To take a break from the information only regarding 94.5, we will focus on Nassau Broadcasting Partners, L.P. this week. Nassau Broadcasting Partners owns WPST along with a handful of other radio stations along the East Coast. They currently operate stations in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts and Maryland. Nassau is quoted to have signals currently covering approximately 8.1 million people across the East Coast. Not only do they operate all of these companies across the coast, but they help operate WPST, located right here in Princeton. Nassau Broadcasting Partners is also located right here in Princeton; both WPST and Nassau are local companies to our community. Founder, Herbert W. Hobler of Nassau Broadcasting Partners was a graduate of Princeton University. People and community are the main focuses of Nassau. Here's a look at Nassau's mission statement by President Louis F. Mercatani:
"Our current portfolio of stations is characterized by a diversity of format, geographic location, programming, marketing, and promotions tailored to each stations target audiences."
STATION PORTFOLIO Nassau Broadcasting Portfolio presents a diversity of AM and FM frequencies in order to satisfy their locals and national marketers needs.Their current objective is to make their clients increase their investments by advertising their companies throughout the East Coast.
Number of Nassau Broadcasting Stations in the East Coast Maine: 11 Stations Maryland: 3 Stations Massachusetts: 4 stations New Hampshire: 10 stations New Jersey: 2 Stations (WPST) Pennsylvania: 7 stations Vermont: 12 stations
Nassau Broadcasting Radio Stations offer different music genres and formats such as classic hits, country hits, classic rock, classical, Hot AC, Inspirational, talk, ESPN Sports, religious, and adult contemporary.
PRESS CENTER Within the Nassau Broadcasting website they have news releases about all of their events that they participate in with all of the radio stations they own. Some of the press releases include events such as food drives and folk festivals with 106.3, a holiday food drive with 101.5, and an online auction with 99.9. They also have many press releases about their events with 94.5 PST. Some of those events include their annual freedom festival and their annual coats for kids drive. Each press release discusses the time and place of the event and the different activities that people were able to take part in. Their press center is a great form of public relations because it shows their involvement with all of their radio stations.
NASSAU HOLDINGS, INC. Nassau Broadcasting is owned by Nassau Holdings, INC. Nassau Holdings is a diverse holding company that is located in Princeton, New Jersey. They manage predominately in four different areas: Media and Communications, Real Estate, Marine Services and Food Services. In Media and Communications, Nassau Holdings manages Nassau Broadcasting as well as Nassau Journals, LLC. Louis F. Mercatanti, Jr. is also the owner of Nassau Holdings, INC.
When first opening Nassau Braoadcasting INC.'s official website page, they blatantly advertise their own advertising tools. Their main page says "Advertise With Us," and underneath allows you to choose which region you want to advertise with, each region being linked to a different page you are then directed to to further complete the advertisement process. They encourage your participation and help with advertising in their version of a professional "thank you" letter, addressing that the advertisements posted allow their business to grow and prosper, as well as supply the general public with the radio stations that they love. Their main goal is to keep expanding their business and giving the public what they want, via radio and such, and while they're promoting themselves, they allow the credit to fall on their supporters; they spend the majority of their thanking to the companies and explain that helping Nassau will also greatly benefit the advertisers companies as well.
A statement from their letter: "Nassau ensures that our Account Managers have available to them all of the state-of-the-art information, research and digital production technology required to develop highly successful marketing and promotional campaigns for our clients."
So, they take into account their technological advantages and strengths, while still encouraging and helping other companies as well. Besides the great deal of advertisement information that essentially keeps the company running, Nassau also runs a slideshow of all of their radio stations that they own on top, displaying all the areas they broadcast to. This is an excellent example of PR at work: they are both promoting themselves, while making other companies feel confident in their services and confident with using Nassau's company to broadcast their companies advertisements. Overall, it is a smart and professional way for them to disperse other companies names out to the multimedia world through social media. Just follow the link!
The DJ's at any radio station are an important part of the station. At 94.5, the DJ's are very active. They blog, have social media sites and allow listeners to e-mail them through the day. They participate in charities and different live events for WPST. This is all on top of their radio hosting job. In this week's blog we are going to take a closer look at each major DJ at 94.5 WPST and discuss what they do as DJ's to promote themselves and the station, as a part of Public Relations.
As always WPST does their best to keep thier listeners happy, one of the ways they do this is their PST Loyal Listeners Club. To do so, you need to sign up and tune in to WPST at 8:20am, 12:20pm, 4:20pm or 7:20pm and earn points that can lead to great prizes. This is just another way WPST is getting thier fans involved and keeping their intrest with prizes and games. For the avid listener, this is just another reason to listen to the radio and earn free prizes during the week.
