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I know summer just started, but it’s time to start planning for your September promotions. (And we’re just the right partners to help!)

Did you know that September 13^th is National Fortune Cookie Day? Increase in-store or online retail traffic by offering a fortune cookie with a printed discount inside to all who visit your retail locations. Or hire a street team to hand out your fortune cookies at public places, such as downtown intersections or transit stations.

Celebrate the arrival of fall by partnering with a radio station and sponsoring a “Fall Clean Up Party” at a local park or community center. Starting September 22^nd, the first day of fall, offer “falling” prices storewide or for a particular product that week.

September is also a great time to promote your Mom-targeted products and services, as back-to-school means helping with homework and running from one extracurricular activity to another.

For Dad, don’t forget that September means the start of football season and 1,001 ways to marry your brand to America’s favorite spectator sport.

So, as you soak up the sun on the beach and relish your backyard barbeques, think ahead to the great marketing opportunities that await in September. Or, just give RDR Promotions a call and we’ll do it for you.

Happy summer!

Barbra Tabnick, Senior Account Manager

“Chrysler will offer wireless Internet access in 2009 models
The nation’s third-largest automaker is set to announce Thursday that it’s making wireless Internet an option on all its 2009 models, according to The LA Times. The offering, dubbed UConnect Web, would be the first such technology from any automaker. Chrysler is hoping that providing drivers access to the information superhighway will set it apart from competitors. Needless to say, the system will be able to stream audio.”

This “little” blurb in yesterday’s Media Business Report speaks volumes about the changing landscape of Broadcasting and how the Internet is merging and blurring the lines of demarcation of what is defined as radio.

While Terrestrial broadcasters vociferously, methodically and hotly voice concern over the SIRIUS/XM merger and extol the virtues of HD Radio, (the “new radio” platform that nobody but broadcasters care about), the Internet is tearing along at warp speed and taking no prisoners.

This “little” announcement is truly stunning.

Terrestrial Radio Broadcasters appear to be ignoring their biggest challenge. It’s not Satellite, TV, Cable, Outdoor or the Newspaper …it’s the Internet! Soon, the Internet will be delivered to you and me wherever we are. We will be freed from the chains of the desktop and the laptop.

WiMAX will revolutionize how information and entertainment is accessed. UBIQUITOUS is the word of future. Once the infrastructure is in place, the Internet will be with us wherever we go and wherever we are… on jets, in cars, in the middle of the ocean, on all cellular technology, in wristwatches, eyeglasses, the yard, the bathtub and the kitchen sink.

If terrestrial radio is to survive, it must discover unique ways of growing and keeping a restless audience that wants choice and technology at its fingertips.

WiMAX will cause incredible audience fragmentation.

For 60 years, radio was the dominant ubiquitous medium, owning out-of-home, in the car “news, weather, traffic, and entertainment to go” listening.

This “little announcement” by Chrysler is changing that.

And that is radio’s challenge of a lifetime.

Vince Raimondo, Vice President of Marketing

My mother thought he was dirty. My sister thought he was dreamy. I thought he was a twisted, brilliant social commentator who delighted in exposing hypocrisy, absurdity and pomposity.

Yesterday, George Carlin died of heart failure in Santa Monica, CA at the age of 71.

Carlin is perhaps best known for his classic “Seven Words You Can Never Say on TV,” which listed – and graphically detailed – the naughty words you can’t say on television (or radio). Performing that routine got him arrested (and later released on First Amendment grounds) in Milwaukee in 1972. It led to FCC guidelines that established and enforced the guidelines of what we, as a society, considered indecent language unfit for broadcast on the public airwaves.

Many would argue that descriptions of war, murder, rape and other permutations of man’s inhumanity against man make the Nightly News the more flagrant violator of indecency than silly tirades about bodily functions offered as entertainment. The point, I believe Mr. Carlin would agree, was how language – verbal uttering – could incite mankind to love, hate or enact laws to control behavior. Yet we as a society focus on legislating sound with more passion and urgency than the actions they describe.

Today, for George Carlin, that point is moot. But the prolific body of work in his 40+ year career (23 comedy albums, three books, 14 HBO specials and 130 appearances on The Tonight Show) made him the spokesman of the counterculture generation and a righteous, self-appointed watchdog, protecting America’s doorstep from any individual or corporation that came a-knocking, trying to put one over on us.

His material ranged from silly (“The Hippy Dippy Weatherman”) to family-friendly (“Football vs. Baseball”) to dark and disturbed (“You Are All Diseased”). Nevertheless, his unique talent for crafting the English language is a perpetual inspiration to all of us who awaken each day and fill blank pages with words intended to shape public opinion and influence buying habits.

