitment pool is unparalleled by any other medium.
Radio makes sense for the DOD for Black radio and any other format that reaches a young audience. A committee of industry leaders should be formed with an immediate target of 10% of the DOD budget – it will be money well spent by the DOD and $50M for radio!
