|
KOL Strategy Rick Richardson
Programming
1) Consistent Call Letters - KOL /not/ KKOL (with increased frequency)
a) Call Letter Consistency - Although we have made progress with this we still need to “search and destroy” all left-over KKOL mentions and visuals. The web address should always be “1300kol.com” and not “kkol.com”. We still need to create the “@1300kol.com” e-mail and stop using the “@kkol.com” e-mail. KKOL needs to be removed from stationary, business cards, all sales information, all in-office forms and billing forms. The only place that KKOL should exist is on FCC required usage information. However, even our legal ID can be re-cut to reflect our “K-O-L” image identifier (ie: “KKOL Seattle is Newstalk 1300 K-O-L Where Your Opinion Counts, a service of Salem Communications”). We should leave no confusion as to what our call letters are.
What difference does it make?
i) Name recognition for station rating services (Arbitron). Our consistency with call-letters will strengthen responses for KOL. We do not want people saying “It was K-K something” K-O-L is simple and easy to remember.
ii) K-O-L has an important history in Seattle Radio. As one of Seattle’s first radio stations, and a station that was at the top of the Seattle radio market in the 1960’s, the K-O-L call letters carry a familiar quality that is of benefit to us.
iii) The double Ks can be easily made into triple Ks by the liberal community to attack our conservative views. We do not want K-K-KOL as an identifier. See the quote below from “Blather Watch”.
Bather Watch / August 03, 2005 Salem’s Dennis Siopora told us last week they probably wouldn’t be ready to pump it up on KKOL until the last quarter of next year. (Is it just us, or does anyone else think KKOL has rather unfortunate k-k-kall letters for a right wing station?)
b) Call Letter Frequency – We have increased our call letter frequency from about five times an hour to about 20 times an hour during Morning Drive time. We still need to increase our frequency throughout all day-parts, including weekends (when ever possible).
c) “On-Time Traffic” – We have adopted the slogan “K-O-L On-Time Traffic” for our traffic reports to create another familiar identifier for the station.
3) Build Morning Drive Listenership - signage and cross promotion
a) Laura Ingraham - We will initially concentrate building our listenership in the day-part we have the most likelihood of making progress in, and move out from that point. Currently our strongest day-part is Mornings. The reason for this is Morning Drive is focused primarily on information and entertainment. The cume listenership is higher, and the TSL is generally lower. The structure and style of the Laura Ingraham program lends itself to do well competitively under these conditions. We want to have one day-part that we focus our efforts on to be sure we have something that people will want to come back to and also sample our other day-parts from.
b) Beginning Morning Drive at 5:00am - It is imperative to begin Morning Drive at 5:00am. The Seattle commute is well under way by 5:00am, and both of our competitors begin at this time. The two other conservative talk stations in Seattle are KVI and KTTH. KVI has has consistently started its morning show with Kirby Wilbur at 5:00am. At KTTH Sitman and Boze also begin their show at five. However, when Mike Seigel was hosting that Morning Drive slot, the show began at 6:00am. This, among other factors, lost listenership because KVI had already begun their morning show an hour earlier. Since the Laura Ingraham Show is a nationally syndicated program we have two options.
1) Air a compelling one hour feature in the 5:00 hour. KTTH had little success with this approach. They had David Boze, Mike Seigel’s producer, cover the first hour. The appearance was that Boze was filling time till the host got in. It was not featured and promoted well as a separate program. If KOL used this strategy, I would suggest an up-tempo (crazy at times) local one-hour news block called simply “The 5:00 News”. The advantage would be to have something salable and local with plenty of avail space to start out Morning Drive. The disadvantage of this is the time, attention, and extra expense needed to do the quality program that we would need to produce in order to achieve the results we would want.
