Kowalski Korner
As you have probably noticed the amount of updates on the affiliate web-site has slowed considerably since the end of the basketball season. With a little over four months before the start of the 2010 football season one could say that things seem pretty calm around Learfield Sports right now. However, I would equate it to a duck making it rounds in a pond. On the surface, it appears as though the duck is slowly moseying along while underneath the water it’s a different story as the duck is working furiously churning its legs to move forward. This analogy would be a good way to describe what is going on right now, we are already moving forward with our plans to build upon our quality programming for the upcoming football season. To learn more about what we’ll be doing the next couple of months be sure to check out the video on our affiliate home page (and each Network page).
As for me, this is easily my busiest time of the year. I just got back from an affiliate trip in North Carolina and am in the middle of working on building my various Networks, so with that said I’m going to give this blog a rest until August. At that time I’ll give you an inside look into our preparations company-wide to get ready for the 2010 football season. Have a good summer!
Kowalski Korner (4/1)
With the basketball season almost in our rear view mirror, our affiliate recruitment season has already started in earnest. Brittany Heck, Adam Froidl and Ryan Suttenfield have already made their first affiliate trips while I will be heading out to North Carolina the week of April 12th. This is an exciting time for the affiliate relations staff. We’ve been in the office since mid-August and are itching to get back out on the road. Over the next couple of months we’ll be travelling around the country to see as many affiliates as we can, and I wanted to let you know going into the 2010-2011 season that we have shuffled some of the Network responsibilities around. Below are the Networks each affiliate representative will be responsible for this upcoming season:
Keith Kowalski
Army, Bowling Green, Chattanooga, Clemson, Maine, Missouri Valley Conference, New Hampshire, North Carolina, Southern Illinois, Toledo
Brittany Heck
Indiana, Iowa, Iowa State, Kansas State, Minnesota, Missouri, Northern Iowa, Purdue, Wisconsin
Adam Froidl
Louisiana Tech, Memphis, Mississippi State, Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, Tulsa
Ryan Suttenfield
Boise State, Fresno State, Idaho, Montana, Montana State, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon State, Utah State, Wyoming
Aaron Worsham, our Vice President of Affiliate Relations and Operations, will continue plying his affiliate relations craft by working with San Diego State, San Jose State, Stanford and Xavier along with focusing on flagship partnerships around the country. Finally, Jeff Tarman at Penn State and Tom Roberts at Alabama will handle affiliate relations and also play important roles on the broadcasts for their respective schools.
Personally, I’m very excited about taking over new Networks this season. I am especially eager about taking over the reigns of the Clemson Tiger Sports Network for the first time since 2002. In July of that year we were awarded the multi-media rights to Clemson. I was sent out to renew and grow the Network with less than two months before the first football game of the season – it was a whirlwind trip but very successful. Ryan Suttenfield will get to enjoy the beauty of the mountainous west region as he begins a three week trip covering the states of Utah, Idaho and Montana in mid-April and will then head out to Oregon in May…we’ll encourage him to take his camera. Brittany Heck maintains her Midwestern roots by adding the Indiana Hoosier and Purdue Boilermaker Networks while Adam Froidl will add Oklahoma and Oklahoma State to his stable of Big XII schools along with Louisiana Tech, Memphis and Tulsa.
Kowalski Korner (3/16)
The collective gasp you heard on Monday morning was from our Sports Operations staff in Jefferson City, MO as they came up for air between the two weeks of conference basketball tournaments and the beginning of the post-season men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. Last week our Networks around the country aired 225 broadcasts with 135 of those broadcasts coming out of our Jefferson City studio.
As you’ll be able to see on this video (Tournament Memos), it’s a yearly tradition to put the tournament memos detailing each teams possible broadcast times and dates on our Executive Producers (Keith Sampson) wall. Last week we had so many memos posted that it spanned his entire window offering a wall of tournament possibilities. The process of formulating all of these broadcasts is like a giant jigsaw puzzle as several steps need to be taken to ensure that the broadcasts get on the air, much less achieve the quality that we promise our affiliates. Crew travel, rooms and credentials need to be planned and confirmed, logs need to created, lines need to be ordered, a massive amount of affiliate communication needs to ensue and a littany of other tasks go on behind the scenes to make our broadcasts sound top notch.
