Texty texty
Don @ IdahoRadioNews | March 11, 2009Fuentes said the station received more than 60,000 text messages from listeners requesting songs in January alone.
That’s a snippet from the Statesman’s February story on KWYD/Wild 101. The station says it go a whopping 60,000 song requests by text in January. I’ll go out on a limb and say that was the total number of texts — and it was largely driven by contests that told people that “whoever sends the most texts wins.”
Now KSAS/103.3 Kiss FM is running a contest that will give the person who sends in the 1-millionth text Taylor Swift tickets.
It’s a cool use of technology — but has the potential to raise the ire of parents — especially if their kids are NOT on an unlimited text message plan. At $0.10 a pop, those extra text messages can add up quickly…
UPDATE: Part of my hunch is challenged – see comments.
You know Don I guess my role here is to keep you honest when you are claiming to be “in the know” when it comes to my stations. The sixty thousand is correct. There is a mechanism to keep track of what text is what. The text contest you referred to generated 120,000 texts from 6000 individual numbers outside of requests. Most of those texts were received during hours when the “kids” you talked about were in school.
We have close to 10k listeners in the OPT in database and guess what? Over sixty five percent are over 21.
As to costing Mom and Dad? We run constant messages about “your normal texting rates apply”. NO complaints!
How is any of this news? Maybe the site should be IRG instead of IRN?
Darrell
Fair enough. 60,000 requests is quite a feat for a single month.
A couple things: most kids I know these days text constantly while in school… at break.. under their desk in class… at lunch. An average of 20 texts apiece isn’t a big deal — but of those 6,000 – how many just sent two or three texts? And how many sent tons? As in — hundreds?
If sixty-five percent are over 21 — that means 35 percent are under 21 – or 3,500 listeners. That would actually mean that a disproportionate pool of those in the contest are underage
And as to the last part — YOUR aren’t going to get the complaint — the poor dumb kid who sent 8 trillion text messages to win a contest is going to get in hot water with their parents. How do I know? Because it happened to a family member (though not your station).
I guess if people are pissed about a positive post about Impact (the Piolon story)… and pissed about a negative post (this)… something must be right.
As I said Don, we have mechanisms to track. The 6000 discreet numbers generated over 120k messages. The back end on the mobile platforms is impressive software. As to texting under the desk, ok maybe. But explain to me how they would be able to respond at the appropriate time unless they have headphones hanging out of their ears? It was a call to action contest, unnannounced. Maybe hide a cell phone from the teacher, not buying headphones or radios in school. Sorry.
I also said under 21. We are an 18-49 targeted station with a big 18-34 component. I did not quote the three years between 18 and 21 or 12-24. It was an all ages show so I do not see the underage issue. To have 65% over 21 with a format like this is killer.
Look, the reality is we and others in town are bringing something else to the game of radio. I had a client tell me they worked with Citadel and got 120K plus texts for Rascal Flats. Unless you are working the mobile applications it is hard to understand how they work, the metrics involved and more important, how they can make radio better, cooler faster in some instances.
As to being mad or happy over your topics, I had an old girlfriend in college. One day she was nice as hell and the next she was mean as a badger. You remind me of her in that I’m never sure which Don I will get. Happy trails, I have a cluster to run. And I do appreciate the topics you throw up (no pun intended). There have been some lively discussions.
Well that doesn’t make a ton of sense. So you’re saying a full THIRD of your contestants are aged 18 – 19 and 20? So 10% per year? The contest you ran was “text as many times as you can” – and it was over an extended period of time — and I heard it mentioned a number of times — meaning kids were probably hearing the contest… then compulsively texting trying to win.
I think the text messaging piece is awesome for all groups — but there’s peril for some since kids and others have to pay for those messages, and the carriers charge an arm and a leg. Limiting a contest to one per cell phone would get the same result but not turn it into a silly arms race.
And Darrell, you seem to like to call names — whether it’s your competition (Tragic, Miss) or me (an old moody girlfriend). Whatever you think of the editorial policy of this site, I’m not going to call you a name to make myself feel better.
I will have to say that while I want to question those numbers from Darrell I can say for sure that assuming that the majority of the texts are coming from kids is a big mistake. We have been doing the text thnig on the X for almost 9 months if not longer! The response has been huge from the very beginning. I can say with certainty that the majority of our contest texters especially during morning drive and afternoon drive are not teens! Now that being said I’m glad to see the rest of the radio groups are catching up with available technology!
Hey I have to get some sort or barb in there!
AT LEAST YOUR BOTH EMPLOYED………..
Nampa is the best!!!
Kiss got well over a million text f.y.i!