Did you know radio can be broadcast from practically anywhere? Since radio listeners are interested in stations that play the songs they like, ads and news are designed for specific listeners. For example, one would perhaps hear about the sale of horse on a country radio station or the opening of a Tyler Perry movie on a station frequented by African-Americans. Just kidding! That is not to say that certain groups of people don’t like certain types of songs. I know several people over 45 who love rap music, and I know people under 20 who like Blues songs. However, for the most part, music and news is brought to us 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Radio commercials can be just as powerful as television commercials. Overall, the audio news release (ANR) is the most effective of them all. Since the radio reaches “94 percent of Americans age 12 and older.” They are no more than 60 seconds, but they can be extremely powerful. An ANR I heard recently goes a bit like this (not verbatim):
Telephone ringing
Answering machine answers
Male voice is heard: “Hello, this is Mike (sic). I can’t come to the phone right now because I’m beating my child. Please leave a message after the beep.”
Then, an announcer tells the listeners that finding out that a child is being abused is not that simple, and that we need to be alert and to report any suspicious abuse. It certainly heightened my awareness of the issue. Radio is powerful!
Reference:
Cameron, G. T., Wilcox, D. L., Reber, B. H., & Shin, J. H. (2008), Public relations
today: managing competition and conflict. Boston: Pearson.
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