2) An easier solution would be to air the pre-feed of the Laura Ingraham show. The Laura Ingraham show re-airs the last hour of the previous day in the 5:00 hour. Although this is a re-run, since morning TSL is about 17 minutes, we would not have many listeners who are hearing the same show over again, and we will begin our news and traffic reporting at this time. Our biggest weakness is that our show is not local. We must, through our traffic, news and transition liners, create as local of a sound as we can. Our success with this objective will determine our overall success in this day-part.
c) Signage – Obviously any paid signage (as in Bus Boards and Billboards) will increase our cume listenership. Although it can be expensive, it is also effective. We should not cut corners if we are able to go this route. A poorly composed piece of advertising may do as much harm as good. The artwork itself should make people take a second look and WANT to listen. However, if there is no funding available for paid signage, we still need to use signage through publicity and gorilla promotions tactics to increase our cume.
d) Cross Promotion – We will, for a period of time, sound like “the Laura Ingraham station” because we will be heavily cross promoting Morning Drive. Our strategy is to drive all of OUR listeners to Morning Drive, thereby increasing that day-part as much as we can through our own listeners. From that point we can turn our focus to other shows and day-parts as they develop.
4) Develop Local Program(s)
a) Weekends and/or Feature Host - Our easiest and quickest way to establish a local presence is to develop a local weekend host that can focus on local politics and make public appearances for KOL. An alternative would be to have minute editorials/features run a couple of places a day. No matter how we do this, establishing a local person to represent the station will be highly advantages.
b) Afternoon Drive – This is the day-part with the most potential and the day-part that our competition is the weakest. Afternoons are where local political activism works the best. Currently KVI has Brian Suits in the afternoon. Although he is local, he does not have the political activism ability that either John Carlson or Mike Siegel had in this position. KTTH is airing Michael Savage in the afternoon. Savage is a national host without a broad-based appeal.
c) Mike Siegel – After making several recent poor career choices, Siegel is in a position to “prove himself” to be the king of Seattle talk radio activism he once was. The buzz that Siegel would bring to KOL will increase revenue to the entire station. The proposed plan will be to begin Siegel as a weekend show for a “proving” period of time and then to Afternoons.
d) Rabbi Daniel Lapin – Rabbi Lapin’s strength as a communicator is in delivering bits of wisdom. He is currently doing a weekend show for a San Francisco station. So far the company has been unwilling to entertain the idea of simulcasting the show, but I understand the station may be sold, and that possibility might be in the future. However, having a one minute editorial/commentary would establish his presence on the station allowing us to utilize him in public appearance situations.
e) Peter Weisebach – Weisebach is another former KVI talk show host. He would not create the “buzz” that Siegel would, but he is a talented host. However, he did about half of his shows from his home studio, (when he was at KVI) making him seem less a part of the station “team”.
5) News Department / Public Affairs, Elections and Emergencies
a) News - KOL will air a one minute national newscast at the top of every hour, followed by a one minute local newscast throughout the day (5am - 7pm). Mornings and afternoons we will also air news at the bottom of the hour. Our newscasts should be “in-house” both to insure quality and ability to cover elections, disasters, or any other event that requires extended coverage. It is also good to build a relationship with local officials and community leaders. Metro News will not be able to deliver extended news coverage, does not include actualities in their newscast, and cannot take the time to do any more than rip and read. Metro DOES, however do an excellent job of reporting traffic and should be retained to do so.
b) Public Affairs – KOL will produce a weekly half hour public affairs program, “The Pulse of Puget Sound”, to air early Sunday Mornings. This show will, in addition, be aired in one-minute features throughout the previous week of its airing to promote the full program.
c) Elections and Emergencies – Whenever there are elections or emergencies/disasters listenership spikes for news-talk stations (if they are covering the event adequately). In addition, the audience will stay with the station for a period of time after the initial news event.
d) Susan Michaels – Susan has been a Seattle Newsperson for the past 18 years on stations including KASY, KMGI, KIXI, Star 101.5, KVI, and KOMO. In addition she has been the Public Affairs Director for Fisher Broadcasting for over 10 years. Her experience and ability will give tremendous credibility to KOL news.