THE PST WAKE UP CREW The PST Wake up Crew consists of Chris Rollins, Tommy Jordan, Newman and Wendy McClure. They broadcast on weekdays from 5:30-10:00 AM. Each DJ has their own blog and participates on WPST's Facebook page. On the crew's website, they allow listeners to play games and enter contests. They also have a section called The Crew Cares where they tell listeners about the latest charity events the station and the Crew are taking apart of.
TONI RYAN Toni Ryan is one of the main DJ's at WPST. Her radio show airs on weekdays from 10am-3pm. Toni also has a blog that she interacts with her fans and others; this can be found right off of the WPST web site. Fans may contact her through email and she will address them on her blog or over the air. If you take a look at Toni's blog you can also see that both WPST's Facebook and Twitter links are all over the place. So as a DJ with WPST, Toni uses social media to gain coverage for her company.
MATT SNEED As do most of the DJ's at WPST, Matt also has his own blog and links for pictures. Matt has his own show at 3pm-8pm on the weekdays. Matt Sneed is very involved with the company as he has been with WPST for over 5 years now. He does all he can to give back to the community and participate in events to help better others, which WPST is known for. As you can see on Matt's blog, he looks for input from the fans and wants to know what they think. WPST drives to satisfy their listeners, and this proves it. Go check out Matt's page!
SHINN Tom Shinn, most commonly known as "Shinn" is the night show DJ for WPST. Along with his hilarious sarcastic blogs about late night snacks, temperature and random comments about people wearing high socks with sandals, he also takes part in a night show from 8pm-12am. This is one of the most listened to sections of the show. He begins his show with the five most requested songs that PST played that day, and follows it with fun conversations with his interns and even discussing a fun video of the day that he posts on the PST website to keep the fun and energetic atmosphere of his show. He holds many contests to allow listeners to win prizes and also takes requests from many to play everyone's favorite songs. Shinn's show positively promotes PST because it shows the most fun side of the station. His show helps reach out to young teens as opposed to other DJs who mostly attract those in the work force, which helps have the variety of listeners that currently listen to PST.
WADE While WPST is located right here in Princeton, Wade grew up in Trenton. Wade has his own blog just like the rest of the DJ's at WPST, where he loves talking about media and all diffrent things that are going on in todays world. He is every in touch with public relations and that shows on his blog, you can check out his blog by clicking on his name above. Growing up in neighboring town Trenton, Wade does his best to give back to the community and DJ's for sponsoring events around the communtiy.
Tommy Jordan is a DJ who posts on his blog around a regular basis. This shows that each DJ does have a life outside of work and they are very friendly and sociable. Tommy writes various funny events in his blog, and listeners often comment on his stories as being funny, interesting or cool. All in all, Tommy adds yet another personality to the WPST DJ crew, and adds to the friendly atmosphere that they try to portray at the same time.
In today's age of technology WPST has many competitors, including other radio stations such as Z100 and Q102.You also have the internet, satellite radio and apple products, with today’s technology its only a matter of time before radio has another competitor alongside all of these.
Along with Z100 and Q102, WPST competes with all radio stations. Today, most stations stream their music online. Just a quick internet search can give you all stations similar to WPST, there are hundreds. This means, that listeners can listen to any station they choose anywhere around the world. Also, sites such as Limewire and Rhapsody make it easier than ever to listen to music on the internet. These sites would allow a listener to customize which artists and genres they prefer to hear, when they want. Not only does this allow listeners to download music it also allows them to put these songs on IPods and portable MP3 players. Both IPods and portable MP3 players compete with the radio as well.
Some of the other direct competitors that WPST has may have nothing to do with radio stations at all. Instead it is technology fueling today’s music market. IPods, Satellite Radio, and even T.V. music stations are direct competitors of radio stations and WPST as a whole. With the rise in popularity of MP3 players and the increasing number of commercials on public radio, people are switching to other means when looking for music. Satellite radio, which offers superior quality and little to no commercials, is also a direct competitor for people who are looking to receive a variety of music at the highest quality with no interruptions.
Satellite radio allows everybody to listen to their favorite radio station while they are driving miles away from the radio source. A satellite radio user can be listening to an American radio station while they are in Canada. Compared to a traditional radio station satellite radio sounds quality is the same as CD-burned sound quality with complete clarity. The two main companies for satellite radios are XM and Sirius who are now a single company; launched their product at the beginning of the 21st century. Nowadays cars manufacturers are installing radio satellites instead of regular terrestrial radios stations, and also they are available on electronics stores around the country. The availability and installation of the satellite radios in brand new cars is turning radio satellite into one of the biggest terrestrial radio competitors.