Over the past two weeks we have geared up for several men’s and women’s conference tournament games but have also focused our efforts and attention on baseball and hockey broadcasts as well as coaches shows. The fun doesn’t stop there as this coming week we have over forty teams participating in post-season basketball tournaments along with several important baseball and hockey game broadcasts.
Good luck to each team, I’m looking forward to watching the play-in-game tonight as well as some NIT games before the NCAA tournament starts on Thursday. Oddly enough, once college basketball season ends the following day there is a clock in our office that starts counting down to our first college football broadcast of the 2010 season. There is no rest for the weary here at Learfield Sports.
Kowalski Korner (3/3)
The Ohio Valley, Big South and Horizon League conference tournaments started yesterday which means that ”March Madness” has officially begun for me. Most people associate “March Madness” with the NCAA tournament, but they are missing some great drama associated with the tournament games played in conferences that historically only receive one bid to the NCAA tournament.
I know you’ve all seen the games on ESPN and ESPN2 with two less than household teams vying for their conference’ s automatic bid. They’re playing in arenas fractions of the sizes where most major conference tournament games are contested. You’ve also probably noticed there is a lot of passion in these games. This is a chance for players to play in front of a national audience for probably the first time in their careers and they are forty minutes away from realizing their dream of making the NCAA tournament. My favorite scene is at the end of the game where the players are locked arm-in-arm as the seconds count down, and they rush the court when the horn blows. Mind you, there aren’t thousands of fans joining them ala the Cameron Crazies at Duke, but these players just earned a spot in the “Big Dance” and now have a chance to put on Cinderella’s slipper by beating a team from a power conference in the first round of the NCAA tournament.
I must explain my bias at this point, I went to Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas, and I am a HUGE supporter of the Lumberjacks to this day. Last year SFA won the Southland Conference tournament earning their first ever NCAA tournament appearance in school history. I vicariously shared in the players excitement after they beat UT-San Antonio and was equally thrilled to see Stephen F. Austin come up as the thirteen seed to play Syracuse in Miami, Florida during the selection show on CBS. Most people didn’t give SFA a chance to beat Syracuse (they eventually lost to Syracuse 59-44), but as a fan and alum winning the Southland Conference Tournament was equivalent to winning the National Championship.
Over the next two weeks take some time to watch one of these games, not only will it help you fill out your brackets but it will also give you another reason to love college basketball.
Kowalski Korner (2/17)
Evaluations are vital for growth. I know, evaluations elicit the same excitement as a trip to the dentist. However, let me continue with that analogy. When you go see the dentist, he/she is really taking an in depth look to what is going on with your teeth and the best part about it is that they are experts. It’s pretty hard to get one by the dentist when they ask you if you are flossing daily or brushing multiple times a day, they truly know the effort you are putting into this aspect of your health. After the dentist has had some time to check things out and ask you some questions they give you their opinion of where you stand and how you can improve (side note: when I was a teenager I had 12 cavities at one visit…my parents were thrilled and my mouth was numb for a month!). Evaluations in the business world are very similar. One must make sure that they are getting evaluated by someone in the know. A good evaluator also takes the time to poke and prod along with asking some educated questions. Finally, you might not want to hear what the evaluator has to say but nine times out of ten, what they are telling you is accurate and insightful. At that point you either have an “a-ha” moment or you knew you were supposed to be acting on their suggestion before they even mentioned it.
So let me get down to the motivation of the post. As you may or may not know we introduced a new affiliate web-site at the start of the 2009 football season. We’ve taken a lot of pride in this site trying to create optimum communication with our affiliates to ensure that you have all the necessary tools to air a quality broadcast. Along with going to a paperless system for logs and affidavits we also input several audio pieces and news items to allow our affiliates to be fully engaged with our product.
Even though we are in the midst of a great college basketball and hockey season and still have plenty of athletic broadcasts yet to be aired we want to know what your thoughts are on our affiliate site. What items do you use the most? What would you like to see added for the 2010-2011 athletic season? What could we change on our affiliate web-site to make it easier for you to carry our programming?
