The comments are still flying in on Curt Crafts recent blog about crappy remotes. He’s clearly struck a nerve. What are your thoughts? Do they make the industry look unprofessional? Is it time to ban the dreaded remote broadcast? Send pictures of your successful remotes to [email protected]
(By Curt Krafft) Have you been to a radio remote lately? I have. I thought I was attending a funeral. A table was set up, a giant van was parked off to the side with the station call letters painted on it and a couple of speakers were set up blasting the stations music format to the point where it sounded more like a screech emanating from the fourth circle of hell. To add to the excitement there were three people sitting behind the table all with blank expressions on their respective faces. In other words they looked like they wanted to be anywhere but there.
The table was empty save for a small stack of contest forms and a little box of cheap wooden pencils. Oh, and on the other side of the table, you know, the area where the listeners would be standing? There was no one. Not one single person.
I asked myself, what has happened here? BTW, this was outside a minor league baseball park long before the game started. But I’ve seen similar depressing circumstances at other radio remotes as well. Whether it was a county fair, a shopping mall, a business expo or just a day at the park these remotes all had one thing in common. They were dull, lifeless and literally a waste of space. There were lots of people around but no one was visiting the station’s table. No one.
What is going on here? I remember when radio remotes were exciting. We would still be broadcasting out of our main studio but we would cut in live at least four times an hour. We would introduce ourselves, shout out the call letters and then do other stuff. You know, like interviewing people, doing a contest with the crowd in front of us, giving away prizes. Stuff like that. And the table would be covered with t-shirts, bumper stickers, tote bags and various other little goodies. We, the employees were having a good time and so was the crowd standing in front of us.
So, what’s happened? Why the sudden transition to a funeral parlor? And then it occurred to me. This station doesn’t have any live, local air personalities. Or, if they do then it’s probably only morning drive. The rest of the time they are either satellite, automated or voice tracked. When I did remotes the station always had at least five or six d.j.’s on the staff. There would always be someone at the remote that the visitors would be familiar with. No one goes to a remote to meet someone from the promotions dept., the sales dept. or the chief engineer. Nothing personal if that’s what you do. They go to meet the air personality because that’s the only person that they are familiar with. That’s the only person they know. If you don’t have any live, local air personalities or if you only have one or two then doing a remote could be a problem. Unless of course you don’t mind paying your morning D.J. to work the extra hours. And you will still have to pay someone to be back at the studio.
Radio is biting itself in the butt because it is losing the human touch. That is something that no machine or satellite feed can substitute for. Radio has always been great because its employees have been great. But remember, the only employees that the public knows are the ones they hear coming through the speaker. If you start cutting back on that, if you diminish it by substituting with automation or satellite feeds then you run the risk of losing that “human element.” And any business that loses its human element is not only running the risk of losing customers but also losing money.
The listeners do not care about your wiring or your antenna. They don’t care if the rug in the hallway needs vacuuming. They only care about what they hear coming through the speaker. And if you cut back on that you are asking for trouble. Not only from an image standpoint but from a revenue standpoint as well.
Send pictures of your successful remotes to [email protected]
Curt Krafft is a radio air personality, account executive, and developer of new format ideas. He can be reached at [email protected]
I certainly agree with a lot of these comments, that the magic is gone, everything is too fragmented now, and I know that radio has lost most of its appeal with listeners. There were many years that you used to hear people in your city talking about what this radio station was doing, and what that radio station was playing, and did you hear so and so on WXXX the other day, whens the last time anyone heard that kind of stuff? Radio back then was chocked full of PERSONALITY, and INTRIGUE, and it had peoples attention. I honestly cant remember the last time I heard any radio talk from anyone I know in the city I live in. Glad I was involved in radio back in the heyday. Everything sounds so boring now. Dennis Williams Toledo,OH
One other thing to add to this: Social media. I know an air talent or two who, when they do appearances, often use Facebook Live or Instagram to help showcase the appearance. If more stations took advantage of social media that may help the client out, create more buzz. It would also help if these events were planned more than a few days in advance, so the station could also promote the appearance/remote on their websites/social media. Often times stations don’t update their “Station Events” page with any regularity or even mention the appearances until the day of (unless it’s a concert). That would help both the station and the client out by creating buzz.
Having limited local talent and a large area to cover, we long ago positioned our girl street team (family friendly) as the “face” of our country station and that has been an effective move. We send them out with prize envelopes – containing everything from a $1 scratch ticket, station swag to concert tickets. It’s not unusual to see 50-100 people in the two hours we’re onsite. We solved the “sitting around doing nothing” aspect by never packing chairs with our remote gear and assigning one person on site (usually sales person) to handle social media so you don’t see everyone on their cell phones! It’s a station rule and part of our culture that if you’re at an event, you’re interacting – whether its the sales person, the jock or street team. And, since our sales staff “gets it” – our on-site presentation is outstanding due to their willingness to go the extra mile to ensure the table is fully dressed and being present to manage event and interact with the client.
