This comment has stuck with me ever since my conversation in February with Jason Dixon. Jason, Director of Sports Programming at SiriusXM, was talking to me about the way listeners consume audio. Jason said, “Like promos–we love making a great promo. You know what a promo is to a listener? A commercial, an interruption of the content they want.”
I have thought about this a lot. As audiophiles/radio people we do love making a great promo–the writing, the sound, the voice, the music, but as Jason aptly pointed out–listeners just hear it as another commercial. An interruption. So as sports radio programmers, how do we promote shows, special events, play by play, without using recorded promos?
Live Reads
This is a pretty standard way around the recorded promo. Typically you will hear these as part of sports talk shows or at the end of a sports update or news/traffic report. It relays the info and depending on the host or anchor, will provide varying degrees of enthusiasm.
Guest Spots
If your show has a big guest or contest later in the day, a live guest spot is probably the best way to promote it and get tune in from the audience. This can also be tricky territory for the PD as many hosts think their own show is the only show that matters on the station or they are too insecure to promote something big on another show. This takes strong and early communication by the PD. The PD needs to listen and understand the concerns that the insecure host has and to explain that the guest spots will also be used to promote big things on their show as well.
If the item to be promoted is big enough, set up guest spots on other stations in your company’s cluster. Additionally, if you are a flagship station, during live play by play would be a great spot to be in the booth for a few minutes or half an inning for baseball to promote the event or guest.
Social Media
If your hosts have done a good job building a big social media following, this is a natural place for something big to be promoted. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, wherever people are, let them know what’s coming up and when.
Recording a video promoting what’s coming up is a great way to send your message out via social media. If it’s a big time guest, coordinate with the guest or team/school to see if they will tweet out the appearance or, at least, retweet/share the social media promotion.
Push Notifications
For your loyal listener club or fans who have signed up for text notifications, a push notification is a great way to communicate big events to your listeners. The key, as with social media posts, is to make sure you don’t overdo it. Promote the big things. If a sports writer (no offense) is coming on your afternoon show at 405pm, there’s no need for massive promotion or a text message.
The removal of your programming promo slots from your broadcast clock only helps if that time is replaced by show programming time. If you give those slots to ad sales, you are just adding an ad in place of a promo, replacing one interruption with another. Instead, give your fans what they want–more of your great sports programming while finding other ways to promote special programming and shows.
Matt Fishman is a former columnist for BSM. The current PD of ESPN Cleveland has a lengthy resume in sports radio programming. His career stops include SiriusXM, 670 The Score in Chicago, and 610 Sports in Kansas City. You can follow him on Twitter @FatMishman20 or you can email him at FishmanSolutions@gmail.com.
