Radio has enjoyed a resurgence in popularity over the past few years. Although no one can pinpoint why more Americans are turning to a low-tech medium in a hightech era, its portability and its ability to cater to specific program tastes may be two underlying factors for its success.

Two program formats - Country Music and All News/Talk - have enjoyed particularly strong growth in recent years and reach vastly different audiences.

There are more than 11,000 radio stations in the country today. About two-thirds of them use public service announcements (PSAs). Before mailing PSAs to stations, however, there are a variety of details to consider when preparing your distribution plan:

• Selecting stations that reach your primary and secondary target audiences.
• Determining material formats that most radio stations want and obtaining costs for replicating materials.
• Developing a packaging concept that attracts the attention of public service directors and encourages them to use the PSAs.
• Getting packaging elements designed, printed and mailed.
• Developing an evaluation procedure to help you measure campaign impact.

Selecting Stations

Unlike television, which is a general interest medium, radio programming is aimed at listeners with particular interests, making it easy to segment stations by ethnicity, age, educational level and lifestyle. The list below includes the major radio program formats and the approximate number of stations in each format:

Adult Contemporary	1,899
African - American/Urban	153
Beautiful Music	238
Classical	409
Country/Western	2,630
Educational (high school/college)	113
Jazz/Big Band	153
Middle-of-the-road (MOR)	875
Oldies	580
News/Talk	667
Religious (Gospel/Christian)	660
Rock/Album Rock	1,011
Spanish	594
Top 40	369

Criteria for Selection

The number of stations to target is influenced by many factors, including budget, demographic considerations and previous usage practices of the station. Our typical distribution plan is 5,000 stations, which includes all previous users and provides uniform coverage across markets and program formats.

Material Format

CDs are the standard format for distributing radio PSAs, but there are a number of different CD packaging concepts. These include the Radio DiskPak, the wallet style, the jewel case and script booklet packaging concepts. for a description of each, use the search engine on our site to find the article titled: "Planning Your Radio PSAs From Production to Packaging."

If you are on a very tight budget, think about sending scripts to stations printed on the reverse of postcards, a technique that we have used for several clients.

Lengths

One of the most frequently-asked questions pertains to optimum PSA because the evaluator must interpret what stations mean by "TIN" (Till Further Notice), "ROS" (Run of Station) and other meaningless comments. To obtain accurate and meaningful usage data, we design questions that force stations to provide very detailed data. The critical pieces of information include: what spot length was used; how often (number of times per week) and what time frame (number of weeks). To make it easy for stations to complete the form, we use a design with simple check-off boxes for each piece of information that is needed when we keypunch usage data into our computers. In addition to usage data, there are several questions that should be on your response card, including spaces for providing:

• Name of public service director.
• Station call letters (both AM and FM) since many stations with sister affiliates will use the PSA on both, and you thereby get double credit fox useage.
• Station data: that is, address, city, state, zip and station program format which is used to keep your database current.
• Station program format and the station's preferred audio material.

Usage Levels

For most radio PSA campaigns, you can expect an unaided response rate of about 12-15 percent, meaning that 600 to 900 stations will use your PSA when 5,000 are targeted. Given an average dollar value of $930 per station, a typical radio PSA will generate in excess of $700,000 in airtime value. We often are asked, "How did our PSA compare to others you handle?" To answer the question, we provide a benchmark radio campaign to which all others can be measured. The benchmark results from 21 radio campaigns we distributed over several years.

Follow-Up Surveys

Although the vast majority of targeted radio stations do not respond, that does not mean they are non-users. No matter how simple you make it for stations to respond, there is a fairly consistent number - about 30 percent - that use but do not respond to a PSA mass mailing. To capture some of this additional usage, we often employ postcard reminder surveys. Designed as a two-part postcard, this device includes a short note to the public service director and a response card that is identical to the one sent with the original package. These cards can generate significant increases in reported usage rates and exposure levels.

Some organizations also employ telephone surveys to increase reported usage rates.

However, we have found they have drawbacks and should be carefully considered. Busy station personnel often consider telephone surveys a serious nuisance, when could affect ultimate usage rates if public service directors get annoyed at the intrusion. Also, it is very difficult to get the person who received your PSA on the phone, since most of them have collateral duties and cannot be interupted. Anyone other than the one to whom your PSA was directed probably cannot tell you if your PSA was used. For these reasons, we recommend minimizing phone calls to stations and sending reminder postcards, which are both cost-effective and less intrusive.

Radio PSAs can be one of the most cost-effective mass communications techniques avaible to get your message out both to general audiences and discrete populations. They offer flexibility and they permit you to reach audiences out-of-home. They are comparatively inexpensive and they provide a good return on investment. To maximize your return, however, you should establish objectives and develop a thorough plan for your campaign.