Years ago, radio was where you got your music and the DJ’s were the ones that brought the new songs into your life, therefore, they were special to you, and you wanted to meet them and get to know them. Today, you can hear ANY song ANYWHERE, without any help from ANYONE. The magic is gone.
It’s gone because emphasis is put on music. Put the emphasis on talent. Real talent and bring the magic back.
Back in the day, I played many radio remotes in the Atlanta area with the old WPLO 590AM. Lynn Anthony (now deseased) was the main morning man and would be at all of them. Great crowds. Sometimes they would have FREE helicopter rides, besides the food and other give aways. The station was sold in the early 2000’s and is now a Hispanic station using WPLO 610AM.
When we began installing the “Class/Classy” format on radio stations across America we didn’t have a problem with remotes. The only stations they’d give us were ones with no ratings so they couldn’t even sell a remote which was great but I was ready for them. When you work on a radio station with no ratings, the rules about we’ll do or not do are ageed to by management quite quickly. Unfortunately though once the radio station starts getting ratings, the sales department wants to sell what all the other guys sell even though we don’t sound at all like the other guys. As I tried to explain many times, “It’s hard to call yourself Class FM while you’re standing outside a tire store begging people to come by. What a radio station should do in my opinion is sell personality appearances. The bigger the personality, the bigger the crowd. Oh yeh, and if he can give away something too, the crowd will get bigger depending on the size of the prize. Salespeople love 3 things, live reads and remotes because they are easy to sell. I’ve always loved salespeople but I don’t like working with them. geo
Remotes have ALWAYS been a problem, even with 24/7 live talent. The problem is that most stations fail to invest in a remote “stage”. Remotes are a visual event put on by audio people. Remotes should be a visual EXPLOSION that matches the excitement of the on-air sound. Beautiful men and women models should be there are hand out station logo merchandise. Talent should be dressed up to look like stars…hair and make up done right. The set should look the way listeners imagine a station looks—big knobs, lights, meters, SPARKLE and stage lighting. Make a show.
I’m a talent. The only remotes I see success at are the remotes where…
A: You have a talent listeners WANT to meet.
B: You have prizes / food that’s geared to the life style of your listeners.
C: You have a business listeners give a shit about. Car dealerships are getting slammed but people buy new cars every day and they expect car sales people to hound them. Whats the station doing to counter that? How is the station having fun and doing what’s needed to keep listeners there so the car salesman can hound them?
Yep…Radio did this to itself. Hire more talent. The end.
“Radio Parties” has gone a long way in filling that entertainment gap for radio stations. Our company recruits the areas hottest mobile DJs and provides an exciting, engaging live DJ show at station appearances, mixing a hot set of station format music representing the station as a part of their “street team”. We provide our service free to station partners in multiple cities around the country. And handle every detail for them. One of our best examples is HOT 99.5 in Washington DC. Where we have rocked their commercial appearances, pre concert shows, The Pride Parade and yes our street team made HOT 99.5 look awesome at the White House Easter Egg Roll! Any major market station that wants us to make it happen for them, let me know. Ric Hansen 800-954-3535 [email protected]. #hot995 #radioparties
Ask yourself this: Are you someone you’d like to go see and meet at a remote? Are you a ‘disc jockey’ or a ‘personality’? If you read liner cards and play the hits and give the call letters….. why would someone come out and get a free t-shirt from you? If you’re there for the event, that’s fine. The listener will thank you for the information, and if it’s something they’re interested in, they’ll show up and my stop in to see what you look like. But most stations don’t let the ‘personality’ come out other than the morning show peeps and it costs extra for them to come out. Why? Cuz they’re the morning show, hell, they should almost do it as a public service.
Remotes draw crowds when you provide a reason for crowds to want to show up. The cliche car lot remotes don’t do it unless there’s a MAJOR reason to show. I’m constantly imploring our sales folks to consider the “Thousand Dollar Test Drive” concept at the LEAST. The premise being that one car on the lot has a thousand dollars in the trunk, but the guest can’t check the trunk until after the test drive. Dealers these days tend to want/need foot traffic towards the end of the month – coincidentally when folks’ household budgets are at their tightest. May or may not lead to a vehicle sale, but it sure would generate traffic and show that dealer your station’s ability to draw.
Elsewhere, again, it’s about “the event.” If there IS no “event,” there is no draw, and that’s not on the station; it’s on the client. Someone said (above) sometimes it’s better to invest in the buy to beef up the schedule and get more audience penetration than to squander money on the remote broadcast. That’s sound advice.
