Radio Sales Café

We are watching something new happen in our rural area - one of our local newspapers has decided to start streaming area high school sports, therefore cutting into our sales. They have even taken it a step further and began pushing us out of our broadcasting spots in the press boxes. They are offering packaged deals that include print ads in addition to ads during the sports broadcast. Is anyone else dealing with this issue or a similar one? Any suggestions on how we can fight back?

I've never heard of a newspaper doing this before, although we've had a cable company start doing some. Who's actually doing the broadcast? Is the quality as good? I can't imagine a newspaper writer being able to do a decent play by play.

Actually they are former employees of our radio station and they actually are good to doing the play by play!

We do both, live broadcasts plus we stream them too.  If you're rural, the streaming audience is probably fairly small and, if it's like ours, most of this small audience doesn't even live within the area.  We have people across the U.S. listening.  These folks have moved out of the region but still want to hear their old local team.  Stress the larger local audience you reach.  People who can actually purchase your advertiser's products and, once you've set it up, throw in the streaming audience for free; at least for a while. 

Here in rural Indiana, our small daily is providing a video stream of the high school games, but the audio is simply crowd noise and the PA announcer-no actual play-by-play.  Advertisers are paying $300 a month to have web site ads displaying along the side of the video window.  So far, I don't think many have signed up.  But this is a sign of things to come.  So far, our stations are still doing traditional broadcasts that are streamed, but no video.  Cost of adding video to the stream is high, and quality is questionable.  All of us need to be looking into this, however, or someone else will.  I can see schools doing this, and certainly cable companies.

Actually we do stream our games also. We do get a handful of listeners from time to time but nothing to major unless its a postseason game!

Our state athletic association has been doing this by signing an exclusive video steaming rights agreement with a company called ProView for all State Championships. ProView then takes this lead and pushes the school districts to stream all their events through them bypassing the local broadcasters. It been a tough fight but we won by partnering with the local college digital media class and Network1Sports to stream everything else. It helped that we have a STRONG relationship with our local school.

Our local paper just started doing this as well...they don't have it quite off the ground yet.  Is there a way to solidify your spot as the broadcaster for the games before they do?

Its something we are working on. The schools like to play the political and diplomatic role so its always first come first serve type of thing. Occasionally we pick up a game at the last minute and by that time they have already taken our spot. At this point it really comes down to man power - they have more than we do.

Mother of Pearl, fire on the Poop deck as Sponge Bob Square Pants would say.  What a revoltin' development!!  I will  think on this and ask around discreetly....see what we come up with.  I mean initially..I think competition makes us better...so what's a better package than they are presenting?  One thing we did at WLKM was have an annual "All Sports" package to try and get the money out there...annually.   2 ads in ever game broadcast, 2 ads around the game time and 10 (these are :30s) ads per month...year round.   So clients are on every football and basketball game and all tournament games...for all towns we carry the games for......plus 10 ads every month of the year....for one set (it's a good price)..amount.  We kind of divided our annual sports money up to come up with a price and added a little for the 10 monthly ads.  As for taking your spot in the broadcast booth..early bird gets the worm?  Develop  better relaionships with athletic dept. so they "save" your spot?  Let us know how you do!!

we have three local schools in our local coverage area and we announce one on AM and another on FM. we decided to give the third school coverage who had just started football by signing up with an ihigh.com account (which is free) and streaming the coverage on our website. The guys we had do this quit just before basketball season because they saw a money making idea to go out and do this on their own. They tried to undercut us on price and badmouthed our radio station around town to advertisers. Luckily our advertisers are loyal. they get 400-500 hits per game but I question how many of them are really people and how many are just them and their friends going on there to "create hits". I had originally gotten word from the IHSAA that they would not be able to webcast post-season games, but they changed their mind and allowed them. Also, two of our three schools will not allow them to webcast and have stuck with our station as their station of choice. however, the game is changing and all radio needs to realize they are not the only "game in town".

depending on what state your are in, most ADs have the right to decide which media is allowed at the school. have the AD sign an exclusive agreement with your station and that will keep anybody else out. that only works with local games. post-season games are regulated by the state athletic association.