In November, George Carlin will be posthumously honored with the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor on PBS. I’ll be watching. And I hope you’ll take a few moments to remember this gifted wordsmith by dusting off an old VHS copy of one of his TV specials or by listening to one of the rants that made him famous.

Here are a few links to get you started:
George Carlin’s Home Page

IMDB Biography

YouTube Videos:
Ten Commandments
“Stuff”

Classic Quotes:
BrainyQuote
The Quotations Page

Mark Lipsky, President & CEO

You know the song.   The one that whisks you back in time to when you were 12 or 16 or 23, bringing a smile to your face as you relive the carefree days and nights of summer.  In celebration of the arrival of Summer 2008 – and possibly generate an idea for a cool iTunes playlist – we polled our staff, clients and select radio personalities to share that one song that defined summer.

Here’s Part Two of that list.

CHEESEBURGER IN PARADISE & MARGARITAVILLE - Jimmy Buffett
Both songs remind me of my summer beach bar days way back before I was married with children and could listen to something other than Radio Disney and Kidz Bop.  (Helene Rubin, RDR)

SUMMER TIME - Will Smith & DJ Jazzy Jeff
It’s the ultimate summer song!  This song’s texture is the sights, sounds, smells and antics of a city summer…in my case Brooklyn NY.  The beats and rhymes remind me of all the boys on the block honing their rapping skills and spewing “yo momma” jokes, as the early 80s Hip-Hop was building its legacy.  (Christine Williams, Ascend One)

HOT FUN IN THE SUMMERTIME - Sly & the Family Stone
The opening piano chords of this R&B classic bring an instant smile to my face as I time travel back to summer days spent playing stickball in the schoolyard and summer nights riding the Morrone’s Water Ice truck through my neighborhood. Without question, this is the official anthem of summer.  (Mark Lipsky, RDR)

THERE’S A MOON OUT TONIGHT – The Capris
It reminds me of my first summer romance.  (Michael Savage, “The Savage Nation”)

JUNGLELAND - Bruce Springsteen
Any song that begins with the line….”The magic rat drove his slick machine…over the Jersey State line” evokes memories of happy adolescent times doing things we probably shouldn’t have been doing…but having the time of our lives…. (Danny Ocean, RDR)

WHY CAN’T THIS BE LOVE – Van Halen
I used to blast this song out of my car driving to the shore during the summer.  It brings back a lot of memories that I can’t share in such a public forum, but it will always be my summer anthem.  (Barbra Tabnick, RDR Promotions)

The song that defines summer for me tends to change each year.  I always attend the Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Austin City Limits music festivals and those experiences and music discoveries stick with me long after the trip has ended.  While the Lolla and ACL trips aren’t in the books yet, the Coachella trip has put a leading candidate on the boards for my summer ‘08 song: KIDS – MGMT  (Justin Allen, PGA Tour)

ABOVE THE CLOUDS – Amber
A dance club staple back in the late 90’s early 2000, but for me I picture the rooftop party attended by Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda on a summer Sunday on SATC.  I used to crank that song up and put the top down on my convertible on my drive from Manhattan to the Hamptons.  (Monica Caraffa, RDR)

TWO STEP – Dave Matthews Band
This song reminds me of summer because I listened to this song over & over again throughout my trip to California & Hawaii back in the summer of ‘98.  I went with my best friend (and her mom) - my friend and I had an amazing time.  This song reminds me of that trip - of being young & carefree - it reminds me of adventure, of experiencing new things, of loving and living life.  “Celebrate we will ’cause life is short but sweet for certain” – DMB  (Arwen Haring, RDR)

You know the song. The one that whisks you back in time to when you were 12 or 16 or 23. The one that brings a secret smile to your face as you recall those carefree days and nights of summer. In celebration of the arrival of Summer 2008 – and possibly to help you generate a cool iTunes playlist – we polled our staff and friends to share their favorite summer songs.

Here’s Part One of that list.

SUMMER – War
“Summer” is one of the all-time great cruising songs of the early 70’s, that conjures up my memories of cruising around Wildwood, Margate and Ocean City, not to mention Overbrook and Havertown, in my 1961 Ford Falcon, with the radio turned up loud, looking for action.(Vince Raimondo, RDR)

SURFIN’ USA – Beach Boys
My summer song is the 1963 Beach Boys hit. I was 9 years old and living in New York City, far from the waves of Pacific. It was a dream to me then and now…a reality over 40 years later. (Meredith May, Patterson’s Tasting Panel Magazine)

BOYS OF SUMMER – Don Henley
This is a total summertime song. It reminds me of vacations in Hilton Head, SC. Meeting a boy and hanging with him until you had to go home. Aahhh, summer love. (Tracy Parker, RDR)