A lot of good feedback here. I believe a lot of the responsibility falls on the Program Director too. Where’s the game plan? I don’t care who is working the remote, jocks, promotions, sales. NO ONE should ever be sitting behind your table at an event. How exciting does that look? You stand in front of your table, wearing station gear, offering people a chance to win something! At my last station we had a monthly concert flyaway that we registered people to win at all remotes. We always had station swag! Also the Talent understood his position was not to sell anything! We just got people there! So they cut up & had fun just like they did every day on the air! Once people showed up, it was the client’s job to do the selling. We also didn’t put clients on the air either, listeners sometimes yes, just like a radio show! If a station doesn’t have local talent, you need a “KXXX Street Team wearing station gear & loaded down with a lot of free stuff as I mentioned. As someone said earlier, you can have big name personalities sitting behind a table, bored playing on their iPhones and we watched our competition do it for years. Radio is STILL an entertainment medium (at least for the stations winning!)
I’ve found that showing up with little or nothing to give to those who do show up is a problem. We also take the advertisers money and in many cases, only mention the remote during the recorded commercials and then once you arrive. As a jock, there was a time when you could talk up appearances to create hype, these days, once the check is in for the remote, no one cares if anyone shows up. Problem is, the next time a sales person suggests a remote, the advertiser remembers that it was the station staff and the employees of the business that were the only ones there.
You get out of it what you put into it. I’ve been to remotes where the top personality in town was set up…. and nobody was there. A remote needs to be treated as a promotion. You’ve got to make it worthwhile for people to come by. You’ve got to give them a show. That, after all, is what the client is paying for. Unfortunately, we’ve cheapened the enterprise. Time to get back to basics. Showmanship….in my over the hill opinion.
Times have changed. It’s not necessarily radios fault. Remotes were a key component to station marketing, then they became a necessary sales tool.
In 2017 our audience is different. Their schedules are crazy. We all have good BS detectors and realize if I go to a car dealer to win XX some guy is going to hound me to buy a car. It’s not worth it.
The stations in smaller markets who claim remotes are the lifeblood of community involvement? They’re lying. They are a revenue source pure and simple. Oh sure there is the occasional remote from a fundraiser event–that of course we sold to a thirty party advertiser to cover our nut—it’s all about the money.
PS: wanna save the embarrassment of an empty car dealer remote? Agree to send over pizza for the sales staff every Saturday on the radio station rather than make an appearance and watch how fast they no longer “need” a remote.
It has been a long time since I set up a NEMO atop a wooden tower constructed just for the event. Listeners ganged around the base of the structure with their requests…just wanting to hear their names on the radio. Those days are gone forever but back then a NEMO was a great event.
We have a rule for remotes: We’re there to cover an event, not be the event. If the business isn’t doing the remote to have us cover their event, we suggest that their marketing dollars are better spent with a heavier schedule.
I think it is tacky when the DJ does their program using a cell phone most remotes I see in Chattanooga are done this way
How exciting can a remote from a car dealership be unless you’re giving away a car? That’s been my problem with remotes forever. A remote should be an opportunity to broadcast something more exciting than what you’re doing in the studio. To be at a car dealership and talk about the great Memorial Day savings does not make people run out and buy a new car. Unless you have a dog and pony show to broadcast, or you’re not registering people to win a new motorcycle, remotes are pretty worthless and they always have been. And that doesn’t even address what a tune out they are for listeners who have no motivation to go to your live broadcast. On the other hand, if you are giving away a car, boat, motor cycle, whatever, as a radio station you need to make it as exciting to listen to as it is to be there otherwise stay in the studio.
Remotes (LIVE Action Broadcasts) can still be a great interactive tool for Radio Stations and they are for our small market cluster. Our announcers would never presume to call themselves “Talent”. They are members of the community who care about their friends and neighbors and talk about what matters to them. They enjoy meeting and greeting and never just sit behind a table.
The blame for the so-called decline of remotes can be shared equally by the Sales Department and those who do consider themselves “Talent”.
I am certainly a talent. An announcer? Are you kidding me? I am totally engaging, well loved, immersed in my community and very involved -host, emcee, raise money for over a dozen charity events a year. Our audience is thrilled to consider me talent- it make knowing and hanging out with me more special to them.
Two weeks ago my wife and I were at a car dealer… and there was an (empty) table with a radio station tent beside the table. My wife said “I wonder why that radio station tent is here.” And then our 12-year old daughter asked “What’s a radio station?” …No joke. … Wow. And if you ever asked a millennial now if they wanted to go to a “radio station remote”…. they’d probably look at you like you were nuts! Anyway unless you’re talking about some obscure market say like Laughlin Nevada (small markets where there isn’t much happening), radio remotes are an anachronism. They had relevance 20 or 25 years ago, before everyone had a mobile phone and before technology and entertainment options totally changed.