With all of these competitors, WPST has to try even harder to manage their communication with their fans and listeners. They can be taken away by any of these competitors at any time. WPST uses exposure through the internet and their radio broadcast to promote their radio and try to get listeners to tune in. Can't we just go back to the day, when the radio was exposure for everything and their was no other way?
The gap between social networks and jobs is becoming increasingly closer together, and as a result, many people’s social lives outside of work are being directly affected. Over the years as Facebook has grown into a huge social networking site it has helped bridge the gap between people’s personal lives and their lives at work. This new rise in social networks and PR can have both an advantage or a disadvantage to people who use them in the workplace. In a good way, Facebook can allow users to network and exchange contacts and find jobs online with different people easier than other job sites. Since it is a more sociable tool, it is easier to communicate and exchange resumes as well as ask and answer any questions either party may have. The downside to this is that many of the new generations of teenagers are headed into the workforce, and it will become an issue with organizations and people’s privacy. Companies are becoming concerned with people’s lives outside of work and it’s becoming an issue with the interview process as well. As people go in to be interviewed for different jobs, their Facebook pages are being invaded and companies may be persuaded not to hire certain people because of their behavior outside of work. The evolution of Facebook has been a key factor in the rise of social media and PR and has both been beneficial in the work place, yet problematic as well.
Social media have been an enormous influence on public relations since they first began to be popular in 2004. According to A.C. Croft, author of Emergence of "New" Media Moves PR Agencies in New Directions, public relations agencies have made the transition from traditional forms of journalism to new “emerging” media. New media were first seen in blogs. Today, social media can be anything from a social networking site to podcasts.
According to Croft, social media have brought along a new set of public relations practitioners called “citizen journalists.” Everyday people can record, blog, write and videotape anything “newsworthy” to them. People today need their information faster than ever before. Also, according to Croft, press releases are being produced completely different. Press releases are no longer “one-dimensional.” Press releases are now being put out to the public in creative ways, such as logos, PDFs, preapproved executive quotes and creative formatting.
An outstanding example of social media is Facebook. According to Crunchbase, a free database developed by TechCrunch, Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2004. Zuckerberg, with the help of friends Dustin Moskowitz and Chris Hughes, created an exclusive network for Harvard University students. In 2005, Facebook opened up to all high school students and in 2006 opened to anyone with an email account. Contrary to popular belief, Facebook’s fastest growing demographic is working adults older than thirty. 11% of users are over 35. As of date, Facebook has over 250 Million users, making it the world’s largest social network.
Just like Friendster, MySpace, and now Twitter, Facebook is a social network site that allows individuals to present themselves, articulate their social networks, and establish or maintain connections with others, which all revolves around public relations. Facebook is a wonderful site for social networking. People are able to make their own profile, make friends and network with many people. Being friends with one person promotes the opportunity to be friends with all of their friends, so if someone is promoting their own business or social contacts they can do so by making different connections through people on Facebook. This site is also great for advertising. Similarly to social networking and promoting yourself as well as businesses, you can also advertise these same businesses on Facebook. For example, Red Robin, which is a casual dining chain, makes a great attempt to advertise themselves on Facebook. According to an article entitled Red Robin calls in a Facebook favor from 1,500 fans, the restaurant has made their own profile on Facebook to help better promote themselves and improve their PR. First, Red Robin has customers fill out an online survey at the bottom of their receipt from the restaurant. In return, customers have the ability to win cash prizes if they answer questions about their experience. Lastly, Red Robin asks the customer if they would like to recommend this restaurant to someone else; if so, they are invited to recommend Red Robin to their Facebook profile page. Thanks to Empathica, which handles all the surveys for Red Robin, about 20% of the people who were asked to do this have, making this a great opportunity for Red Robin.
“Recommenders have an average of 150 friends, who all get positive impressions of the brand, at least in theory. Red Robin chief marketing officer Susan Lintonsmith estimates that her chain has gotten about 1,500 recommendations since Empathica launched the service in April. That would mean about 225,000 positive impressions during that time. The Red Robin fan page, meanwhile, has about 1,900 fans” (Red Robin calls in a Facebook favor from 1,500 fans).