Now that you’ve had a chance to poke and prod our affiliate web-site, how can we manage the affiliate web-site in the future to serve you better? Email me at kkowalski@learfield.com.
Kowalski Korner (2/5)
Our affiliate travel season is about to start which means this is by far my favorite part of the year. Going around the country to visit with affiliates and prospect stations gives us a great chance to tell everyone about our programming face-to-face, but as a side benefit we get to see parts of the country that normally we never would have had a chance to see. Mind you, I hate the fact that I go through places like Nags Head, North Carolina or Myrtle Beach, South Carolina in a business suit, but every now and then we get to enjoy the cities we visit.
Every year I think our affiliate reps could write a book with stories concerning their trips. My most vivid memory from last year has to be the time I spent on a beautiful highway in western North Carolina/Eastern Tennessee. After finishing my meeting in Bryson City I was well on my way to the Asheville area for my last meeting of the day. I had been on the road before and wanted to take a different and more scenic route to Asheville. I knew that my next meeting was two hours away and that my GPS device was screaming at me to stay on the same path. However, there was a sign pointing to a route going through the mountains that beckoned me saying that Asheville was only 90 some miles away. I listened to my inner Robert Frost and took the road less traveled. What a mistake, I ended up getting extremely lost on a very narrow two lane highway that was reminiscent of a roller coaster. By this time it was me and a ton of joy riding motor-cyclists. I had no cell phone or GPS service and because the road had so many twists and turns I couldn’t find a spot to turn around.
I was mad! I had an important affiliate visit to get to and I was kicking myself for trying to be adventurous. For literally twenty minutes I kept going and going without finding a single spot to turn around and grew furious because I couldn’t call the GM at my next meeting to let them know I couldn’t make it. Finally, at some point I just said to heck with it. I knew I was going to miss the meeting and I was smack dab in the Smoky Mountains. My attitude changed immediately. I turned the windows down, threw in a CCR CD and enjoyed a beautiful sunny day in North Carolina (or maybe it was Tennessee at the moment). Once I finally made it back to the road I was supposed to be on my cell phone coverage and GPS system came back and I called my next appointment in Asheville asking if I could re-schedule. I’m glad I finally took advantage of this unplanned excursion and the road I was on will go down as one of my most favorite I have ever been on.
Below are just a few of my other favorites that I’ve had over the years:
Favorite city: Enterprise, OR – This quaint town with a population of just under two thousand is located in a beautiful area of north-eastern Oregon. Felt like I could touch the mountains when I was there and the people I met were incredibly friendly.
Favorite affiliate visit: Elizabeth City, NC – Went sailing on the Atlantic Ocean with the General Manager in 2002. Neat story here, the GM signed up with the Tar Heel Sports Network the year before and she did so well selling the local spots that she used her commissions to buy the sail boat we took out. If any of my affiliates want to top this experience during one of our meetings this spring/summer, please feel free to do so.
Favorite car accessory: GPS device – Not sure how business travelers ever went around the country without this device. I used Map-quest print outs when I first started traveling and can’t believe I never got into an accident trying to figure out exactly where I was.
Favorite restaurant: Subway – It’s pretty easy to pack on a few pounds when you’re on the road. We normally don’t get to our hotels until after 8 p.m. and most of the time it is just easier to go by a fast food place.
As we begin our travels, I look forward to finding some new favorites along the way only this time I’ll listen to my GPS device.
Kowalski Korner (1/25)
Have you ever gone to a party and met someone new and for the next fifteen minutes they do nothing but talk about themselves? You stand there looking around trying to find a way to get out of the discussion. Maybe you finish your beverage of choice as fast as possible hoping the need to top off your drink might be a good way out of the one sided conversation or you act like you just saw someone you haven’t seen in years necessitating your exit.
Now, picture yourself at the same party and you meet someone for the first time and you find that the person is engaging you with a lot of questions just trying to get to know you. They want to know what your interests are, what you do for a living, a little about your family. Whatever it is, you find yourself talking to the person for thirty minutes because they have an interest in who you are and what you enjoy. Towards the end of the conversation you find yourself searching for your phone so you can get their number so maybe you can meet them up for lunch sometime or maybe play a round of golf because you in turn want to get to know more about them since they obviously showed an interest in you.
