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CIVIC CLUl
AIR FAX: Station garners local support with school sports play-by-play. Broadcast: November 5, 1949 Station: WKDN, Camden, N. J. Sponsor: Participating Power: 1,000 watts Population: 500,000
One of the neatest switches in the history of time sales occurred on Saturday, November 5. The place was Moorestown, N. J.; the occasion was the annual Moorestown-Palmyra football game.
Edwin W. Tucker, Program Director for station WKDN in Camden, N. J., has the programming problem confronting any small station on the fringe of a metropolitan area, in this case Philadelphia. The answer to this, as he saw it, was to have the same function as a local newspaper—heavy coverage of local events. Capitalizing on this he selected a football game between two of the region's outstanding high-schools. The plan, according to Major Ranulf Compton, President of the South Jersey Broadcasting Corporation and Station WKDN, seemed tailor-made for sports-conscious South New Jersey.
Because the studios and transmitter of WKDN are located some 12 miles from Moorestown, necessitating the cost of lines, Tucker realized that this cost, plus that of talent and air time would be excessive for the type of sponsor he was interested in obtaining. Consequently he devised a participating plan for six Moorestown merchants.
But at this point he carried the idea from a standard community promotion
plan, to what Radio Showmanship considers one of the smartest station-selling plans of the year.
The idea of giving a small-town the same quality of radio coverage commonly thought to be obtainable only in big cities, and doing it on a participating basis is not unique. But — when a civic group in the small town offers to assist the station in selling the time, the plan becomes exceptional.
Since the end of World War II, Moorestown has been raising funds to build an athletic memorial to honor the sacrifices of local men. The project, as conceived, would be a place for athletics of all kinds including baseball, football, and track. Naturally such an undertaking was expensive for a small community, and there was always need for additional funds.
Motivating force behind the campaign to raise funds for the memorial has been the Moorestown Township Memorial Athletic Field Association, a group formed by the local Lion's Club.
Realizing that such a need for additional funds was always present, Tucker offered the following plan to the Memorial Association. Station WKDN would, he said, give to the Association one half of the profits they received from this broadcast.
Since the offer was made on a philanthropic basis, Tucker was in no way prepared for the reception it got from the Association. They, and the Lion's Club agreed to help WKDN sell however many participating sponsors needed to put over the program.
The result was that the station had no difficulty lining up six sponsors. But even more important, none of these six had ever used radio advertising before. All six
RADIO SHOWMANSHIP