Aside from social networking and advertising, Facebook also takes part in direct marketing. Direct marketing is an attempt to send messages directly to consumers. When users sign onto their Facebook, on the right-hand side there are advertisements that specifically fit your profile to try and find certain products that you may be interested in. Although this goes right along with social networking and advertising, it is specific advertisements that target different users based on the information they give on their profile. Facebook is beneficial to individuals as well as different jobs and organizations because of the ability to social network, advertise, and market anything you have to offer, which all revolves around public relations.
Companies are finding that using Facebook is a new way to connect with customers. This is a new marketing tool because the social media world is expanding, significantly. According to the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce, Facebook also has the fastest-growing membership segment being adults aged 35 to 54, the majority of whom are in the workplace. As you’ve seen, most popular websites and company-based websites have been including the links on top of the page saying “Add us on Facebook” or the “Facebook Connect” with the Facebook “F” logo beside. “Facebook Connect” is a tool that allows websites to add the link to their pages to add social networking features.
Many reputable businesses use Facebook to market themselves. According to NetBanker, TD Canada Trust, the ninth largest bank in North America, just recently launched a Facebook application called Split IT, which helps roommates manage and split basic bills. It’s a visual bill: representing tables separating the roommates, utilities and each of their costs, simple and time saving. It even displays your debt, for example, if you owe one of your friends/roommates money. From Split IT, you are linked to their “Money Lounge,” which contains a plethora of job postings, offers, and all kinds of offers, which attracts their audience. Also, according to CIO Insight, JP Morgan Chase hosts a credit card loyalty club, Chase +1, to attract the college demographic. Chase +1 has about 34,000 and offers rewards and financial advice.
Also, ads on Facebook are an extremely useful way of attracting a broad audience and marketing your website/product/logo. Facebook has three different types of ads: sponsor groups, banner ads and text announcements. While sponsor groups and banner ads are the most popular (but, more expensive), text announcements are the cheapest (as low as $9/day). Sponsored groups are intended to promote a product, brand or idea as well as banner ads, which use brightly colored, sometimes flashy ads to attract people. Text announcements are for college students or smaller companies trying to target a specific audience or market.
In today’s business world an average of 60% of businesses use social media to track their employees, and do background checks on future employees. This can hurt you if you are not careful about what you release onto the internet. When looking for a job, you have to make sure that if you use any social media web sites such as Facebook, Twitter, or Myspace that they all portray you in a professional manor. Things such as you pictures can give a company an impression of certain things that they may hold against you. Also your information and what you might say on these sites can affect your job processes. Anything that you put on the internet is accessible some way or another, and in most instances someone can get their hands on it one way or another. Social Media affects your entire outlook on yourself; you have to remember that someone is always watching you. You have to watch what you write and never post or write about anything work related that may surface later on. For example, from CNN article "How social media can hurt your career”, former Philadelphia Eagles employee Dan Leone, he was fired for making inappropriate comments about his organization on Facebook. Someone is always watching, you have to make sure you protect your personal image and keep it professional. It is your image that is on the line and your future that you have to look out for, why ruin it over something as small as social media web site. Facebook brings engagement of Public Relations and its clients. People are no longer watching TV commercials; they are interacting and sharing their necessities. According to Dan Shust, The world is moving to more connectivity, more sharing, and more openness platforms. With all these things happening, social media will continue to grow and expand the Public Relations world and Facebook it’s going to be a huge part of it.
Dan Leone Interview & Interview Tips about Facebook
If you do not have a Facebook and would like to join, Please follow the link provided!FACEBOOK
For this weekly edition of the Group 4 blog we have looked further into 94.5 PST. We have asked Rider and TCNJ students as well as other local college students whether they listen to the radio station or not. Their responses were fairly similar with the common answer being that the radio station appealed more to younger audiences, as well as some older demographics, mainly older individuals who listen to the radio while at work. Our group has also called the station to try and find out which demographics they try to target, and they said that they have a large range of people that they try to reach out to. The listeners were from all across different age groups and they try to target the most amount of listeners possible, due to the pop music that they play. College students tend not to fall in these categories because there are a range of options for them to get their music. Technology is a huge factor for the changing demographics in radio listeners, and it will continue to change as certain technology improves and becomes more mainstream. Ipods, Limewire, and Satellite radio are major factors for changing demographics. To try and appease Iphone users, they offer applications for users to be able to listen to their station on the go so that they are always connected.
