An Offer You Can't (or Shouldn't) Refuse...

When I learned that the Radio Advertising Bureau has begun to offer personal memberships, I could hardly wait to sign up.

At $210 a year, it's a bargain.

$210 a year. $4.04 a week. About the price of a 20-ounce Espresso drink. Or a Happy Meal.

For a veritable treasure trove of research and resources quite likely unsurpassed by any other advertising organization.

The RAB's vast archives contain tools to make creating and selling radio advertising easier, more productive, and more likely to generate results for radio advertisers.

Now, I've not agreed with everything RAB has said or promoted over the years. Decades ago, they often seemed to reflect and reinforce Radio's inferiority complex, the idea that the highest and best use of our medium was in a supporting role to print or TV, as part of a media mix. (If the ad buy were a martini, Radio was the vermouth or the olive.)

But gradually the RAB reflected a growing confidence in our medium, i.e., that Radio as a primary medium was capable of carrying 100% of the weight of a campaign and make it work!

Beginning with radio sales trainer Jim Williams, his protegés Chris Lytle, Chuck Mefford, Darrell Solberg...along with folks like Sean Luce, Dave Gifford, Jim Taszarek, Paul Weyland, and Jerry Frentress...and more recently Norton Warner, Jeff Dostal, Michael Tate and Matt Hackett, radio advertising sales professionals have had unparalleled opportunities to understand and unleash the unlimited potential of our medium. Support from the ad creation side has come from folks like Roy Williams, Dan O'Day, Jeffrey Hedquist, and others (watch for a guy named Doug Zanger to be making big radio waves in coming years). I'm sure there are many more I've failed to name (Jason Jennings just came to mind).

The point is, for many years now the RAB has been leveraging the talents of these folks and others for the good of our radio team and every last player.

$4.04 a week ought to be impossibly attractive, like the sizzle and smell of a prime ribsteak on a bed of hot coals (sorry ... it's Friday dinnertime and I'm fantasizing).

Personally, I was thrilled to be able to secure a personal RAB membership, for my benefit and ultimately the benefit of my clients.

Eric Rhoads, publisher of RadioINK, wrote a thought-provoking piece in which he expressed his concern for the future of RAB, which is facing cutbacks in the support it typically has enjoyed from the largest broadcast groups. They recently (and undoubtedly painfully) announced layoffs that included veterans George Hyde and Mike Mahone, themselves champions of education and training for thousands of radio advertising salespeople.

Whatever the reality of their present circumstances, of this much I'm certain: every membership matters to RAB.

Please consider supporting them with yours.

Thank you!