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Cumulus Ads

T

Tiger1983

Why is it that they have a girl who sounded like a typical high school student telling listeners to join in their sales team? They have that same ad running all across Cumulus' stations in this market, and possibly in different markets as well. In this recruitment ad, she claims she has health insurance and is very satisfied as a sales account executive position. I mean, come on! This has got to be one of the worst company produced ads ever ran on any of their stations!! This ad sounded totally unprofessional and it should belong to a college station. I heard a similar younger female voice on other commercials, especially those from Kings College or LCCC.

Under previous ownership by Citadel, their recruitment ads they produced were very entertaining, and sometimes off-the-wall. Reason being is that even though you don't have any interest in sitting behind the microphone, you can still be involved in the radio industry by selling ads. These ads were nothing compared to the ones under Cumulus ownership. Even their tagline "Cumulus! The Power of Radio" sucks.

Someone needs to make such ads very professional and more mature.
 
I had a similar reaction. The "girl" sounded too young to be believable or convincing.
In fact, she sounded naiive. My reaction to hearing it was: Yeah, just wait a few years honey. You won't even be there.
 
Years? Months at best.. new sales hires typically get the accounts no one wants or one's that have been impossible to attain.. radio's feeling is, hey, if they can get one or two of these accounts to produce, that's great.. they'll be gone in a few months and we will take over the accounts.

I lasted less than 6 months at my only attempt at sales, just as I started to make contacts and get interest, BAM, you're gone.. can't waste any more time on you... Yes the spots are hilarious!
 
Once in a great while, a Magic rep will call our business looking to sell ad time. Usually I let a call like that go straight to voicemail, but if the receptionist says "It's Magic 93" or any other radio station, I say "Sure. Put 'em through."

After the rep does their brief pitch, I usually say something like, "So the boss has you doing cold calls, huh? You guys are owned by Cumulus, that company that tends to fire LOCAL air staff. I knew one of your old production guys. Yeah, fired him right before Christmas a couple of years ago. No, I don't think I'll be giving your parent company any of OUR money. Sorry."

They never know quite how to react but it sure is fun. I always thought those "exciting new career spots" that air on ANY station should be worded with nothing but the truth. Something like...

"Stuck in a dead end job? How would YOU like a new career in the exciting world of radio advertising? Do you think you have what it takes? If you answer, "Yes" to any of the following questions -- YOU DO! Do you want to spend a good portion of your salary on clothing so you look good when doors are being slammed in your face? Do you want to be berated by your local sales manager on a daily basis? Do you want the opportunity to make up to 90,000 dollars a year when in reality you'll be lucky if you actually make somewhere near 40? Do you want the air staff to only bother to learn your name after you've been here six months because they've seen at least twelve people sit at your desk since March? Oh wait, I forgot, we no longer have an air staff -- scratch that last question. Would you like to attend pointless seminars on a regular basis put on by guys who were once in your shoes but were smart enough to get out of the business years ago? YOU DO! Then call...."

And so on and so on and so forth. That's the commercial I'd LOVE to hear.
 
I might as call the girl who asks listeners to send in their resumes for a sales position "The Cumulus Sales Recruitment Girl", and also this girl may have used a fictitious name since she is believed to be heard on hundreds of Cumulus-owned stations nationwide.
 
Bad commercial reads have been making professionals wince for so long that the concept is probably irreversable. Evidently the 'dealing in volume' quotient is too tempting and too inexpensive a harvest for fast-food radio management to ignore.

I'm a relic and am no longer in the business, yeah; I realize that. And it no longer seems to count that someone who ditched their Noo Yawk/Phelly/Bahstin/Raaaachester accent forty years ago (to sound more presentable for other markets) exists.

As long as there are message boards such as this and others, though, populated by professionals present and past, the indictments about commercial quality must continue. The response to paid advertising is the very air that's breathed in these broadcast boardrooms. You'd figure these folks would realize how important that air is and how polluted it's become.

Yet ..... even in major markets ..... you hear someone throwing away a word like 'terrific' as though it were a sedative ..... the client is getting gypped, plain and simple.

We've all heard the idiocy of the 200 MPH disclaimers, the weak sell, that aggravating (to me) short 'a'/Valley Girl trendiness used instead of the short 'e' , the spot-cluster barrage, the thrown-away superlatives, and in short, the lack of effort. But now that all of these lazy, assemblyline approaches are tolerated at the biggest stations, there won't be any turning back.

Paraphrasing someone : 'Diminishing returns -- it's the law'.

This collective climate of eroding standards is not my problem anymore. But the professionals here still employed by the industry have a virtual communications duty to point out lousy performances whenever feasible.
 
right on steve. i couldnt have said it any better. im retired, and from the old school of broadcasting also, and i agree with you 100%...
 