Our remotes at the first station at which I worked had the jock on-site at the remote venue doing his show with someone back at the station playing the music and the spots. I enjoyed it. The fact that people came in because they had heard what we were doing and came in to meet me or any other jock doing the remote. The only thing I didn’t like was a deal had been done with a tuxedo rental store which required us to be in full tux outfit as long as we were at the remote. Most of the remote clients wanted you right in front of the big window. Imagine how we felt when we showed up in full tuxedo in the middle of summer with the sun pouring through the window where we were going to sit for the next four hours. I used to break the rule and take the jacket off. I am susceptible to heatstroke and when asked about it I would ask them if the wanted the listeners to hear my show or hear me falling off the chair unconscious with the nice loud bang which would be my head hitting the floor.
Also meant to mention the station where I worked who did full-board remotes. One of the engineers would take a mobile control board to the venue, then the jock would show up with a box of records and do the entire show, operating the board, everything you would during a studio broadcast. I have never seen that anywhere else.
I am certainly a talent. An announcer? Are you kidding me? I am totally engaging, well loved, immersed in my community and very involved -host, emcee, raise money for over a dozen charity events a year. Our audience is thrilled to consider me talent- it make knowing and hanging out with me more special to them.
That this topic (remotes) is under discussion or debate is just another indictment of the industry.
Agree 100%.
While we’re at it…Let’s talk about bringing back AM radio too!
Very missing is the key word entertain. It’s almost the opposite of boring.
The remote at the ballgame had people around, basically, there was no entertainment from the station’s booth.
From the listener end this man is absolutely correct. So many stations have little to no listener involvement anymore. Stations don’t really take requests – if you request something that was coming up you might hear it. Most stations don’t answer their phones unless it’s a contest. Morning shows are broadcast from some other town who generically talk about the news instead of focusing on the local market. Music is picked to ensure commercials happen at a certain time and matching other stations. Even when they do remotes there is nothing there. Very rarely are there any trinkets stations used to dole out in the past – stickers, shirts…things fans love to collect and will show up in mass to do. The drive for big profits over listeners is apparent in radio thanks to the corporate conglomerates and at least from the other side of the speaker it seems pretty much like they do not care about the listener so long as the advertiser is happy.
The value of remotes is market and number of signal dependent. If your community revolves around your stations, then the above is very important and you need to get back on track. However if the market is larger, your commute is 20 minutes or more, and you 10 or more signals, the number of people who will plan to attend your remotes just to see your personality is much lower. “What is in it for the listener?” The personality is the cherry on top today. The experience is what the listener is after. T-shirts, tote bags, and six pack coolers are no longer enough. You are just feeding the contest hogs. What is the experience for the listener? Can they sample food & beverage from vendors, have games and activities for kids, and meet Mr./Ms. Air Personality then you have a winning remote. The cost of assembling this is what makes it harder. The client now needs to invest more than just his radio time to make a remote successful. That is where it usually falls down. The problem is bigger than what the article suggests. It is a, however, a big problem that needs to be brought to light. Radio is losing a tool from its chest, and we are letting it happen. That is one less asset to leverage. That is never a good thing.
In major markets (my only experience) remotes on’t draw flies. Stations need to look at them as though we were advising a client in developing their commercial messaging. Who is the target market and what are theirbenefits sought Trash and trinkets are clearly not the answer, winning an iPhone X, maybe!
Back in the 90s when ABC/Disney broadcast the Pure Gold format, we brought Jim Zippo and Jay Fox into our city at least twice a year to do a weekend of remotes. Believe me, people showed up! But even if your station only has one local personality, I believe it’s a good idea to get him/her out there with “on-location broadcasts” (not “remotes”). The public does respond if the set-up looks good and it helps promote the station.
I couldn’t agree with you more Curt. Removing the “live” human aspect of day-to-day radio leaves remotes in the hands of interns and/or marketing department staff—people who don’t directly connect with listeners. When people see a radio station broadcasting at an event or business, they want to know they can meet the people they share their life with every day–the personality. The problem is, your one live personality can’t do everything (trust me, I tried). Bring back 3-4, maybe even 5, local, live on-air personalities in regular shifts (morning drive, mid-days, etc.), then let them share on-the-air their experiences with friends, family, local businesses and the community as a whole and I guarantee listeners will take a more active role in interacting with the radio station. To make money, a radio station has to endear themselves to their community—voice tracking and syndicated programming is not going to do that. I completely understand that the corporations answer to stockholders but constantly cutting local, live shows and personalities in favor of cheaper syndication has proven itself to NOT be the answer.
Right on, Kevin, I couldn’t agree more. Once a corporation gets its hands on a station you can miss local radio goodbye.
Damn. No edit feature. That should be “Kiss local radio goodbye.”