NJBA Weekly Newsletter Friday, January 26, 2007

NJBA Lowers Price for Sales Training

The NJBA Board of Directors meeting in Cranbury, NJ this week lowered the price for RAB Web Sales Lessons. The price per student was $150.00 per person. NJBA, as part of the National Alliance of State Broadcaster Associations, was able to participate in a price deal made with NASBA and the RAB. This lowered the price for NJBA and the Board decided to pass the savings directly through to the station members. Those stations that have paid the higher rate will get a rebate, and those stations starting new sellers in the program will get the new lower rate of $79.00 per person. We still have a number of sales lessons available, and at the new lower rate, they should go pretty fast. 

Arbitron to Meet With NJBA Board

February 6 is the new tentative date for a meeting between New Jersey Broadcasters and Arbitron to discuss the problems with the people meter. Arbitron has stated it will cost them too much money to people meter the entire state. They are proposing to people meter those counties in New Jersey that also are metro counties to New York City or Philadelphia. The rest of the New Jersey Counties will be diary counties. How they will combine diary counties with people meter counties is still a mystery and it remains to be seen if the scheme will even work. This could wind up costing New Jersey Broadcasters big bucks in their billing, if the agencies have trouble with the scheme Arbitron comes up with.  

NJBA Survey to Be Ready In June

Josh Gertzog informed the NJBA Board of Directors the questionnaire for the NJBA/Edison Research Survey is almost ready to go into the field. Josh’s committee was meeting to put the finishing touches on questions and will then have Edison Research start polling people. NJBA wants to find out what listeners expect from New Jersey local radio stations -- are they getting what they want, and what do we broadcasters need to do better?  The results are expected to be ready for delivery at the June 2007 Conference. 

Research Tax

The NJBA discovered that the State of New Jersey recently added to its 7% sales tax, Research Services. Therefore, Audience research, both for programming and sales are subject to the tax and will increase the cost of Arbitron, as an example, by 7%. Adding research services to the bill came as a surprise to the broadcasters. We had no warning the state had added it to sales tax collections. We knew about limos and tanning salons, but not about research services.    

Dan Finn’s Service as Chair Acknowledged

The BOD presented Immediate Past Chair Dan Finn with a Thank You to acknowledge his work during his two years as chair of the NJBA.

Reminder…the RAB Meeting, Dallas, February 8. 

Best of the Best deadline, Thursday, April 5, 2007!

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