3-31-14
McCarthy will begin hosting "The WOR Sports Zone," beginning today. The show on the Mets flagship will be heard weeknights from 6-9:00 p.m. and on Mets game days before and after each game. McCarthy joins WOR after over eight years at MLB.com and five years at SNY-TV, where his duties included sports anchor, play-by-play announcer, color analysis, radio talk show host and sideline reporter. The Mets host the Nationals at 1:10 p.m. at Citi Field.
By Jeff Schmidt
It?s always interesting to see the news of the quarterly earnings calls from publicly held broadcasters. Recently, one CEO told the analysts, ?The quarter didn?t turn out the way we hoped.? Don?t get me wrong, the big companies aren?t the only ones that miss their expectations or don?t get what they had hoped. They just have the unfortunate requirement to report it to the world.
We hope things will get better. We hope this client will buy. We hope we will hit our goal. We hope our cluster will make budget. We hope this new seller will make it. To use a line from my partner Chris Lytle, ?People are hooked on hopium.? I?m as positive a thinker as they come. I have a tremendous amount of hope in the future. Psychologists actually tell us that the number one cause of suicide is the loss of hope. Hope is a very positive emotion, a powerful motivator.
I have always told my teams, ?Hope is not a method.? Hope is a great attitude, but it must be backed up with a plan. Hope is a positive expectancy. Hope with a plan can get dramatic results. Hope without action will more often than not result in disappointment.
What plans do you have in place to support your hope? What changes are you making to achieve different outcomes? Are you learning new things, trying new approaches, gaining more knowledge? In other words, are you taking action, or just filled with hope?
Sales professionals are on the frontlines of economic growth and prosperity in their communities. If you think about it, nothing happens until a sale is made. Sales are the grease that drive the economic engine, and as a salesperson, you have the ability to make things better, not just hope they get better.
So, to break it down:
We hope things will get better. What steps are you taking to ensure they get better? Are you talking to more prospects, are you providing greater value to your current clients? Are you increasing your own knowledge and expertise?
We hope this client will buy. Have you prepared a presentation that is specifically addressing the most important need of the client? Solving her most pressing problem? Have you given her a value proposition that makes not buying impossible?
We hope to hit our goal. Are you seeing enough people? Do you have enough business in your pipeline? Are you constantly looking for prospects and new business? Have you gone deeper into your current accounts looking for new profit centers and new ways to help?
We hope this new seller will make it. In the past, the standard was to give new sellers a rate card and a phone book and wish them good luck. Are you providing a comprehensive learning protocol to ensure their success? Have you paired new sellers with a successful seller in a mentor relationship? Do you have a repeatable sales process that your new sellers can follow to ensure success?
?We?re interested, call us next week/month/quarter.? How many times have you heard that? The problem is a seller will come back to her sales manager and report that she had a ?great? meeting with a client. After all, the client said he was interested. Let me suggest that the only thing that makes a meeting ?great? is when you get the order and open the business relationship. A ?good? meeting is one that results in an advance of the process, meaning a next step or appointment that is agreed upon and scheduled. Anything short of that and you leave the meeting with only hope.
True prospects will put you on their calendar for a next step. Information seekers will let (or make) you chase them down. Chris Lytle and I teach a technique called ?The Magic Question.? The Magic Question to determine if you are working with a prospect or information seeker is: ?Are you willing to work with me on a calendar basis?? Since they have never heard that question before, they are likely to give you an awkward look. You simply say, ?You?re very busy, I?m very busy, rather than me trying to chase you down let?s schedule an appointment to have our next conversation.?
The amount of prospects you have on your calendar is the best indicator of your future success. Securing appointments is how you turn hope into success. Do you want to waste your time chasing down information seekers, or do you want to invest your time calling on true prospects? The Magic Question will help.
If you?re looking for an easy way to focus on your professional development, Chris Lytle and I have partnered with Radio Ink for the Radio Sales Success Expander webinar series. Click here to find out more and sign up to participate live or on demand. Learning is a great way to support your hope with action.
Jeff Schmidt is EVP and Partner with Chris Lytle at Sparque, Inc. You can reach Jeff at, Jeff.Schmidt@Sparque.biz
Twitter: @JeffreyASchmidt
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/schmidtjeffrey
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3-31-14
Tomorrow is not only the start of a new month, it's the day many radio hosts try to grab headlines by playing April Fool's jokes on listeners. It's Inevitable that some host will go too far and get into trouble. We thought this was a great opportunity for to revisit and share John Garziglia's column where he details the FCC hoax rule (Section 73.1217# and offers up a little advice on how to avoid getting yourself and your station into trouble tomorrow.
(by John Garziglia - From Radioink.com 3/29/2013)
The FCC?s broadcast hoax rule (Section 73.1217) prohibits the broadcast of false information concerning a crime or a catastrophe when: (1) the broadcaster knows the information is false; (2) it is foreseeable that the broadcast of the information will cause substantial public harm; and (3) the broadcast of the information does, in fact, directly cause substantial public harm.
