Memorial Day NOT For Self Promotion

I received a call from a listener who complained that they were disappointed because the 94.9 WHOM vehicle was NOT in the Portland Memorial Day Parade yesterday. One of our competitors did place their van in the procession and this listener-apparently a fan of BOTH stations (maybe now only ONE!) was upset that we “didn’t care” enough to be there.

On the off chance that there are others who also feel this way, I thought that I would offer an explanation.

To put it plainly, we made the conscious decision to NOT put the WHOM Tahoe into the parade—because we felt it was not right to “promote” the station during a parade that was meant to honor those who have fallen in the line of service. We do MANY parades-and are very promotionally active throughout the year-and although we cannot be at EVERYTHING, we try to show up to those events we can.

With studios in downtown Portland, it was not a hardship to show up-in fact, my family and I witnessed the parade—but in my view, this is not a forum for clowns, Shriner go-karts or jugglers on stilts—or radio stations to troll for new listeners.

Maybe I’m old fashioned, but I thought it was more respectful to NOT place a commercial vehicle in amongst the police cars, fire trucks and veterans who are deserving of our applause.

Of course, maybe you could say that showing up would be our way of saluting those whom we remember on Memorial Day. Would love to get YOUR opinion:

Tim.moore@citcomm.com

Thanks for considering a response.