Radio showmanship (Jan-Dec 1949)

BANKS ON THE AIR Remarks at opening of Clinic Session on Radio by Daniel W. Hogan, Jr., Vice President, City National Bank and Trust Company, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. What is the^position of radio as an advertising medium for banks? Can we go so far as to class radio second to newspaper as an effective means of getting a bank's message over to the*public? A recent issue of Chemical Bank and Trust Company's "Trends" carried a paragraph on "Leisure Time" stating: "The Book Manufacturing Institute recently commissioned Henry C. Link and H. A. Hopf to find how the public divides its leisure time among five activities — radio listening, moviegoing, and newspaper, magazine, and book reading. The survey revealed that 49 per cent of American leisure time in these categories is spent listening to the radio. Newspapers get 21 per cent. Magazine reading and moviegoing get 1 1 per cent each. Book reading gets only 8 per cent." Likewise, last month, Harris, Uphan & Company published a story on "Blue Mondays" in their "Market Review": "Ever since the Berlin situation began to get tense, the stock market has had a difficult time on Mondays. Since the first of June it has declined during 14 Monday sessions and rallied during only three. Other days of the week have shown a better record of 36 advances and 29 declines. There is more than a little suspicion that the Sunday radio commentators, in dramatizing and exaggerating the war scares, have had something to do with these Monday Blues." If radio receives such a large preference of the public's leisure time, and even affects the stock market, it would seem that radio is pretty fundamental in American living and should, by all means, occupy the high place it does in selling merchandise. And selling service, you must realize, is no different from selling merchandise. That's where the bank comes in! But not every bank, not even every promotionminded bank, can use radio, because each individual advertising program is governed by local circumstances. For instance, rates of metropolitan radio stations are necessarily high, prohibitively so except for the very large budget. Likewise, competitive talent costs a lot of money and so do spot announcements with network adjacencies. On the other hand, it is quite possible that the enormous circulation might be worth the expenditure to a bank offering services with a mass appeal. Furthermore, some banks cannot locate the right type of program, or the proper slot, or perhaps their stations may not have an availability, or they just might not be sold on radio. Banks which have used radio consistently know what kind of a job it can do if properly harnessed! But what can we tell the banker who has only dabbled with radio or who has only an academic interest in its sales ability? What suggestions can we make to help him determine whether or not he should buy radio time? In the first place, radio advertising has approximately the scope of newspaper ad (Continued on Page 30) 10 RADIO SHOWMANSHIP