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10 cents each. In ten days, 7,500 dimes had come in!
Since what promotes Uncle Si, promotes Levins, the trick is to get listeners to think of them as blood relatives. Levins has shopping bags made up with Uncle Si's picture, and fans create store traffic a-plenty to get them. Too, every Saturday is Uncle Si's day at the store, and we widely publicize these personal appearances of his.
But Levins doesn't stop there. The store runs a two column by six inch ad on the radio page of both Sunday newspapers published in Charleston, and every Levins ad used during the week carries mention of Uncle Si's Almanac.
Currently WCHS has in preparation an autobiography of Uncle Si which will be sold over the station, through West Virginia newspapers and the news-stands at 50 cents a copy. In / Been Around Here Seventy Odd Years, Uncle Si tells his life story and his favorite jokes in a fictional vein. Pictures of Uncle Si and other WCHS talent will help Levins enlarge its listening audience, help that audience identify Uncle Si with our store. Obviously we don't hold with the school of advertisers who feel that to build a radio personality is a waste of money, since it builds only the personality and not the advertiser!
Formerly, Levins sponsored a 30-minute interval of The Old Farm Hour, a two-hour hillbilly jamboree in the WCHS auditorium before a Friday night house of 2,000 people. It goes without saying that Uncle Si was a star performer in this series, and when transportation difficulties made it necessary to suspend The Old Farm Hour, Levins stayed with Uncle Si.
Each year, right after Thanksgiving Day, Levins goes on the air with a 30minute daily Santa Claus program which originates from its bargain basement. You'd recognize the man in the
whiskers and red suit in a jiffy; as you might suspect, it's Uncle Si. Last year the program brought in 9,000 letters from the boys and girls in this area. How did Levins like it? We've already signed up for the coming Christmas season!
There isn't any question of Uncle Si's versatility. Recently he emceed a WCHS one-shot Smokes for Yanks Radio Stage Shoiv. Each 50 cent admission bought one carton of cigarettes for our fighting men overseas. And it might be added that Uncle Si never makes a personal appearance without his make-up of white chin choppers and white hair, gold rimmed spectacles and hillbilly garb.
Uncle Si made his debut for Levins on New Year's Day, 1942, and it was a splendid way to start the New Year off on the*right foot. Uncle Si's Almanac is heard at 7:45 A.M. six days weekly, and on Friday at 7:30 P.M. Uncle Si handles the five minute morning show of songs, jokes, philosophy, occasional poem or guitar strumming, alone. Guest stars add variety to the Friday night quarterhour. It isn't an elaborate format, but it is a successful one.
And our formula is the same formula that any other successful radio advertiser must use. Given the proper program and an established radio personality, the advertiser need have no doubts about an audience. If this combination is adequately merchandised, sales follow in logical order. For Levins, radio has proved itself the advertising medium of today! And when Levins thinks of advertising, it thinks in terms of direct sales. 7 he program that does a selling job is also an institutional asset!
SEPTEMBER, 1943
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