Next time someone says "the phones light up" think of this.

A really smart guy named Reg Johns (years in media in some big centers) told a story recently about the radio station KISS in Los Angeles. This station is one of the biggest in the country with a cume of about 4,000,000 people.

They have 6 or 8 lines that come into the control room for contests and they were always "ringing off the hook". But they wondered how many people were calling and getting a busy signal. They used some software to find out. The answer? 450. That's all. Out of a cume of 4,000,000 people, less then 500 were calling the station for giveaways.

Most of our stations have 2 or 3 lines coming into control. When your "phones light up" you may be engaging no more then a few people.

I draw three conclusions from this.....

• A large portion of your audience does not care what you are giving away on the radio. They want to be entertained and engaged and that does not come from prizing.
  
• NEVER assume phone activity is an indication of whether a bit is good or not.
  
• ALWAYS look for additional points of contact with the audience. Our local portals, Twitter, Facebook, etc., are becoming more important all the time.

And as Reg said, there is no busy signal on the Internet. Our audience can contact us at any time. When people reach out to us, let's make sure we reach back to them.