After stunting yesterday as “Trash Pandas Radio” with baseball songs promoting the upcoming move of the Mobile Bay Bears minor league baseball team to the area as the Rocket City Trash Pandas, iHeartMedia has launched Alternative “Alt 92.9” W225AH/WQRV-HD3 Huntsville AL.
The new format launched at 9:29am this morning and will run commercial-free through the rest of September.
No offense to the Huntsville staff, but this is the saddest station launch video ever. Three guys standing in a room watching a computer work through a pre-programmed playlist and one local TV photog videoing the computer screen.
Sign of the times.
Yeah, posting this qualifies as “it seemed like a good idea at the time” because it sends the message that it’s just a computer rolling a playlist.
Unless that photog is grabbing 2 seconds of B-roll and is interviewing people at the station, there’s nothing newsworthy in the shot.
Notice the guy in the back with the grey beard letting out a yawn as he grabs his phone to send a text. No enthusiasm.
No expression by anyone except at the end when prompted by who, judging by the head bobbing is clearly the program director. The engineers don’t care and the sales department may not have known this was even going to be happening today.
Also what’s with the Linkin Park hook, “..In the end, it doesn’t even matter” when announcing something new?! LIVE…err..ALT 105 in San Francisco ran a simliar re-name promo for months when they first changed their name and gosh evvverryybody it seems to be going against the point of the whole production.
The Trash Pandas! A legendary team name out of the box. If just 1% of the creativity that it took to come up with that name were to be employed at radio, the industry would be in a much better place.