Being Local & Responsive

Recently, I took a few friends to the Jim Brickman concert in Wilkes Barre, PA. You may remember that Jim is a friend, and I normally go to his show when he is within driving distance. This trip was easy since the venue was about 15 miles from my apartment.

Anyway, the show was great as usual, and the audience reaction was fantastic. In fact, after Jim began to perform, even the men in the audience, who were probably dragged to the show by their wives or girlfriends, appeared to enjoy the performance. The fact that Anne Cochran, his singer, is as talented and good looking as she is, certainly helped!!!

After the show, as they usually do, both Jim and Anne came out to meet anyone who came to the show, something that you don’t see too often with popular entertainers. Following the “meet and greet,” Jim and I went to the lounge at the hotel where he was staying, for a few drinks and to catch up. Since I’ve never been shy about bringing up something that’s on my mind, I had to ask Jim about the “soft” ticket sales for the show. In fact, it looked as though they had only sold about 1/3 of the house. Jim’s response was a wakeup call that hit home for our industry.

Jim was obviously disappointed with sales, and told me that when he got to the venue, he found that there had been no comp tickets given away by the media partners, specifically the radio station that was one of the presenters. In fact, regardless of the fact that one of the top stations in the market was one of the media partners, they apparently hadn’t taken any ownership of the show.

Have we as an industry forgotten how to build audience and take ownership of opportunities in our markets?

What happened to local radio’s ability to take those comp tickets and use them to generate revenue from other clients, by selling them packages of advertising and giving them tickets to give away? What about the interviews we always did with artists coming to town, that we would play before one of their songs on our station? How about the promotions that we would normally do, giving away dinner before a show, where the artist would show up at even if it was just for coffee and dessert? Wasn’t this the way we built revenue, as well as the reputation of being a local, responsive medium?

That’s why I got into the business and what made us successful in the past. I have to believe that it would also help us now! It’s time to go back to the local hands-on type of service that made us such a viable medium in the first place…