CENTERFIELD - John Fogerty
Maybe it’s a guy thing, but that song brings me right back to summers as a kid where our only concerns were whose mom was going to make us lunch, and how many more innings we could get in before dark. It’s a timeless American song that’s impossible not to sing along to. (Brian Barney, Countrywide)

THEME FROM A SUMMER PLACE - Percy Faith
By the summer of 1960, after having been #1 for 9 weeks earlier in the year, this instrumental was heard repeatedly on Muzak systems everywhere– and often. Hearing it now instantly and unfailingly transports me back to the Americana Hotel in Bal Harbour Florida, where I lived in 1960. I feel the sun on my back and the warmth of the chaise lounges on which I reclined, I hear the roar of the surf and the sound of that song blaring out of numerous tin speakers– and I remember what a great time it was to be alive. (Rollye James, The Rollye James Show)

SPINNING AWAY – Sugar Ray
This song is the definition of warm weather for me. I’ll never forget rolling into Miami Beach to this song with my best friends hanging out the windows screaming or the long bridges in the Florida Keys with nothing but blue water on either side of us with it on repeat! (Scott Fisher, RDR)

WALKING ON SUNSHINE - Katrina and the Waves
It is fun, uplifting, energizing and best-experienced riding on the highway on a beautiful summer day with all the windows open. I swear, the song just makes you feel good! (Bonnie Boyle, Bloomberg)

POUR SOME SUGAR ON ME - Def Leppard
It’s one of those songs that take you instantly back to when you first heard it. In this case it was the summer of ‘88. You couldn’t move without hearing this song on every radio coming out of every car. (Ian Cohen, RDR)

SCHOOL’S OUT - Alice Cooper
Since our customers are 8 - 18 years old this is the song that always says summer to me. They can’t wait to get out of their school to spend time at “our” school; the Paul Green School of Rock Music. And we spend more time with them in the summer because we get to be together for summer camps as well as our performance-based program. (Stacey Marnalejo, Paul Green School of Rock)

The Music of Summer, Part Two will appear on Friday, June 20th.

Thanks to the Digital Age, failure is not an option for advertising agencies. In the Analog Age we knew that 50% of our advertising worked and 50% didn’t, we just didn’t know which 50%. Ad agencies often created nifty, snappy, clever, funny, award-winning campaigns that failed to sell product, increase market share or build brand awareness. The ultimate goal of most advertising is to sell as much of a product or a service as you can. If that goal is not accomplished, winning a CLIO award is a hollow achievement. Today, more than ever before, companies want to see tangible rewards instead of winning fanciful awards.

In the Digital Age, the old 50-50 rule does not apply. Online advertising, websites, search engine marketing, search engine optimization and everything else the internet has to offer have changed that dynamic forever. Businesses can now track where their customers are coming from and can scale their advertising accordingly. Thanks to the internet, businesses can gather reams of information about their customers and market to them based on their unique buying habits.

Retailers have reams of data that track consumer behavior. In the world of “Direct Response Advertising” we’ve been tracking results for years and holding our traditional media partners accountable for success. They didn’t like it early on and they like it even less now. Most traditional media loved the days of “50/50” because failure could never be traced back to an individual channel. Consequently, neither could success. They always positioned themselves as part of an overall media plan. And if the campaign failed, it was a failure at all levels. They got away with, dare I say it….highway robbery.

For example, a radio station might have he largest audience in a market and be “base buy” station for a traditional media buy. They’re number #1 in reaching Women between the ages of 25-54, but in the direct response world, if they produce an ROI that is worse than a second or third tier radio station in that same market, their value as a DR channel is diminished. How does something like this happen? Often times the top music station is a market will be the heritage Adult Contemporary station that builds a huge cumulative audience based on “at-work” listening. The audience listens passively. It’s “background” music. It is the soundtrack of their cubicle life. As a result of passive listening, the audience responds poorly to DR commercials, delivering sub-par results. Conversely, a second tier talk radio station with a much smaller audience may be populated with active listeners who are hanging on every word the talk show host utters. As a result they hear the DR commercial with both ears and are more likely to respond.

Today radio operators are “talking the talk” of accountability, but they are not “walking the walk.” There’s a movement to “post” ratings once PPM is in place across the country. Guaranteeing ratings does not guarantee success. That’s just a promise that the audience you claim to have will be there tomorrow after their schedule runs. That won’t work. All media needs to hyper-focus on the needs of their best clients and promise to help them fulfill their needs and achieve their goals. If that commitment is made, I’d venture to say that a lot more than 50% of advertising will work.