Rather than writing the usual ?Groundhog Day? type of column that appears every year at this time from communications attorneys warning against April Fools Day stunts that violate the FCC?s broadcast hoax rule, I would rather take the approach of what is allowed on April 1st. Such an approach, however, is difficult. Even if the broadcast hoax rule itself, which is paraphrased above, is not specifically violated, there are many other April 1st stunts such as joke contests, or use of EAS tones even if to warn of sunshine and blue skies, that would violate FCC rule sections and policies.
The FCC?s broadcast hoax rule, adopted in 1992, is specific. The prohibited ?public harm? that occurs as a result of the broadcast of false information concerning a crime or catastrophe must begin immediately. Further, it must cause direct and actual damage to property or to the health or safety of the general public, or diversion of law enforcement or other public health and safety authorities from their duties.
The FCC says that ?the public harm will be deemed foreseeable if the licensee could expect with a significant degree of certainty that public harm would occur.? Further, the FCC states that a ?crime? is any act or omission that makes the offender subject to criminal punishment by law, and a ?catastrophe? is a disaster or imminent disaster involving a violent or sudden event.
The broadcast hoax rule was adopted expressly to prohibit broadcast hoaxes that are harmful to the public. A radio broadcast that is harmful to the public also invariably exposes the station to potential civil and criminal liability.
Interestingly, the FCC, in adopting the prohibition against broadcast hoaxes, gave as an example of a broadcast that would not be covered under the rule, a broadcast about amoebas invading the city, stating that this was an ?obvious hoax?. On the other hand, the FCC noted that the broadcast of a mock nuclear attack on the United States with a siren sounder, was not an obvious hoax and merited a $25K fine. Likewise, a false report of a nearby volcanic eruption merited an admonishment to a radio station prior to the adoption of the actual hoax rule (this was a Los Angeles station ? perhaps if the station had been in the middle of Kansas it would have been obvious?).
In adopting its hoax rule, the FCC stated that it was not its intent to ?restrict harmless pranks, or to deter broadcasts that might upset some listeners but do not pose a substantial threat to public health or safety?. Unfortunately, these words of the FCC come as close as anyone can come to saying in today?s regulatory environment what is acceptable for a radio station April Fools Day prank. If a station is wrong and receives an Enforcement Bureau inquiry letter as a result of a broadcast hoax, the joke will be upon it.
John F. Garziglia is a Communications Law Attorney with Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice in Washington, DC and can be reached at (202) 857-4455 or jgarziglia@wcsr.com. Have a question for our "Ask The Attorney" feature? Send to edryan@radioink.com.
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3-31-14
Imagine Communications and Marketron have announced a strategic partnership to provide both TV and Radio with end-to-end ad sales, traffic and scheduling, and automation solutions. The partnership will provide cross-media revenue operations and reporting for companies with multiple properties and markets. Marketron CEO Jeff Haley (pictured) says, "This integration enables our customers to easily run their cross-media business from Marketron?s Mediascape platform, a single, end-to-end, integrated platform, enabling streamlined, efficient business operations.?
Imagine Communications CEO Charlie Vogt said, ?We are thrilled about our partnership with Marketron, as together we will deliver the industry?s most feature-rich, end-to-end enterprise business and playout solutions designed for TV and radio broadcasters, TV networks and content distributors. Last week we unveiled MediaCentral, our reference architecture for the integration and virtualization of our media software, playout and automation functions. Our partnership with Marketron signals an industry ecosystem required to accelerated innovation and best-in-class solutions.?
3-31-14
The Weekend comedy show hosted by Daren Streblow (pictured) will now create a short feature for stations to air during weekdays. Executive Producer Corey Irish said, ?We have received constant requests from our affiliates asking us to add a short feature on the weekdays. We believe some of these station groups will also add this vignette to the music stations in their clusters." For more information call 615.970.2739.
3-31-14
Two weeks ago we reported the story of how ?This American Life? will be losing it's distributor, Public Radio International, as of July 1. In an email to the New York Times, the host and executive producer of the program, Ira Glass (pictured) said he will be talking to several possible distributors, including NPR. He also said, ?self-distribution continues to be an option, and we?ve been looking at what that would mean in a more serious way.?
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3-25-14
It's the first new launch since Cumulus took over the brand. "Good Time Oldies" will be a 24-hour format, available to stations April 28, featuring music from the golden era of pop, rock and soul--centering on hit music from the 60s and 70s?and positioned slightly earlier than traditional Adult Hits-formatted stations.
Good Time Oldies will feature several well known personalities from around the country. Jim Zippo has worked at WDRQ/Detroit, WEAM/Washington DC, KQOL/Las Vegas and KTKS/Dallas, and has done mornings nationally for over 12 years. John Summers marks 30 years as a PD, MD, and personality on such stations as BJ105/Orlando and WMMO/Orlando, and he currently does PM Drive on KLUV/Dallas. Kevan Browning will join Good Times Oldies from his current role on WestwoodOne?s Classic Hits format, after a long on-air and programming career with stops in Milwaukee, Memphis, Houston, and Dallas.
The satellite-delivered format will be built on a single clock, with break structure that will allow a station to air local spots or play music seamlessly. All affiliates will be provided with an imaging package, whether they elect to use the version nationally-branded with Good Time Oldies or construct it using their own imaging and slogan.