BusinessReport.com

If you watch WAFB-TV, you might have noticed the Double Day restaurant promotions on the Thursday noon newscasts plugging half-price coupons for local restaurants and other small businesses. Curious? Turns out it’s a relatively new and increasingly popular way that television and radio stations are using to make easy money from retailers that cannot afford to buy expensive commercial air time to advertise.

The company that came up with the concept is the Cleveland-based IncentRev, and it’s a coupon broker that facilitates the on-air promotions. Essentially, it works like this: A retailer—say, a new restaurant—“buys” exclusive air time with the station in exchange for 100 gift certificates, which the station then promotes on air for half-price. Viewers can buy the gift certificates on a first-come, first-serve basis by accessing the station’s Web site.

All parties involved say it’s a win-win arrangement. Viewers get a bargain. A small retailer essentially receives free advertising. And IncentRev, which does all the paperwork, and the station split the money. The station also gets traffic directed to its Web site, which WAFB brass says is the main reason they do it.

Station executives won’t say how much money the Double Day deals generate, and officials with IncentRev decline to discuss their commission structure. But it’s not hard to do the math. If a station sells all 100 gift certificates from a retailer in a given week at, say, $50 each, that’s $5000, minus whatever percentage IncentRev gets from the deal. Multiply that by 52 weeks in a year and that’s $260,000—not bad considering there was no production cost for the station, no actual advertising air time devoted to the promotion and no messy paperwork involved.

WAFB isn’t the only local broadcaster using the medium. WJBO-AM does the same thing, as are many Clear Channel stations. And nationwide, it’s a growing trend as media outlets look for creative ways to increase their Web presence and Web traffic.

But does it compromise a station’s integrity when anchors do on-air promos during a newscast?

Not a bit, according to WAFB News Director Vicki Zimmerman, who says her talent does not advertise or endorse the businesses—mostly restaurants—giving away the coupons. They merely direct interested viewers to the station’s Web site, where they can get more information on the half-price deals.

“It’s not paying for news as some people would make it out to be,” she says. “It’s more of a Web-based thing than anything else.”

WAFB’s new faces

Channel 9 will be welcoming two new faces this summer. As previously reported, Andre Moreau returns next month to the station, where he was a popular sports anchor in the 1990s. He will replace George Sells as co-anchor of the 10 p.m. newscast. Look for him beginning in early July, though an exact date for his on-air debut has not been set yet.

The station has also hired a new reporter, though no details are available.

The last drop

After nearly 20 years of tracking the social and civic activities of the area’s movers and shakers, Carol Anne Blitzer and Mary McCowan will write their last Coffee with Carol Anne and Mary later this summer.

The social column, which appears biweekly in The Advocate, has been a fixture in the paper’s People section since 1989, when then-features editor Ed Cullen asked the friends and neighbors if they would be interested in covering the local social scene together.

“And in those 19 years, we have never missed a single deadline and never had anybody cover for us,” Blitzer says. “We’ve done it all ourselves.”

But while it’s a fun gig, it’s also time-consuming, with frequent weekend and nighttime functions to cover and Monday morning deadlines. McCowan, 65, says she’s ready to call it quits so she can spend more time enjoying her weekends and her many grandchildren.

Though McCowan is retiring, Blitzer will continue to write for the paper. She is a regular contributor to the Food section on Thursdays, and already writes several features a month for People. Now, with more spare time, she intends to write more of the historical features she enjoys.

But The Advocate will continue to cover the local social scene. No decision has been made on a replacement for McCowan and Blitzer, but Executive Editor Carl Redman says the paper is committed to running lots of pictures of people who are involved in the community.