Brian Rickman – URBan Radio
TUSCUMBIA – Every broadcaster wants folks in the coverage area to notice when the format of the radio station changes. When a station moves from “Justin Beber” to “Rock”, the management wants their listeners to know ahead of time. On the face of this, it sounds like a good idea.
Earlier this week, the management of radio station WMSR 94.9 was probably having different thoughts. “We decided to change the format of the station. And the method we chose to get the word out was to “stunt”. We did what a lot of stations do, in that we wanted to draw attention to the fact that we were going to be changing formats, effective yesterday (Wednesday). What the promos said, it was kind of a robotic voice saying, “Change is coming Wednesdayat Nine.” And then there was another one that said, “We no longer like Justin Beber… We are making changes to this frequency. Tune in Wednesdayat Nine AM,” said Brian Rickman, GM of Star 94.
Some local law enforcement agencies, after they started getting calls from a number of parents who were afraid to take their children to school, decided that they had better take a hard look at all of this. Nothing was found of any consequence. No laws had been broken. No aliens had landed.
However, the programming on Star 94 did change sharply at 9:00 Wednesday. No more Justin Beber.
This kind of promotion has been carried out by hundreds of radio stations over the years.
“Well, yeah. But apparently it hasn’t been done here (in the Shoals).” The ratings were not where they wanted them to be and so they decided to do something different… “Something to make a splash,” intoned Rickman.
Boy, did it ever…
Rickman continued, “The idea was that some ‘Star People’ had intercepted the signal of the old format. But they didn’t like what they were hearing. So they were coming to this galaxy, to the radio station and adjust the format to something that they would like. And that was supposed to have happened yesterday.”
The promotional material started running this past Monday. Rickman told this reporter that he came home and took a look at the facebook page. “We had gone from having about 14-hundred fans, to suddenly having about 6-thousand fans. As soon as I saw that, I knew something was… weird. Very weird.”
This was not great.
Rickman continued on about the sudden increase of facebook ‘likes’. “It’s so many, you’re thinking… SOMETHING HAS GONE BADLY WRONG!”
Then he opened up the messages and there were about 30, and most of the people got the gag. “And they were saying, ‘Aliens are coming!’ Blah-blah-blah… They were playing along. They had sent us little memes that had flying saucers… But then, suddenly I started to read some that reflected alarm. Somebody wrote that their daughter was afraid to go to school. Another message said that the writer had sever panic disorder and was afraid to leave the house. ”
The next morning, Rickman started working the phones. He was making calls. He was receiving calls. A busy man, indeed.
What surprises Rickman is that all of the audio is transcribed on the station’s facebook page, yet there are still a few folks who think there was more to this than a simple misunderstanding. He wondered to this reporter why the concerned people wouldn’t just scroll down the facebook page and listen to the actual recordings.
“All we wanted to do was unveil a format in a funny way. We did want attention… We just didn’t want this kind of attention.”
The radio station format changed. Listeners are reporting that they like the new sound.
And not a single alien has turned up, that we know of.
Reporter’s note: “I don’t care what you say about me. Just spell my name right,” P.T. Barnum.
1 comment
I actually thought this was funny. Our society has become one that does not think on it’s own. And only goes on what is told. I enjoyed listening to the aliens and all the different types of music they played. It might have been nice to leave it that way.