Sponsor (July-Dec 1955)

TIMEBUYING BASICS vertisers who share network programs. There are advertisers who buy segments of programs in which you are entitled to a minute of commercial time. To answer your question, network radio may very well be getting closer to a spot than it was before. Q. How many networks can the United States really support in radio, in television? A. <From Tom McDermott) From my viewpoint — and this may sound like a silly answer, but I don't mean it to be that way — there will be as many radio and tv networks as American advertisers find it profitable to support. We tend to think of major networks but a lot of us buyers are acutely aware of the fact that there is a Collegiate Radio Network and the Keystone Network and there are several operations of stations that are organized in network fashion to deliver service and as long as advertisers find that that kind of operation produces for them efficiently those networks will remain in effect. I don't think anybody can say there will be one network or three or how many. Q. What are the requirements of a station to become basically interconnected on a network; what are the requirements for other classifications? A. (From John Karol) I suppose that means tv, but basically it is the same thing in radio as in tv. The size of market determines that. The radio network was set up for covering broadly the northeastern half of the U. S.. and most basic network cities are of 100,000 population or more. Q. How important are regional networks, like Yankee, Don Lee? A. (From Jim Luce) I think it depends on the problem. If you get an advertiser, and he is in New England only, or he wants to use New England, I think all you can do is compare Yankee vs. programs available on each vs. the market that you want to cover. Maybe you just want to cover Boston. There is no pat answer to it, but certainly regionals have filled a very valuable need, more so in some areas than in others, because in certain other areas where there are regionals they are not as identifiable. They are just combination discount, that is all they are. I don't think they serve much purpose beyond that, but we love them because we like to save money. If we can save money, we may use them where appropriate. * * * Seminar 7. CAN YOU DO BETTER WITH SPOT? Speakers: Kevin Sweeney, president, Radio Advertising Bureau; Ned Midgely, media supervisor, Ted Bates. Moderator was Frank Pellegrin, v. p., H-R Representatives. WHY YOU DO BETTER WITH SPOT RADIO KEVIN SWEENEY: Let me define the sidelines I am going to run down. Some of what I say that spot radio can do probably applies to spot television, but I am going to talk only about spot radio, and why it is better than any other advertising media you can buy when you are buying markets selectively. Weather, local competition, distribution, local folkways, legislation, percapita income, these and a dozen other factors materially affecting sales must also affect advertising. I hesitate to even cite examples of why you may have to advertise PAGE 26 selectively, except that some of us came directly from Princeton or Stephens without ever seeing the outside world in which the following can occur: 1. You have a grocery specialty which is a sensation except in a market where A & P and Kroger have all the grocery business, and the buyers of those chains are singularly unimpressed by your claims. Result: no distribution. Sometimes it is better to go around a market like that until they, too, see the vision. 2. Your product's sales curve follows temperature. When it is hot or cold or even wet, things happen to your product. Well, obviously, if it is 70 degrees in one market and 10 degrees in another, there will be different sales potentials and different advertising may be indicated. 3. In several major markets you run into entrenched local competition — the silly jerks prefer the product their papa bought for 80 years. Sometimes it takes time to dig them out, depending on the bravado of the client, it may indicate far heavier expenditures than normal or none. Obviously, a medium with a national pattern is not indicated there. These are the kinds of problems where selective marketing is sometimes indicated, and when it is indicated you can do the advertising job better — better than any other medium with spot radio. Here are the reasons why. First of all — and in most of these cases I will eliminate the basic advantages which I feel that radio has and concentrate on the selective marketing aspect of this story — spot trades on one of radio's basic advantages when compared with other selective advertising tools in that it reaches all the people. The purchasing power now lies with all the people, 100% of the families. With spot you can talk to all of them because radio is the only medium that gives you access to them. And most important when you are weighing the major selective media, the only medium that gets you out into the suburbs, the whole vast complex of cities, small towns, and rural areas that surround the great markets of America. You reach out there easily with metropolitan radio stations with the same force and vigor. With other selective media, your penetration, coverage or whatever you dub it falls to a half, a third, a sixth even of what you get in the city. Second, spot radio allows you to engineer an advertising budget if you are going to relate it to sales, because it provides multiple choice of facilities. In markets like Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Toledo, Akron, and to a lesser degree, in hundreds of other areas, there is far less opportunity to make sales potential and advertising budget mesh in an estimate because in other media there is such limited access to facilities — which in English means there is only one newspaper. Maybe you can afford to spend only $5,000 in the market, but there is no way of buying what you need in these markets except through radio for less than double that amount. Third, advertising is becoming a more exact science — or at least we are trying. And the old shotgun technique of advertising at the whole market is giving way to reaching the right people within a market. If your product is beer, it's men you want. They select the brand. If it is such a product that hides skin blemishes, it is girls and women 12 to 35. (After that they have either captured a guy or to hell with it.) So when you advertise in St. Louis or Dallas or Houston or Minneapolis, it is not the concept of advertising to the entire market. That went out with button shoes. It is the idea of advertising to the people within the market who will respond frequently enough to make your advertising profitable. Now, radio's wealth of facilities — its terrific smorgasbord of programing — enables you to single out in each of these markets just the group that you want, and while it would be pretty expansive of me to say there is no waste, there is less than in any other selective medium by far. Fourth there is no question that in many cities it is important to localize your message. Any type of radio provides you with localization equal to that provided by