There was a time when station promotion was a form of public relations for an individual radio station. Stations did things to promote themselves for the shear promotional value. Industry consolidation turned station promotion into a purely revenue-driven element. Stations routinely seek out promotional partners to bear most, if not all, the costs of the promotion. Stations even turned public service into a sponsored event. Radio stations seek out corporate paid sponsorship for things like dog adoption days, a Habitat for Humanity home building project, etc. The ideal situation is a promotion in which the station is able to have several partners and make a substantial amount of money.

Directly related to consolidation is the partnering of radio stations in local, regional, and national groups to combine resources, talent, and audience numbers to appeal to advertisers to support such promotions. The downside to this is that the promotions have grown so big and cover such a large geographic area that listeners feel that their chances of being involved or winning is much less. In other words, the most effective promotion may be one with strong local appeal and listener involvement rather than a major regional or national promotion.

Like promotions, contests have progressively gotten bigger and bigger. The listener backlash is that if a prize is too big or too hard to win, why play? To support such contests, stations have turned to contest insurance companies such as SCA Promotions (www.scapromotions.com). There was a time when a $1 million dollar prize was heart attack territory. Not any more. A local station can afford to offer the prize and the insurance company is ready to pay the prize if someone wins it. Companies like SCA Promotions make selecting a new promotion quite easy from the standpoint that a local station can afford to offer the "big prize."