I’m taking this week’s column to share thoughts on a few notable, completely unrelated, articles that crossed my path last week. They involve Dr. Demento, NBC Sports and listener marketing.
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish Heads
If you missed the news reported by AV Club, the world’s weirdest DJ, Dr. Demento ended his show after 55 years. For anyone not familiar with him, the Dr. Demento show focused on novelty songs, comedy and unusual recording and he played a major role in making “Weird Al” Yankovic famous. His show was syndicated for broadcast from 1978 until 2010 and continued online until last weekend.
He ended the show in style with a three and half hour tour-de-force counting down the “top 40 most demanded demented discs and tapes” from his lengthy career. Some of my favorites from the list include: “Wet Dream” by Kip Adotta; “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” by Julie Brown; and “The Time Warp” from Rocky Horror. You can see the whole list here.
Even if you are too young to have encountered Dr. Demento, find a minute on the air to play a few songs in honor of his last show. It’s a great opportunity to pay tribute to a true legend of the business and give your listeners a good laugh. It’s something only our formats can and should do.
In Praise of Appointment Listening (Viewing)
The Sunday Scaries are a real thing, and they get worse at night. No one likes going back to work and facing the real world on Monday morning. If you are a sports fan, NBC is doing their best to help you get through.
Already the home of Sunday Night Football, when football season winds down the network will begin airing Sunday Night Basketball and now with ESPN moving on from its deal with Major League Baseball, NBC will take over as the leagues’ exclusive Sunday night partner for the next three years.
According to an article in Awful Announcing, NBC Sports President Rick Cordella hopes this will lead to habitual viewing because sports fans will know there is always something to watch Sunday night on NBC.
It’s a great reminder that people are creatures of habit. If NBC can own Sunday night in the mind of a sports fan, what can you do to own a spot in the week with your listeners?
Make Your Listeners Your Marketing
I know, I know, I used the M-word. Nobody has budgets for marketing. But that doesn’t change the fact that if we don’t market our brands they won’t be top of mind and if consumers forget about us amidst all the media choices they have today we’re going to be in big trouble.
Enter Hubspot with a lengthy post by Sophie Miller about how brands need to stop overlooking their most powerful influencers: their customers or in our case, our listeners. The focus of the article is about how many brands are cutting back or outright giving up on using influencers to promote their products and instead turning to their most passionate evangelists, their customers.
Some of the benefits they list include authentic, relatable content, messaging that accurately reflects the people who use your brand, the potential for real word-of-mouth sharing, increased loyalty in the listeners you work with.
Now let’s be honest, I don’t know if this works for every station or format. Top 40 listeners aren’t always very loyal, Alternative listeners are probably too cool to lend you their voice, Adult Contemporary listeners just aren’t that engaged. Classic Rock and Hits are more uniquely positioned than most to do this. Our listeners love our vibe, and they love our music. Let’s lean in and let them help us.
To effectively roll out listener-based marketing Miller recommends several steps including: taking time to decide ahead of time how you want to involve listeners; making it easy for them to communicate with the station; asking the listeners how they would promote your station; and finding ways to reward people who participate because even if it’s something small, the acknowledgement can lead to even more devotion.
Finally, this week, as I was putting the finishing touches on this post I found out that Ace Frehley has passed. While KISS isn’t the biggest Classic Rock artist, if you haven’t already, he should be acknowledged on the air. If you are looking for suggestions on how to deal with artists passing away, I wrote about it here. And for all of us who are fans, here’s “Cold Gin” the only song that Ace wrote for the band’s debut album. with Ace singing a verse.
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Mike Stern is a Classic Rock columnist and Features writer for Barrett Media. He has been with Jacobs Media consulting stations in the Classic Rock, Rock, Alternative and AAA world for more than a decade. Prior to that he programmed stations in Chicago, Detroit, Denver Las Vegas and other markets. He also worked as News/Talk Editor for Radio and Records, wrote about Top 40 Radio for Billboard Magazine and had his own radio talent coaching business called Talent Mechanic.
hi mike. good article. I was the associate producer of the Doctor Demento show for the Westwood One companies all through the 1980s.
the headline that you posted got me. what these three things have to do with each other. well you missed a couple things that you wouldn’t probably know about but Dr demento’s real name is Barret Hansen….apparently you work for Barret media…. and Westwood One, Dr Demento’s syndicator, bought NBC radio in the late 1980s. including NBC Sports on radio.