Public Interest/Service
I propose that KOL become a real “grass-roots” activist by supporting a number of “Neighbor to Neighbor” programs. Block watch, block parties, learning CPR from your local fire departments, and just getting to know your neighbors would be our focus of involvement throughout the year. Creating a better society begins with one person doing something as simple as inviting his neighbor over for dinner.
Promotions
1) Listen at Work – One of the simplest promotions to begin with is a “listen at work” promotion. Here is how it works:
There is a cold-call challenge to the salespeople. We have counter tents (see attached) that the sales people will take with them as they go to new businesses. They talk about the station going to 50,000 watts, and that they are trying to increase awareness of our new improved reach. If the business would be willing to put our little tent on their counter, we will mention their business on the air. AND if they hear their name mentioned on the air and call us up within 13 minutes, their company will win a station coffee break (we bring them coffee and doughnuts). We will give something to sales people who make the most cold-calls, bringing back a list of business for us to mention on the air. We also will reward the salespeople for a second call to these businesses to do a presentation of KOL.
We now have a list of businesses that we can thank for listening. We make promos and begin the contest and say you have 13 minutes to call us up for a complimentary KOL coffee break. Whether we have anyone call or not doesn’t matter. We solicit other businesses to let us know that they are listening at work, promote the web-site streaming and in turn we create the image of lots of listeners. We can see if Top pot Doughnuts will provide the coffee break, in turn for mentioning them in our promos.
Objectives a) Sales people will distribute a minimum total of 100 KOL counter tents per week for five weeks. (500 Total) b) Listen at Work promos will play for one week saying “let us know if you listen at work”. c) The second week we will thank a different businesses for listening every hour of the day, 7am to 6pm, giving 13 minute to call in. d) By promoting the web-site on the promos, increase our on-line listening by at least 100%
This Promotion will run for a period of 2 months (January and February)
2) Display Our Call-Letters – In this promotion listeners are again asked to “help us out”.
They are asked to legally display our frequency and call letters (AM 1300 KOL) and submit a photo via e-mail. We will post the contestants displays on the website. We will encourage youth groups and others to compete. We can have people vote for their favorite call letter display and then we will pick the winners of various categories (including “peoples choice”). The grand prize winner gets $1300.00 and/or something else that will encourage contestants to enter.
Objectives a) Two have at least 2 prominently displayed Listener Entrees. (that commuters will be able to see) b) Have at least 2 youth/church groups participate. c) Have at least 500 people vote on-line for people’s choice.
This Promotion will run for a period of 2 months (March and April)
3) The KOL Class Reunion – This will be the celebration of KOLs 85 year anniversary at the end of May.
We will promote it as a class reunion, bringing together some of the KOL legends from the past, and introducing one or two from the present. This will not be a speaking event, rather, it will be a meet and greet with maybe dinner and dancing. We will sell tickets and give many away on the air. This will emphasize the great heritage that KOL has, while allowing us to introduce the new KOL.
Objectives a) Get Newspaper coverage (at least one story). b) Have at least 300 people attend the event. c) Have a video presentation that establishes KOLs heritage, promotes our 50,000 watt status and introduces our new line-up.
This Promotion will run for a period of 1 month (May)
3) Gorilla Promotions Team – a group of young interns equipped with banners, flyers, and whatever else we can supply them to promote the station and also help with our community service projects.
4) Bring in National Hosts for Events – This will be a speaking event with one or more of our talk show hosts.
We can do it either as a larger annual forum event with many speakers or a speaker series with individual speakers for a number of events. I would prefer the series. 5) Take Ownership of Existing Local Events
Sales
1) Develop Sales Tools
Sales Tools – Currently the Sales reps do not have any type of Standard Sales manual.
They are each individually coming up with their own "tools" to do
the job. Therefore,
2) Have Clear Sales Goals and Incentives
Goals -
The avail inventory needs to be evident so that goals can be set.
3) Focus on Spot Sales as apposed to Programs and Promotions
The Sales department seems to rely on "gimmicks" rather than
spot sales. Although
4) Increase Communications between Sales and Programming
|