Broadcasting Telecasting (Jan-Mar 1957)

TRAVEL: A $75 MILLION ACCOUNT WAITING TO BE SOLD BY RADIO-TV Barney O'Lavin runs a travel service in Fargo, N. D. He is an erstwhile broadcaster: from 1935 until 1946 (with time out for Marine service in World War II) he was with WD AY Fargo, and was general manager of that station. From 1946 until 1953 he operated an advertising agency in Fargo, then branched into the travel field. His remarks about the potential of travel advertising, recorded in an interview with B»T editors, could suggest new sales activity in that quarter. Q: Actually, you're a sort of triple-threat guy. You've sold time and you've bought time and now you're a specialist in the travel field. As I understand it, you feel there is a tremendous amount of untapped revenue for radio and television in that field. A: That's correct. I feel that travel advertising, the carriers especially, haven't been using radio very much but have been using a lot of newspapers and magazines. Q: How much would you estimate overall that the carriers spend in advertising? A: I'd say in the neighborhood of $75 million. The airlines spend about $43 million, mostly for newspaper and magazine space and I guess a small amount of that is devoted to radio and tv. [Editor's Note: PIB credits travel, hotel and resort advertising with $649,581 on tv networks in 1956.] Q: Does this $75 million figure go for domestic or foreign travel? A: It's both, it's all travel advertising, all carrier advertising. I'm not taking into consideration the hotels and the resorts and the various government tourist bureaus who are also becoming quite large spenders. Q: How much money is spent for travel each year? A: It is estimated at $5 billion. Q: Now how does your business break down? A: The travel business is just like anything else. In modern business today you have to have volume and you can't get it by selling individual tickets, airline or steamship, one at a time. You get your volume in group movements. It's no more work to set up arrangements for 50 people than it is for one. I've become a tour operator out of necessity. Q: How do you advertise your tours? A: To promote a tour, radio has been my best source of advertising. With radio you can describe to your prospects just what they're going to do and see if they take your tour. Yon can paint a word picture of what they're going to see, what it is going to cost them. I've asked some people whom I've had on trips. "Why did you go? Why are you with me?" And I've had so many of them say, "You made it sound so good." Q: What sort of copy do you use? A: I've been able to take a couple of radio stations in our area — WDAY in Fargo and WNAX in Yankton, which is near my Sioux City office — and I've been able to show them that a tour for their listeners is a good audience promotion vehicle for them. So I've really not organized it as an O'Lavin tour but as the radio station's own tour. Of course, I handle all the arrangements. We generally take someone from the station along and carry a tape recorder to interview these people while we're on the tour. This gives a lot of interesting, on-thespot comment that they can send back home for delayed broadcast. Q: And you'd call this the WDAY tour to the Eastern historic spots? Or the WNAX tour? A: That's right. Q: Based on the results you have achieved in the limited use of radio in your area, which is North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa and Nebraska, you feel that the carriers are overlooking a very important bet and also that the sales people in radio and television likewise have not exploited this thing? A: That's correct. It's easy to criticize, of course, and I try to make it in a constructive manner. But the newspapers and the magazines, I think, have jumped on the bandwagon very well in developing travel departments and travel editions. They realize that people are interested in travel, that it's good reading, it's interesting copy, it's something that so many people want to do and know about. So they have developed these travel departments and travel editions and naturally that attracts travel advertising because here's somebody doing something to promote travel. So they go to the prospective carrier advertiser and say, "Look, here's what we're doing. Why don't you buy an ad? We have this many readers." I think that radio and tv could do the very same thing by taking a certain period of time once a week or more frequently and aiming it right at the same audience and the same advertiser. Q: Like Wide, Wide World, for instance? A: That's a very good angle. Here's another thing, radio is so flexible and tv, of course, is becoming more flexible that they're natural media for picking up broadcasts here and there and going to remote corners right now which the printed media can't do. A recent issue of Travel News — that's the travel agents' trade paper — carried a media section which listed about 100 newspapers and 70 magazines with regular or special travel sections or editions. It may or may not be significant that no radio or tv stations or networks were listed. Q: Do you think primarily if this as a local promotion for radio and television stations in cities all over the country or do you think of it primarily as being sold on a national basis? A: Well, you have two different things here. You have the international carrier that's going all over the world and the domestic carrier that's just within the United States but still nationwide and then you have the feeder lines that are just out in certain areas. So you have regional spot business, you have national spot and complete network coverage possibilities. Q: Do you envision the job as being mainly to get more people to travel? A: That's the big job. We in the travel business feel we are competing for that surplus dollar and we're trying to get it spent for a trip rather than a new tv set or a car. There are two big jobs to do: First, to create the desire to travel and then direct them to the carrier, regardless of what type it is. Q. Do you think primarily of this as a chance for somebody like you to get in and promote tours from your locality and to create new business right there? A: I've found that you can sell a trip to a person who had absolutely no intention of going. I've done it. They listened and said, "Well, that sounds like a good idea." They have the time and the money so it's just a matter of convincing them that they ought to do this instead of buying a new automobile. Once we get them started I find that there are many, many repeat customers because they find that it's carefree and it's easy. So that's what makes the ball roll. Q: If you were again in the commercial department of a broadcasting station, what exactly would you do to go after this travel business? A: It's very easy to give advice but here it is anyway. I'd say it applies to stations in large cities and to networks. To start with, I'd develop a program once a week devoted to travel, appoint a travel editor to handle it, and have this travel editor do some travelling. I'm sure that I don't have to spell out any further how a broadcaster should build his show. Then get out calling on the carriers, tourist bureaus, resorts, etc., to sell it. Collectively the association [RAB, TvB] also can do a job of selling their media. Q: If RAB and TvB could stimulate the idea of using radio and tv as media to promote travel, then you could make a sale at the local level through their national promotion. A: Yes. Now it's up to somebody to push it some more, to get some of that dough. Broadcasting • Telecasting March 18, 1957 • Page 121