Radio showmanship (Jan-Dec 1947)

In answer to a long felt need and hundreds of requests for a formula for successful Retail Radio Broadcasting, Enid Day of the Davison-Paxon Company, Atlanta, Georgia, has written that formula under the title RADIO FOR RETAIL MERCHANTS. Enid Day's radio program over WSB has been cited for many years as one of the outstanding personality type programs in retail store radio. Pioneering in this field when women announcers on the air were as scarce as women pilots in the air, she set the pattern for successful retail store radio and has deviated little from that original pattern. RADIO FOR RETAIL MERCHANTS, scheduled for Fall publication by Fairchild Publishers, Incorported, deals not only with how to write and produce successful retail store programs, but also with the responsibility of the sponsor in the success of radio as an advertising medium. We quote an excerpt from one chapter of the forthcoming book. unrelated those items may be each to the other, so that perfect continuity may be kept throughout the program. Program belongs to listeners But to inject the kind of variety in a program plan over a long period of time requires more than a knowledge of how to write and deliver good sales copy over the air. It calls for a thorough course in the study of human nature. It goes without saying that the sales type of program must also be entertaining to those who hear it. Programs not designed to sell must also be entertaining. A retail concern which has made, or desires to make a place for itself as an institution in the community it serves, has a good ally in radio, for a radio program may so be an institution in the life of the community as well as a medium of sale. To accomplish this, people must be made to feel that the program belongs as much to them as it does to the sponsor. Lack of ability to accomplish this one thing often accounts for failure of a radio program to fill the place the sponsor intended it to fill when he signed on the dotted line. Yet the answer to that problem is simple. Customers are people. People like to hear about themselves, their projects, their hobbies. They like to hear about anything that touches their lives and hopes and dreams. They like programs that pay tribute to things in which they are personally interested, and they also like programs that give them an opportunity to hear people in whom they are interested, yet may never have an opportunity to meet. One of the best ways to inject variety in a program pattern is to intersperse sales programs with interviews. Those interviewed may range in prominence and interest from lion tamers to ambassadors, stars of stage or screen, sportsmen, authors, and home town boys made good. Other variety programs may deal with civic events, national fund drives, salutes to neighboring cities and towns in a trading area— employee and employer relations, new industries, book reviews, scientific discoveries, merchandise quiz programs, and a hundred other subjects which may be classed as audience participation, educational, or human interest types. Educational medium, too A radio program has a remarkable opportunity as an educational medium, not only in relation to schools and colleges, but in relation to the education of a customer, in teaching that customer to buy more wisely. The formula for a well rounded radio program designed to draw new customers while it clings to old customers who have long been friends AUGUST, 1 947 • 263 •