While personally getting in contact with PST, we were given the opportunity to learn how exactly the station keeps their listeners tuning in. Considering their listeners are anywhere from young teens to older adults in the work place, they have to take part in many different events to keep their listeners interested. Although they play a variety of music, including music from the 70's and 80's for the enjoyment of their older listeners, they also take part in broadcast promotional events where they come in personal contact with their fans. Our group was able to learn of some of the examples of specific events that PST takes part in. To target the younger crowd, aside from playing music that is popular to them, they also attend concerts of young teen’s favorite bands. For example, this past summer PST made an appearance at a concert for The Jonas Brothers. Being at this concert was great PR for PST with their younger audience. There were many young teenagers there and because PST was there to enjoy the concert and give out prizes to fans they were positively promoting themselves to their younger audience. To target their older fans, PST takes part in an event that takes place every other Wednesday called the Parking Lot Pig-Out. Workers from any company or organization have the ability to apply for this event on the PST website, and every other Wednesday a different company wins. The Parking Lot Pig-Out is when PST goes to someone's job and cooks lunch for them out in their parking lot. They cook burgers and hotdogs, and everything is cooked by one of their DJs, Tom Shinn. Tony Henry, their promotions director, also attends these pig-outs every other week and plays games with the people working and gives them the opportunity to win other great prizes. As our group was learning of these events, we were invited to attend one. PST invited us to come to any event and see how they take part in PR and promoting themselves positively to their fans. Our group is looking forward to attending an event with PST.
94.5 WPST is a proud sponsor of many organizations and foundations, but this month importantly they are helping raise money for the Susan G. Komen for the Cure Foundation. 94.5 WPST has even made their sponsorship known by changing their logo colors for the month of October to all pink. WSPT is selling t-shirts for $10 and all of the proceeds are going to this foundation. They are also offering a "PST code" for the Shady Brook Farm's Halloween Horrorfest, which will donate 20% of the ticket price for ever code that is submitted while buying tickets. This is just one organization that WPST 94.5 is known for helping with, within our community.
WPST 94.5 covers different events ever week, almost every day of the week they are out promoting their radio station and giving away free prizes. WPST is at KatManDu weekly, located right here in Trenton, NJ. Almost every day there are events going on, take a look at events near you! These events are all ways that WPST is stepping out into the community and promoting themselves through Public Relations. By, helping out these good causes not only are they helping people that need it, they are also promoting their radio station at the same time!
Over the duration of the next two months, our group will study the radio station 94.5 WPST "Number 1 for variety".
As a group we decided to cover 94.5 WPST because radio is one of the biggest types of Media today. Everyone enjoys music, and WPST offers a wide variety of all types of music for everyone to listen to. Not only does WPST cover all genres of music, but they also cover the weather, news, gossip, and traffic warnings. WSPT relays all information and music that the public is interested in and wants to hear. They interact with their fans with games over the air and they encourage listeners to chime in (609) 248-WPST. WPST is actively involved within the community and sponsors countless organizations. WPST is local to us, as they are based out of Princeton, New Jersey. Their target audience’s include Philadelphia and New Jersey.
While WPST targets audiences throughout the Philadelphia and New Jersey areas, they also target a variety of different age groups. WPST is known for their variety and because of this, we have learned as a group that many people listen to this station while they are at work which targets an older crowd. However, we have also learned that there is a much younger crowd that listens to this station. Because WPST plays a variety of hit music, they tend to play songs by The Jonas Brothers and other groups that attract a much younger crowd. As a group, we are going to follow the songs that this station plays and we are going to pay close attention to how WPST manages to keep such a variety of age groups tuning into them every day. Aside from paying close attention to the music, we are also going to follow the different events that WPST does every week. We want to see how each event attracts different age groups to keep their variety of listeners.
We are going to cover all aspects of the station. Our group plans on following WPST through Twitter, Facebook and Myspace,which are ways the station uses to reach the public when they are not on the air. If you take a look on WPST's home page they actually have a live feed for thier Twitter account, for those of you that do not have an account and would like to follow them. We will look at the station's competitors and see what the competitors are trying to do to one step WPST. We will also track and analyze WSPT's steps to out-do their competitors. This not only includes music on the radio, but their live events, contests, concerts, and listener interaction. WPST has live bands and singers in their studio weekly; you can access live views of these discussions and concerts right on their web page. We plan on learning the history of the station and how it has evolved to be the station they have become today.
As a group we plan on visiting the radio station and looking into their Public Relations practices. We may attend local events and may even place calls into the radio station on the air. As a group we would like to explore all aspects of WPST's Public Relations and how they are reaching out into the community, along with their event planning and much more.
Feel free to listen live to their radio station on 94.5 or access their web page for live looks at concerts and other interviews.
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