From the MCRFB NEWS archive: 1963

The Bill Gavin Newsletter

September 7, 1963

Words to the Wise for the Brass

By BILL GAVIN
Billboard Contributing Editor

SAN FRANCISCO — “What about national promotion?” asks a local promo man. “You made a lot of sense in your column about distributor promotion, but some of our biggest headaches result from goofs by the big shot brass.” So writes one reader. Others have commented in kind, and some in considerable detail. In this open forum of critiques by qualified observers, I’ve drawn up an “indictment” of national promotion evils.

1. You send advance exclusives to one or two stations in my area. The other stations hold me responsible. Sometimes they refuse to get on your record. Sometimes they even blacklist all my new releases. These exclusives do you more harm than good. They do our distributorship nothing but
harm.

2. You supply new releases to every key station in my area before you send your distributor one single sample. You do this without letting us know that the record is coming. When the stations start calling us about the side, we don’t know anything about it. We don’t even know when stock will be available. This makes us look foolish in the eyes of the radio people. When stock is slow, following first air plays, we can’t supply dealer orders and we lose sales.

3. You start phoning us for reports on how a record is doing before we have even received it. You say you can’t understand why we don’t have it, because you’ve already have re- orders from Atlanta and Detroit. Then you finally realize that you’ve shipped the pressing parts by slow freight. You want us to break a hit all over the country at the same time, but you don’t co-ordinate your release dates for all areas at the some time.

4. You send us advance DJ’s with instructions to take them around to the stations on a certain date and not a minute sooner. Long before that date we start getting calls from the stations asking for the record. They tell us that it has already been released in other cities, and they’ve been getting reports on it. This makes us look bad – as if you considered this market unimportant. If other distributors don’t respect release dates, why should we?

5. You visit our city once or twice a year. You make the lunch and dinner route with all the key people on our list. Then you go hack to your office in New York – or Hollywood – and phone these guys as if they were bosom buddies. When we report that they aren’t playing one of your records, you claim that it’s our fault, because they’ve told you they would play ’em. Remember, we have to work with these people day after day. Don’t cut us down just because you have to prove that you’re a big shot.

6. You book promo tours for your new artists. Sometimes they’re so new, or so unimportant that hardly anybody has ever heard their names – let alone their records. You seem to think that if we take these people around to the stations, all the radio people will fall on their faces at meeting a real live recording “star.” Mister, forget it. They don’t. Most of them couldn’t care less. And if we don’t stand around waiting to take orders from the artist’s managers, you get a hot report on what poor promotion we’re doing.

7. You tell your big name artists that they’re expected to keep their appointments when they’re in our town. We’ve set up interviews and press conferences for some of them, and they never show. Why send them around unless they’ll work and co-operate in their own promotion? And another thing, tell them that if they’re going to be in our area we should at least know about it in advance.

8. You offer special prizes or bonuses if we’ll break a record for you-or even get it picked on a key station. Maybe you expect us to spend some of that loot buttering up a top DJ. Forget it. Our promo expense account is big enough, and it’s legit. Let’s keep it that way.

9. You could do something. Once in a while we might break a big record for you. Or we might do a special job in building up one of our artists. Then it’s nice to hear you give us credit – especially in your reports to the trade press. It’s good to hear a thank you once in a while, after all the other comments we get.

10. You blame us when your records don’t sell in our market. You seem to think that we can tell the local stations what to program. But when you do get the important picks and the hit breakers here, you give all the credit to one of our local deejays. After all, we’re on your side. Let’s work together!

So there you have a complete indictment of national record promoters by their colleagues on the local scene. Not all the complaints apply to any one national man, of course. There are some national men who set fine examples of team work. It’s a difficult job, whose importance is emphasized as much by its shortcomings as by its successes. END

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Information and news source: Billboard; September 7, 1963