Kissing into a new radio era

We recently devoted a couple of class periods to discussing example cases of businesses looking to enhance their production and output via the internet. Each group was given a different scenario to work with which they were to make a few recommendations for a way to increase their productivity and popularity to online sources. A majority of the groups proposed a possible contest where participants were able to win a prize by participating. For example, one idea was to have people comment on a photo or to respond to a comment as a possible way to win a prize, which would in turn get them looking at the pictures. As I was driving to work over Thanksgiving break, I actually encountered an example relevant to this exact idea.

I was tuned in to 96.1 KissFM, a Pittsburgh radio station. They were advertising the two 3rd row Pittsburgh Penguins tickets they had in the studio to give away to listeners. While most radio contests consist of calling in and being a certain number caller, this contest took a different approach. The station works diligently to advertise their website which provides forums, on demand music and videos, contests and giveaways, and even mass amounts of photo albums from events they participate in. This particular contest they were doing for the Pens tickets worked with the website to get individuals to look at the photo albums. To win the tickets, the first caller who could call in and tell them in detail what the 112th picture in the most recent album was would win the tickets. Low and behold, within minutes they had a caller who had gone onto the internet and found the picture and was able to tell them exactly what the picture was of.
I think this contest idea was a great way to incorporate both computer mediated communication with radio broadcasting. Because the internet has become such a popular way to access, well, anything really, this may be putting traditional TV and radio stations down in numbers. KissFM now streams their broadcast live over their website and uses contests such as the example above to get people involved with their website and browsing around. While I am sure the idea of incorporating TV and radio with the internet is becoming extremely popular, more stations should consider connecting the two rather than making it an either or. By doing so they are welcoming participants to engage in both of their productions in correlation with each other. This will bring increased attention to all aspects of their business and in turn increase their productivity greatly, as we had proposed in our class discussions.