.

Radio Advertising

Schulberg P. Radio advertising. – Lincolnwood, Illinois : NTC Business Books, 1995. – 241 p.

□ Contents

□ Foreword

□ Preface

□ Introduction

Foreword

by Charles Osgood

Radio is magic. Television is OK, but radio is magic. If television had been invented first and then radio had come along, people would think, "What a wonderful thing radio is! It's like television except that you don't have to look at it!" When I sign off my television newscasts by saying, "See you on the radio," it's my way of saying that radio is like television, but with better pictures. They haven't come out with a TV screen big enough, bright, clear and colorful enough to equal the capacity of the mind to create its own vivid images. This is vitally important to me because I spend most of my time telling news stories on the CBS Radio Network. What makes radio such a terrific "telling" medium also makes it a terrific "selling" medium. Nobody understood this better than Bob Schulberg.

Long before I ever met Bob, I used to steal from him regularly. He was the author of a fascinating and informative monthly newsletter called Tuned In. I would attack every issue with a Magic Marker and shamelessly appropriate material for my own speeches and presentations. I never thought of it as plagiarism. I considered it "research". I figured Bob wouldn't mind because all he wanted was to get the word out.

Well, that was what he wanted but it wasn't all he wanted, as this book clearly demonstrates. What I later found out about Bob when we became friends is that he was the one who understood how the radio business was structured and how it worked.

This changes over time, of course. And if Bob were still alive he would no doubt be putting out a new edition to incorporate the many changes that have taken place over the last few years. With his death radio lost a brilliant advocate and a good friend. Fortunately, Bob's gifted son Pete knows a lot about broadcasting too, both as a broadcast newsman and a newspaper journalist covering the media. Pete has picked up where his Dad left off, bringing the book up to date with a skill and thoroughness I know Bob would be proud of. Good writing runs in the Schulberg family. Cousin Budd Schulberg is the prize winning author of such classics as On the Waterfront and What Makes Sammy Run. Bob and Pete could have called this book What Makes Radio Run.

Some of my news colleagues don't like to think about what makes radio run. They regard the commercial advertising as that which pays the bills so that we, the so called "talent," can do what we do on the air. But it's just as true that broadcasts such as ours exist so that there will be an audience for advertisers to advertise to. Neither of us could exist without the other. In a sense, the advertiser delivers me to the listeners and I deliver the listener to the advertiser. That seems a fair enough bargain, as long as the listener knows the difference between being told something and being sold something.

But whether we are telling or selling, it is important to grasp the nature of the medium so we can do our jobs more effectively. Radio is magic all right. And the Schulbergs, Bob and Pete, explain how the magic works.

Preface

When my father sat down to write the original Radio Advertising, The Authoritative Handbook, he probably never dreamed that less than a decade later, it would require a brand new edition. And that his son would be the one to write it.

As the TV/Radio columnist for the Portland Oregonian, I find myself reporting with constant regularity the on-going communications revolution and the massive restructuring in the broadcasting industry. Indeed, the business of radio has experienced significant changes since 1989, the year Radio Advertising was first written. Government deregulation, industry consolidation, the explosion of syndicated programming, heightened competition, and burgeoning technology have altered the landscape considerably. As keen a student as Bob Schulberg was of radio advertising, even he would have been amazed how quickly it all happened.

In the year or so before he died in 1990, my father had heard from people all over the world, who had read his book and appreciated his knowledge and insight. I hope that by providing a look at some of the more recent developments in the radio industry, his book will continue to enlighten.

Of course, there is so much of the book that is as relevant now as it was then. Its structure is still sound and its premise valid. As my father wrote in his Preface:

This book is neither a textbook nor a manual for running a station. Its intent is to enlighten readers to radio's potential, to spark new thinking by advertisers and their agencies, to suggest specific techniques for effective radio advertising, and perhaps to raise a hackle or two among cohorts and competitors.

I see it as an overview of radio as an advertising medium–affirmative in its point of view, critical but not a critique, analytical but not an academic treatise.

Here is how it came to be written.

With an extensive background in the world of advertising agencies and radio, my father brought a special perspective to his book. For sixteen years, he served in various executive capacities for several advertising agencies in Los Angeles. His last advertising agency post had been a management supervisor at Ogilvy & Mather. In the Fall of 1975, he became the western manager of a business development department that CBS Radio was forming. Soon after that, he took a position at CBS Radio Spot Sales (now CBS Radio Representatives).

Upon joining CBS, my father was required to learn more about the workings of the radio business. "I consciously studied radio the way I would have boned up on a new client's business at an advertising agency," he wrote in the preface to his book. "As an agency account director, I had looked at the broadcast business from the outside in. As a radio marketer, I had to view it from the inside out. And the picture looked quite different from this changed perspective".

Eventually, he began sharing his accumulated knowledge in the form of a monthly newsletter called "Tune In". An old advertising agency colleague of my father's, John Miyauchi, suggested that with some cutting and pasting of his then ten year's worth of newsletters, the result would be a book about radio.

As it turned out, the cutting and pasting part was a delusion. But the idea to write a book wasn't. Although some of the material contained in this book appeared previously in different form in "Tuned In," my father wrote, "This volume is a fresh distillation of an advertising man's view of radio–its background, structure, strengths, warts and wonder".

Introduction

Paradox, thy name is Radio.

In 1948, when television was emerging as the new media champion, there were 2,612 commercial radio stations in the United States and commentators were less than optimistic about radio's prospects for the future.

"Television will eventually make radio as obsolete as the horse," wrote Time magazine.

"Radio's days in the big time seem numbered," suggested Newsweek.

"Radio: On the way out? Yes!" commented The New Republic.

By 1995, however, there were more than 11,700 radio stations whose signals crisscrossed the country–approximately 5,000 AM and 6,000 FM stations. Net radio revenues increased from $562 million in 1948, to almost $7 billion in 1987, to $10.6 billion in 1994. The medium's share of total advertising expenditures has risen as well. While television and magazines were enduring uncertain times during the 1980s, national advertisers were rediscovering the value of radio. Radio was hot again– alive, healthy, ubiquitous, and financially robust. And although radio advertising revenue took a dip in the early 1990s, the industry rebounded in a big way, measuring double-digit growth heading into the second half of the decade.

Yet Bill Stakelin, past president of the industry's trade association, the Radio Advertising Bureau, was compelled to state, "Radio still gets taken for granted. It's the Rodney Dangerfield of media". And Bill Tragos, chairman of TBWA Advertising, commented, "Radio is a new medium to some companies because it's been ignored for so long".

The Cinderella Medium

David Ogilvy himself put it succinctly: "Radio is the Cinderella medium," arid he was absolutely correct. The truth is most marketing and advertising executives–along with the account and media directors under them–perceive radio as a pale, thin relative of television.

This pervasive attitude works itself downward. Young marketing and advertising people usually are well grounded in the complexities of television but only a very few have either knowledge of or feelings about radio. Indeed, radio is much like the poor stepdaughter, wearing hand-me-downs and scrubbing the kitchen floor, while the ugly stepsisters are donning glamorous gowns for the ball.

But by wearing the right pair of glass slippers, radio–like Cinderella–can sparkle in its own right…"

The full text of the book can be found at bookstores, e-bookstores and libraries.

Вернуться к содержанию Каталога книг о рекламе, PR и СМИ.

See also:

Successful Radio and Television Advertising

Profitable Newspaper Advertising

Newspaper Advertising Sales

Books on Advertising

Books on PR

Books on Mass Media

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