Would You Spend 50 Thousand Dollars To Make a Half Million In One Day.

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I’m sure the staff at both Cumulus and Citadel are very nervous but I’ve always told everybody that it really doesn’t matter who owns Pizza hut. The first time to start worrying is when they tell you to use less cheese. What do you mean you heard they aren’t going to use any cheese … Run !

I wonder how long that free money from the Government is going to keep on flowing to NPR now that their attitude is showing.

I remember once having a meeting with an NPR executive in Washington and was telling him about a station in Toronto that was allowed to run one 60 second commercial per hour for revenue besides doing the basic fund raising. He thought about it for a moment and said, even if we had that right we wouldn’t do it our listeners don’t like commercials. I wonder if a new kind of attitude is lurking just around the corner.

I’m doing a panel at the NAB in Vegas this year with Tim Moore called Back To The Future 2.0. This session is about whether or not some of the things we used to do in radio will still work today in the new world of PPM. Pondering all this has brought back some great memories some of the many promotions I’ve been involved in. One of the neatest was a sales/programming promotion that Tim Reever and I worked on together for the 100 year anniversary of the Boston Marathon. Being the Granddaddy of all Marathons the Boston Marathon folks were reluctant to get involved with very many sponsors of the event and tried keep it a pure athletic event rather than a sponsor event most sports seem to be involved in now. Tim and I of course had other plans and It just so happened that our radio station was located in the Prudential Tower in the Back bay which was mere feet away from the finish line. We rented the side walk out front for 50 thousand dollars just for one day. Crazy right ? Wrong! We ended up netting a half a million dollars for that day, no spots involved. We knew a lot of National Sponsors wanted to somehow tie their name to that historic event and we had the way for them to do it. A lot of them had product they wanted sampled so we included that in our plan. Tim even built bleachers for corporate sponsors that had a beer garden on them so they could watch the finish of the race in comfort and even sample some of the products from our beer sponsor. I think what made it all really work was the fact that Tim and I were runners and were really into the whole event. Tim in fact ran in the race while his sales folks took care of our invited sponsors. The on air folks handed out tons of free neat stuff to the gathering crowd and we also did some live cut ins. I don’t think this promotion will ever be done again because who is left in radio today that would have the balls to ask for 50 grand for one day, never mind the fact the person they were asking it from wouldn’t have any idea about what the hell they were talking about nor how to do the accounting for it. They don’t teach these great kinds of promotional events at Harvard I guess.

Can you imagine what Hitler must have said as he was marching through Europe almost unresisted upon hearing that Japan had just bombed Pearl Harbor awakening the sleeping giant, America. I would love to see one of those Hitler rants that are going around done on this subject.

A torrid tale of a lusty night when written by a man is usually much longer than the event itself. The same tale written by a woman is usually much shorter than the same event.

One of the big problems Arbitron has always had is it over measures people who don’t buy anything.

Doug Erickson claims that fear programs the music at most radio stations.

Unfortunately the instructions on how to get out of the box your stuck in are written on the outside of the box.

The only difference between you making 50 thousand a year or 50 thousand a month is knowledge.

Beating last years numbers means nothing. The whole world changed since last year.

You are who you act like.

How you language things is everything.

The only reason to have a goal is so you can become the type of person who figures out how to hit that goal. There is no sense in having a goal you know you can hit, the Wright Brothers and Edison sure didn’t.

I was listening to Mark Foley’s show the other night and noticed he is sounding more and more like a broadcaster and less and less like a politician. That might not be a good thing.

Nothing fixes itself, in fact everything is always in a state of destruction. Creativity is the exact opposite of all that.

I had a lot of good suggestions about what Donna Schaneen should have do to make my Blog but most of them are unprintable.

2 thoughts on “Would You Spend 50 Thousand Dollars To Make a Half Million In One Day.

  1. Hey george,
    You are exactly right! It is refreshing to finally hear someone state the same truths that I have experienced in life. Here is my question from one trapped “inside the box”. How can I legally make $50,ooo with literally only $10 bucks in my pocket! The problem is that I decided to help my handicapped brother five years ago and it left me broke to this day! I have two children and one is a toddler, the wife can’t work and the ex only just now realizes the problems that she has caused our daughter(especially now financially). George I am no idiot, but I lack the tools needed for the job. As an ex Loan officer I can tell you that my credit is shot.I don’t even have a “bootstrap” now to pull myself up with! Obviously i have gone through hell these past five years and even though i qualify for emergency assistance the state (or rather an employee) has discriminated against us!
    Evil and ignorance–i look nice and unfortunately being a thirty something white male does not help my cause. Ready for the kicker??? Social services has me illegally and falsely put me in the child support system for my second child that has always been in my sole support and custody(with wife).I have gone to jail for failure to appear on a court date for CS for my first child WITHOUT EVER BEING SERVED or told of the court date. I could keep going but the point is this: I used to have a charity and help others before my first child, later in life i find that there is No charity,church,or system to actually help me or my family!!! No one wants families to stay together, or father’s to see their children or be good dads, I guess they lose too much money. A million places collect millions and billions of dollars for charity and yet I have never heard of one individual being helped. Did you know that even Habitat for Humanity is a fraud! What poor or homeless family do you know of that has “Good credit”…but yet you must have that in order to even apply??? Ironically..I am the type of person (the exact person) that knows how to make money
    with music,booking,business,commodities and even inventions–5 out of six ideas made it to market within the past seven years by later inventors(sad to watch). I am still under the idea that this is America and I can still bounce back. I have many new product and biz ideas that my research indicates would make a small fortune, but sadly I know that all of these ideas call for money that I have never been able to make or save for the past ten years and so I am forced to call a spade a spade. If i had 50K I can guarantee to turn it into 500k (turned 200 into 1300 on ebay in two days?), but how to get funded for fifty with nothing is going to take a miracle from a really savvy intelligent soul.
    I hope at least that someone will gain insight,hope, or satisfaction from this response but remeber SONY was started by two guys dumpster diving after the world war so my cause is not dead yet. I will repost later this year if (when) i become successful. Until then, Thanks for your integrity in sharing a lost art-Honesty.
    Sincerely,
    Trapped in the box

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