Tuesday, July 25, 2006

BizRadio: Healthy, Wealthy & Wise

Running a Radio Network is a daily challenge. When one market is running great, another one can be struggling from technical challenges which impact the entire operation. Houston has recently been pestered by those Gulf Coast thunderstorms that like to crop up on a Summer’s afternoon. Along about 3pm, you can watch the thunderheads forming out over the rice paddies, west of Katy, or south of Houston over Brazoria county. Pushed along by Gulf breezes, they scoot across the sky, form-up near the Beltway, and dive-bomb selected neighborhoods with drenching rains and deadly lightning strikes.

Over the weekend, one of those lightning strikes hit the HL&P power relay station that supplies the transmitter site for KXYZ-AM in Houston. So we were off-and-on the air Monday morning…mostly off, until midday. Most of our audience was understanding. Others, who have been constant critics and doubters of the BizRadio operation, took the opportunity to nail shut our coffin.

One particularly onerous posting, from some coward hiding behind the “AdGuy” pseudonymn, had this nugget to offer:

“They must have been off the air this morning. I too had dead air as I scrolled through the dial on my morning safari. I think they've been having a lot of technical issues again. As I have posted time and time again on BizRadio, they need professional radio management to make that thing work. Actually, I think it's dead now. They probably lost any listeners they once had due to things like this dead air and poor programming.

“I still think Business talk is a viable format in Houston if properly executed. CBS should revisit putting 650 back to business. Their daytime signal is ok enough to deliver quality and they know how to run radio stations. The folks running BizRadio have no clue anymore. It was a great idea at first, but now it has turned into a paid programming station for the most part with some business thrown in.

Brent Clanton's show is pretty good and informative. The guy that comes after him seems to be selling one of those trading programs. You can't listen beyond 2 or 3 minutes without dozing off.

“The rest of their programming day, the last time I listened, was pretty much following the same format of scheme hawkers. The only commercials you hear are promos for their weekend paid programs and the endless parade of Dan Frishberg offerings.”

Adguy has been a predictable nattering naybob of negativity for sometime. Invitations to speak face to face with him in the past have been rebuffed. He’d rather armchair quarterback from behind his fake name and computer screen.

Let me tell you the other side of the story here at The BizRadio Network, because there are real people who listen to our stations each day because we offer a quality menu of informational fare.

I defy you to listen to any other radio station—AM or FM—from which you can consistently glean information that can be put to use the same day you hear it. Not gonna happen, listening to Sports talk, Smoove Jazz or even the all-news AM’s.

We traffic in ideas, methods, and means by which our audience—you—can better your lot in life.

This morning my personal e-mail box had a message in it from a former employee who’d worked for me at both Business Talk stations I’ve managed. This guy’s been married a few years, their second child is on the way, and he’s got his life pointed in the right direction. Part of that direction came from his association with BizRadio:

“With that news (of a second child), we bought a new home, still in The Woodlands. I also decided to sell our home for sale by owner. We sold it a week after we listed, for our asking price which was 10% more than we paid for it a little over a year ago. I owe a lot of my knowledge in Real Estate to producing (a) show (about real estate) a few years back!

“You'll be happy to know I'm very financial fit thanks to your radio stations and the programming on them. We've got a nest egg built up, we live debt free other than our home, my 401k is maxed out and I'm always looking for new ways to make more money. At 23 years old, I would have never had this stuff figured out if it weren't for working at your stations and listening to what the hosts were saying and sorting out what seemed right for me. Thank you for that!”

Obviously, this e-mail more than offset the tripe from Adguy, and is proof positive that listening to The BizRadio Network can have a positive influence on your life. We will continue to offer business news and information you can use to grow financially healthy, wealthy, and wise!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

"ADGUY" is one who will never see the positive only the negative. His world is one that must follow his beliefs with no diversity of ideas or opinion,just blandness. As we all know diversity is competition and competition is what brings in quality of performance. His performance has been lackluster in that regard,and it is best left to a county road's billboard,hidden under a shade tree,than the medium many can benefit from.

Anonymous said...

There is only one person getting wealthy from Business Radio 1320, and that is Dan F. He has such an inflated sense of his worth and the radio station's worth that he has abandoned the old theory of supply and demand. He thinks that Infinity, Clear Channel, and Cummulus are all crazy and don't know what they are doing. Although I agree that they have caused the decline of creativity in radio, their financial success is hard to argue with. The key to selling radio is to create a demand, even if it only a perceived demand. Business Radio 650 had 250 Watts and billed 1.2million it's final year. They didn't do it by demanding premium prices from the beginning and then blaming the customers when the products don't sell. 1320's programming is much better than 650, but they had sales people running the station. Good luck and see you soon on 650

Brent Clanton said...

You're not entirely correct, but your observations are interesting. You forget it took four years for 650AM to reach those billing amounts; 1320 is barely 17-months old, and the station is more profitable at this stage in its life than 650 was at the year-and-a-half point. Don't discount the Danster; he's on the air every afternoon. What are YOU doing?