Nobody will ever top "Raceway Park"..Put Englishtown, NJ on the map...
 
Every now and then an aircheck pops up in its entirety on the (rival ;- )message board for NYC.

Forgetting for a moment, if possible, the modern cluster marathon approach and how that malignant earsore developed :

The commercials on those old air checks were entertaining!!!

Gene Klavan of WNEW 1130 was, imo, the funniest person I ever heard speak into a microphone. He would have a pretty good load of commercials on his morning show (plus two in-house network newscasts per hour, another subject).

His live reads were so buffoonish as to defy words. And this silliness and anarchy was at a respected, somewhat conservative, legendary MoR citadel. Supposedly, Klavan's show brought in something like 1/3rd of the total station revenue.
Thing is, the agency spots he'd usually alternate were all well done, too. They had their own jingles, or melody, or schtick, or identity.

You'd hear the same excellence from any untelescoped Dan Ingram air check from the opposite drive time.

I realize that the dot-com days have been with us for a decade, and probably for good. At least half the spots have them -- they have to. But that's no excuse for the other :27 seconds of the spot being lame, rushed, mumbled/inaudible, or otherwise sounding indistinguishable from the other twelve elements in the set.

As I said, I've been out of the biz for decades. Still, I'm a listener (and a DXer). Yet, the last two 'names' behind any entertaining campaigns I remember were Jake Holmes and Sunbury's own Dick Orkin. That tele-minister routine from the guy who did the Raymour & Flanigan spots was novel at the start, but wore thin. He made me check too often to see if my fly was open.
Those campaigns were, if nothing else, unique.

Today's one-size-should-fit-all approach to spots has to be a big reason sales are lean.
 
"OMG Mikey...anger issues? Sooooo true!
What's your college frequency again? Can I get it in the W-B? Love your format."

No...no anger issues. I actually have respect for anyone who becomes a sales rep...and can actually stick to it for years and years. Those ads just paint a picture that is so "not true." But that's what selling is (I guess).

The college frequency is still 91.7. Marywood University. Still the finest and purest alternative/indie station in NEPA (and still one of the coolest in the country). It's a 2000 watt stick but it's still perched on top of the library on campus. You should get it in WB though. It gets really dicey when you're heading into Nanticoke. Just hit the stream at www.vmfm917.org. I still might stumble in and do a shift or two before the summer's out. Vintage Vinyl comes back for a fifth season the Tuesday morning after Labor Day at 10am.
 
Gene Klavan of WNEW 1130 was, imo, the funniest person I ever heard speak into a microphone. He would have a pretty good load of commercials on his morning show (plus two in-house network newscasts per hour, another subject).

His live reads were so buffoonish as to defy words. And this silliness and anarchy was at a respected, somewhat conservative, legendary MoR citadel. Supposedly, Klavan's show brought in something like 1/3rd of the total station revenue.
Thing is, the agency spots he'd usually alternate were all well done, too. They had their own jingles, or melody, or schtick, or identity.
Click to expand...

I was a studio guest (just visiting) of Mr. Finch one day. Watching them do the show was just unbelievable.
Virtually no script to all appearances, and spontaneous wit and creative adlibbing by mssrs Klavan and Finch.
Many of the jokes were over my head (I was a teen, and - of course - not a New Yorker), but the buffoonery was a huge part of the draw of the show.
And unlike the situation in most markets, they made piles of money doing it.
 
I don't know why, but even the radio-locator map is too kind: http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WVMW&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

Hey Zenith...actually, if you take away the "blue" circle completely and expand the "purple" circle out just a little bit, that kind of gives you an accurate picture. At least that's how it works in my car anyway.

The real problem is the tower height. VMFM's tower isn't really much of a tower. It's a stick on top of the library. And the library building is only about three stories high. Kevin Fitzgerald and I used to joke about moving the tower to his back yard to add a little height. :D Maybe someday we'll revisit that option.
 
Tiger1983 said:
In this recruitment ad, she claims she has health insurance and is very satisfied as a sales account executive position.
Click to expand...

Health insurance? Yes, but how about the $2,000 deductible that Cumulus has with that insurance? For most of us, that's as good as no insurance at all...and doctor visits don't come cheap these days.

Most of the salespeople whom I knew from the Citadel days jumped ship when Cumulus took over. They got fed up with the endless bulls--t conference calls, the yanking of their commissions, the micromanagement, and that company's practice of running every department by remote control from Atlanta.

We need regulators and legislators in Washington who would repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which gave greedy corporations the ability to gobble up what were once fine local stations, and do to those companies what was done to the Standard Oil monopoly about a century ago.


Radio consolidation: Massive layoffs and lousy programming.
 
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