Westwood Hires Foley as VP, Business Development

10-1-14

Prior to joining Westwood One, Jack Foley was a Business Development Manager for the Radio Disney Group. He also served as VP/Director of Sales for Entercom's Boston cluster, including WEEI, WAAF, WRKO, and WMKK.  Past roles include Regional VP/Sales at Clear Channel where he was responsible for revenue for 44 radio stations in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine. In this new role, Foley will develop revenue streams and create growth opportunities for the company, its agency clients, and its  partners across multiple platforms.

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(COPYWRITING) Radio Character Development

5-24-2013  

Are you different now than you were last year, last month, yesterday, a few minutes ago? We?re all changing. So should the characters in your radio commercials. As difficult as it may seem, you want your audience to be interested in those characters. Change helps create interest.

It?ll make your story more compelling. Even in the short duration of a radio commercial. Aside from making the story about them, with a plot that your target audience can relate to (based on their needs, wants, and desires), if you can have your characters move, evolve, and develop it will draw listeners in.

If your characters remain static, you?re less likely to keep the listener?s attention, especially with repeated exposure.

A character can go from being a devil?s advocate to being an advocate, sad to happy, frustrated to relieved, frightened to calm, shy to confident, coward to hero, from a loser to a winner, from the throes of passion to the depths of outrage, hysterical crying to hysterical laughter.

And what can be the catalyst for these changes? Other characters, each behaving from their own point of view, which you?ve already developed in your back story. As they experience their lack of, discovery of, or interaction with the advertiser?s product or service, they change. What else? Self-discovery, overcoming obstacles, and emergencies -- all the vicissitudes of life cause us to change.

Show the changes with dialogue and the attitudes of the actors, but also with sound effects and music.

If you?ve created a character your audience can relate to strongly, then they will have the same ?aha? experience as the character in your radio play (that?s what your commercial can be). Now you have the ideal situation where your listeners are co-creating with you. They are, to an extent, ?rehearsing? that discovery themselves.

Try applying this technique to all your commercials, even the monologues. See if your character has remained static or has changed. Change is movement, which attracts and keeps attention, which leads to involvement and eventually to a purchase.

Jeffrey Hedquist can be reached at Hedquist Productions, Inc. Phone 641-472-6708. Email jeffrey@hedquist.com. Check out his website at www.hedquist.com

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Greater Media VP of Program Development Buzz Knight

3-29-2013

How I Got Into Radio is Sponsored By Local Focus

The wonderful advantage of being in the radio business is the incredible access we all have to rock concerts. Like many of you, I have enjoyed all formats of music, but the difference in going to a rock concert is a nefarious substance wafting through the air causing a cloud that hangs still and causes many of use to relax and enjoy the concert at a different level. It is that contact with the atmosphere that have caused many of us to forget much of what happened in the 70s, 80s and 90s. This loss of memory leads me to explain how it is that I can?t remember when or how I met Buzz Knight. It might have been in Chicago in the early 80s at the NAB or when I spent many hours trying to place a morning talent at WZLX. Either way, we have known each other forever.

There is not much about the radio business that Buzz doesn?t know. He is an encyclopedia of radio history and applies what he knows brilliantly. But, most importantly, Buzz is one of those wonderful people whom you look forward to seeing and sharing time and conversation with. He is smart, clever, fresh, interesting, and never boring; gosh I wish there were more of him in the world.

Now let me hand it over to Vice President of Program Development for Greater Media Buzz Knight...

My earliest memories of listening to radio had a transformative impact on my relationship with the medium that I still love today.

While growing up in Stamford, Connecticut, I had New York radio in the background on a regular basis as a part of my life. The fabulous energy of WABC was constantly abuzz wherever you went in the community.

I?ll never forget the instantly recognizable news sounder that WNEW-FM ran at the top of every hour. With my head on my pillow I?d sneak a listen to Jean Shepard on WOR radio while he brilliantly communicated his neurotic life.

All of these feelings and emotions instilled a curious love for this business of talking into a microphone. I applied for an internship at our local station WSTC-AM and went to see Program Director Don Russell to try and sell myself into his station.

Mr. Russell had zero interest in taking on the burden of an intern and he passed. But I wouldn?t give up.

As a major sports fan I was fond of the Len Gambino sports call-in show on that same station and I quickly weaseled my way into the ?chief schlepper? role during his program.

Len would eventually give me my first shot on the radio as a guest on his show, heartily proving the adage that, for hosts of shows, sometimes no guest is better than throwing the dopy high school kid in! That point would be made completely clear when Len quizzed me (a diehard baseball fan!) on the nuances of hockey and I essentially clammed up saying "Sorry Len, I'm a baseball fan."

This moment would give me the bug as I somehow had to prove that I could be on the radio for a living. I still remember the moment I was driving by my high school and my inner voice said ?Go for it! Choose radio as a profession!?

From Stamford, Connecticut, I migrated to the University of Dayton in Dayton, Ohio, to pursue a communications degree.

UD had many things going for it (including the parties) but among the biggest draws was the commercial station they owned, WVUD-FM, and my sights were set very specifically on getting hired to be a part of the operation.

I would ultimately work weekends, overnights, and eventually the signature 6-10 p.m. show called ?The Wax Museum.? The bond with radio was locked forever.

Lisa Miller is the President of Miller Broadcast Management in Chicago. She's also one of Radio Ink's Most Influential Women in Radio. Miller can be reached at Lisa@millerbroadcast.com or 312-454-1111. So, how did you get into radio? We'd love to hear the story about why you're passionate about radio. Read how Dan Mason, Don Benson, Scott Herman, Ed Christian and many others got into radio HERE

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Beasley Adds Heeran as Dir/ New Business Development

Heeren joins Beasley's Vegas operation where the company has 5 stations. It's a newly created position for Heeran who began her radio career in sales in Las Vegas in 1985. She was the General Sales Manager at Americom Broadcasting when Howard Stern debuted in Las Vegas in 1992 and moved to Seattle in 1994 where she worked for EZ Communications both in sales and as GSM for KBKS-FM. Heeran returned to Vegas in 1998 as GSM for KMXB where she led that station?s sales effort for over 13 years and was promoted to D.O.S. CBS Radio in 2008. She was hired by Beasley Market Manager Tom Humm who she worked with at CBS Radio.

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