Vince Raimondo, Vice President of Marketing

Format Description:
Country music stations play a mix of music from past and current country music artists. Most radio markets have only one Country station, but Southern and Western markets can support multiple Country formats, often shading their playlists to target a specific demographic with a format niche such as softer Country pop (Carrie Underwood), harder rock (Rascal Flatts), Classic Country (Johnny Cash) or a mainstream blend (Kenny Chesney).

Core Audience:
Adults 25-54 (Adults 45+ for Classic Country)

Core Artists:
Tim McGraw, Faith Hill, Alan Jackson>

Key Radio Stations:
KYGO, Denver
KSON, San Diego
KNIX, Phoenix
WPOC, Baltimore
WBEE, Rochester
WQIK, Jacksonville

DR Factor:
Country’s strength lies in its ability to deliver a loyal audience that
typically has only one radio station broadcasting in their market playing “their music.” A typical Country station will generate a high “exclusive cume” – radio listeners who listen to their station and ONLY their station. This loyalty, coupled with air talent endorsements, can make country a solid, direct response format.

For more information, visit Wikipedia.

The Radio Hall of Fame Award votes are being tallied this month and if you haven’t voted yet - what the heck are you waiting for?

You can vote simply by registering on their site. Some of radio’s greatest pioneers – both local and national – have been nominated for induction in a variety of categories. And I’d like to ask your support in casting a vote for Broadcast Pioneer Art Bell.

Art’s been a lifelong broadcaster, from his early days on a U.S. military base in the Philippines to his current out-of-retirement guest host appearances on the program he created and nurtured for many years, “Coast to Coast AM.”

In the early 1990s, Art grew bored by the formulaic repetition of political talk radio. So he grabbed the microphone and made a sharp left turn into the realm of the unknown.

C2C broke new ground in talk radio, treading the fascinating – and sometimes spooky ground – between science and science fiction. One night, Art would guide a theoretical physicist through a layman’s explanation of the tenets of multi-dimensional string theory. The next, Art’s husky, tobacco-stained voice took on the persona of a modern day Rod Serling, working unscreened call-in lines and orchestrating supernatural wisps of ghost stories, dramatically recounted by listeners east and west of the Rockies.

I’d never heard anyone on the radio like Art Bell and haven’t since his current (and this time he seems to mean it) retirement. George Noory and Ian Punnett do a fine job of keeping the Coast franchise alive, hosting America’s most listened to late night radio talk show seven nights a week. But they’d be the first to tell you, there’s only one Art Bell.

For a treat, visit the Coast to Coast AM website to see if an affiliate in your city carries the Saturday night “Somewhere in Time” rebroadcasts of classic Art Bell programs from the past 20 years. Remarkably, the content holds its relevance and entertainment value in 2008 and can still raise the hair on the back of your neck with a creepy ghost story, alien abduction report or a visit from the Shadow People.

In the meantime, cast a vote for Art Bell to be inducted in The Radio Hall of Fame. Otherwise, I can’t be held responsible for what might be lurking under your bed tonight.

Mark Lipsky, President & CEO

Fanatical. Adjective. One motivated or characterized by an extreme, uncritical enthusiasm or zeal, as in religion or politics.

Passionate. Adjective. Having, compelled by, or ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling.

Loyal. Adjective. Faithful to any leader, party, or cause, or to any person or thing conceived as deserving fidelity.

Those words best describe the fan bases of The Opie and Anthony Show and The Howard Stern Show. You have to LOVE a radio show – not just like it - to pay for it. And millions do pay to hear O&A on XM and Stern on Sirius. In fact, a show member - or guest for that matter - can’t sneeze without creating a stir on message boards that are devoted to overanalyzing every mumbled word and every pregnant pause.

The same goes for commercials aired on their respective channels. People hear them and pay attention to them. Those same message boards have had threads commenting on spots that have aired. Some of the more “memorable” aspects of commercials have become catch phrases in the show from both hosts and callers. Create a message that cuts through and has some frequency and your product is destined for stardom. Or at the very least can live on in infamy for years to come.

With such loyal followings, live reads can do wonders. But beware. Loyal listeners can tell if the copy is forced and the talent doesn’t fully believe what they’re saying. Just give them some copy points and let them talk freely and openly about the product. And since it’s satellite radio, there are no FCC restrictions on language. Use that to your advantage so your product can be talked about how real people talk. A well timed “f bomb” in the middle of a read will make your commercial memorable.

The beauty of it is, the same well known companies seem to advertise month after month on these channels. The kinds of companies that don’t throw good money after bad. So with these types of satellite radio shows delivering workable, measurable results something must be f#%&ing working.

Ian Cohen, Production Director