U. S. Radio (Jan-Dec 1959)

What Stations Want \ To Know About Time Buying Five categories of questions that ask: 'How are buys made?' What's on the mind of radio station management today? For the advertiser or agency who wants to be really attuned to the media he buys, the answers are important. It you know what questions the station man has, you're in 53 KEY QUESTIONS Programming /. How much actual research into a station's program image is done before making a buy? 2. W hat is your feeling with regard to the trend toward specialization of radio station programming? 3. Do you feel station person(dities are doing an effective selling job? How could they improve? 4. I do the adult audience bit in musical programming. Are timebuyers hypocrites when they salute me for playing music they personally prefer and then buy the r&r station? 5. Why won't more agencies allow us leeway in producing local commercials, that is. those of us nith major facilities in big markets. 6. IT hat are we as stations not doing that will make some of our so-called marginal periods more attractive to advertisers? 7. New York radio stations are way behind the times in my opinion so buyers don't hear the fresh new ideas we're thinking up in the Southwest. Don't you think that agencies ought to have a "new radio ideas" meeting once a month to familiarize themselves with what's going on elsewhere? Ratings 1. Do most agencies par much attention to station cumulative audiences in their buying? Our station reaches 72 percent of all the families in our market each week. Pulse says, which is better than any other medium. 2. Are media buyers relying less on audience index surveys u'here other market data is available? 3. Lots of agency timebuyers say in print that ratings aren't the reason they buy one station over the other. I find that ratings are 90 percent of the reason we don't get business. What's the real story? 4. I'm in a market of 50,000. How often should I have an audience survey made to assure buyers that they are getting frequent enough information about audience? 5. We received nearly 100,000 pieces of mail in one month. Our ratings in the market are still second though. How much weight would you give this huge audience response when you evaluate the stations in our market of less than 400,000? 6. We serve a big suburban market and are dominant in it. The market is big enough to rank in the top 40 by itself. Other stations from still larger cities get in there. Is there any hope for us getting national business, which now seems to go mostly to the stations in other cities? Media and Market Planning 1. One of the things ice can't understand about spot buying is that the advertiser may buy 400 markets for newspaper but only 50 for radio. What's the thinking that goes on in the agency that makes for this situation? 2. The average person spends about a half hour or more reading the daily newspaper. W ithin this half hour they are often exposed to several ads of competing products — many instances five or six or more. If time is such an important factor in "protection," why isn't more said about newspaper multiadvertising impressions all within a brief half hour? 3. Do you have some rule of thumb for comparing the relative merits of newspapers and radio in a market? For instance, do you have a list of markets where because newspaper coverage is low you must buy radio? 4. When radio produces results with a saturation spot campaign— why don't more clients continue with a smaller schedule of spots on a regular or permanent basis? 5. In big markets like ours ive feel that the account executive ought to participate in discussions with us as well as the media buyers. W hen a deal costs $25,000. shouldn't the account man get into the act more? 6. How complete are buyer's instructions on marketing factors on product — who buys? peak shopping periods? 7. What is the length of most market lists that your agency buys? I'm in a market that ranks about 75th and most national spot buys don't seem to filter down to our level. 8. Is the trend toward buying a spread of stations in big markets — three or four that add up to 25 to 35 percent share of the audience — or in the direction of one big station? 9. It is our contention that many "smaller market" stations actually serve an audience larger than many metropolitan stations where the pie is cut so thin. Hoiv to get this across for national business? 10. Both in network and spot ive seem to have low cost per thousands, lower than any other media. So on a figures basis 84 U. S. RADIO • Januar\' 1959