Audio News Releases – Reaching a Forgotten Audience

Posted: August 3rd, 2006 | By: Steve Mullen | Filed under: PR Tactics | No Comments

Does ANYONE target radio anymore? As a PR guy I ask that question quite frequently. I’m a former radio news anchor and reporter, so I have a soft spot for the medium, and I see the possibilities it presents for PR. When you get in the car, besides crank up the air conditioning (I’m writing this during a ridiculous heat wave, if you’re reading it later you may want to swap “heater” for air conditioning) what’s the first thing you do? Personally, I adjust the radio to make sure it’s on a station I want. What else can I do while I’m in the car? I certainly can’t do my taxes, so I just listen to the radio. I’m a captive audience.

Unfortunately the problem with pitching stories to radio outlets is that there just aren’t that many places to pitch anymore. It wasn’t that long ago that any decent sized city had at least two radio stations with news departments. Now you’re lucky if there’s one decent radio news operation in your area. Locally produced talk shows are also going the “way of the wind,” with the big boys like Clear Channel syndicating more and more content.

So … how on earth can you get your PR message out via radio? Personally, I think the answer is an audio news release, or ANR.

If you’re a PR professional, you’ve probably heard of Video News Releases, or VNRs. They’re fully produced news stories that are offered to TV news operations for use during newscasts. ANRs are exactly the same thing, except that they’re for radio.

I started producing ANRs almost immediately after I made the leap out of radio news and into PR in 1999. I recognized that there were a LOT of radio news departments like the one that I managed at WVNZ, All News 990 in Richmond (now an easy listening station with different call letters .. ugh.) It seems like every one of them these days is understaffed and overworked. As a result, many would be open to using “canned” content like an ANR. I found a way to produce the pieces using a cassette recorder and a digital editor on my desktop computer, and have been perfecting the system ever since.

So how does it work? Well, the first thing I do is interview a spokesperson for my client on whatever topic we’re trying to push. Then, I pull a soundbite or two from the interview and record a “reporter” track. To hear the final product, click HERE to listen to an ANR produced while I worked in Circuit City’s PR department. Yes, that’s my voice.

Once the piece is produced, it’s ready for distribution. Currently there are three ways I know to do this:

1) Talk Show Placement: I have connections with a national weekly talk show that has about 1.5 million listeners per program. The ANR can be placed in the show as a feature. The benefit here is that the ANR doesn’t have to be completely newsworthy, and there’s no chance of the content being edited by a news director or reporter.

2) Pitching to news operations: If the ANR is newsworthy, it can be pitched directly to radio news operations for use in their newscasts. The benefit here is that, if successful, the listener numbers can be quite large. I produced an ANR in the fall of 2005 that was pitched this way, and garnered 13 million impressions.

3) Podcasts: This is a rather new idea. Podcasts got their name because they were originally audio recordings meant for iPods. These days, it’s a generic term used for an audio piece offered online for people to listen to on their computers or digital audio players. It can be a minute or much longer. Some are fully produced talk shows. The basic production is the same with a podcast as with an ANR, although the podcast format allows the flexibility to be a litle more creative.

The ANR tactic isn’t for everyone. It’s a little more expensive than just writing a news release and pitching it around town. However, compared to its VNR cousin, it’s very affordable. VNRs can cost $10,000 to $15,000 to produce. ANRs, meanwhile, can cost as little as $3,000 for one distributed by talk show or pitched to radio stations. That includes production, distribution, and a final report. The price is even less to produce a piece designed solely to be a podcast. Email me if you’re interested in a price sheet.

This blog entry probably sounds like a commercial. Well, in a way it is and I’ll be happy if it leads to ANR business for me because I enjoy producing them. Aside from that, though, it’s information about a way to target a medium that’s usually ignored by PR professionals because they don’t know what to do.

Please share: