Moneyball: What Keeps You Up at Night?
• I haven’t been on the air in over 30 years, but I still have a recurring radio nightmare. In mine there’s less than a minute remaining in the last commercial and I don’t know the station name or format. I’m looking frantically for a song that might be alright in several formats to buy myself some time. If you were ever on the air, you probably have your own version of the dream.
In my wife Lauri’s dream (yes, we met in radio) there are lots of CDs in a studio which has only cart machines. Those who’ve been on the air more recently often dream that the station automation crashes. Consultant Holland Cooke says he dreams that the reverb gets deeper and deeper. In Suzy Chase‘s dream, she can’t get the mic to turn on, while the mic won’t turn off in Dain Craig‘s dream. “There are no records in the control room” for Tim Roberts. Kendra Raines doesn’t know what station she’s on or who’s coming up next. Jason Allentoff dreams the station building is gone, even though the transmitter is still there. In workday meetings, Shelly Kilburn is triggered if no one speaks for a few seconds… because it reminds her of dead air.
The scene in the movie “Bull Durham,” where Tim Robbins dreams he’s on the mound in just his underwear suggested to me that every occupation has a version of our dead air dream. Doctors have told me about not being able to find a stethoscope — anywhere. Bartenders have told me about every glass behind the bar leaking like a sieve. A mechanic said he couldn’t remember “lefty loosey, righty tighty.” Turns out most of us have anxieties about something or another.
Now for the worst segue ever…
If your nightmare is facing 2026 without local callout, we can help you with that: NuVoodoo Local Snapshot starts at less than $600/month for 10 reports across the year, each with a sample of 50 screened respondents in your market, your demo, who listen to your station and/or its direct competition, rating 40 songs of your choosing. The per report price comes down with more frequent reports. We can arrange barter to cover 50% or more of your outlay.
NuVoodoo can also deliver OMTs and tactical perceptual studies for under $10K. For group clients we’re having great success with coordinated library tests (OMTs) and coordinated callout — running coordinated hooklists across co-owned, co-format stations to give maximal information for programmers and deep insights for format captains at steep savings over typical per market pricing. Reach out to me at leigh@nuvoodoo.com for more information (or to tell me about your dead air dream or take me to task about that awful segue). — Leigh Jacobs