It truly amazes me how much farther you can get in developing relationships (personal or professional) when you shun the mindset and the old Toby Keith song “ I Wanna Talk About Me!” The motivation for this post stems from a recent blog entry titled “Listening” from our Chairman, Clyde Lear, about his time with Wal-Mart founder, Sam Walton.
Asking questions and listening in the business world is imperative. I can’t tell you how many times I hear from a sales person and all they want to do is tell me about their product and how it could help me. Hold on big fella, maybe you should ask some questions about me before you indicate just how much I need this product. When I go on affiliate visits I readily admit I am so excited to tell the station about our programming, but I’ve always found that if I learn more about the station and the programming that they currently air I have a much better idea of how I should position my product so I in turn am more successful in meeting their needs.
So I ask you this question, are you asking enough questions?
Kowalski Korner (1/13)
I caught the bug again. Dog gone it, every year around this time I get the same affliction and I think it is due to the change of seasons. With the college football season in the rearview mirror now, college basketball has once again consumed my mind, spirit and unfortunately for my wife….my time. It all started when my dad and I went to the Missouri vs. Kansas State game this past weekend and saw an impressive and gutsy win by the Tigers to start the Big XII conference season. The game went back and forth and with the score tied at 66 after a Jacob Pullen 3 pointer for Kansas State late in the second half this play occurred….
I have to be honest I was jumping up and down like I’d just won the lottery. Throughout the arena I saw grown men and women frolicking around like school children not caring in the least how they looked. That folks is why I love college basketball, you just don’t get that kind of excitement and passion regularly and I can’t wait to listen to what’s install for a very exciting Missouri Tigers team the rest of the way.
As conference play moves into full swing this week, do yourself a favor and catch a game of your local college basketball team on the radio and you’ll certainly know what I’m talking about. Be sure to record the games and send off highlights like the one above to your current or prospective sponsors or even use it when creating station promos to invite listeners to catch the fever as well. You might just create an interest of epidemic proportions.
Kowalski Korner (1/7)
The day that all college football fans have been waiting for has finally arrived. Tonight the NCAA Football Bowl Subdivision will crown it’s National Champion and even though most would agree that a playoff is the true way to determine a champion I think few could deny that tonight’s contest between two of the most storied college football programs will be one for the ages.
With kickoff at about 7:20 p.m. CT tonight my greatest struggle (along with many others I’m sure) will be to stay up for the entire game especially after taking in the huge Iowa Hawkeye Orange Bowl victory over Georgia Tech two nights ago. I just wish I could listen to the great Eli Gold call the action on the Crimson Tide Sports Network.
My prediction is that the Tide will roll to their first National Championship since 1992.
Kowalski Korner (12/28)
Once all of the Christmas festivities end and the last present has been opened, people start turning their attention to the New Year and for many that means making New Years resolutions. I have never been one for making resolutions in my personal or professional life so I am breaking ground by making some today. Below are my three New Years resolutions for the upcoming year, I hope by posting these items I will be more successful than most in keeping them.
1. Make random calls to affiliates – The importance of this really hit home for me two weeks ago when I heard from one of our property GM’s. He called simply to ask how things were and if I needed anything from him. This GM and I have spent the past few weeks going over several conflict scenarios, programming changes and other items where we were constantly reaching out to each other when we NEEDED something. It was so refreshing to hear from him with the simple goal of just wanting to check in. I know in sales often times people reach out to their customers only when they need something. My goal this year is to grow relationships by randomly reaching out to my affiliates with nothing on my agenda.
2. Thank you notes – How great is it to receive a hand written thank you note? I remember my mom used to make me send thank you notes to my grandparents, aunts and uncles after I received any sort of present from them. I begrudinlgy did it but didn’t realize how nice it was to receive them until I was older.
I normally send out thank you notes to my affiliates once I receive their agreements. However, one thing I admittedly fell away from is sending out thank you notes after I visited with my various affiliates. I know that your time is valuable, and it is SO important for us to sit down face to face with when we make our trips. Moving forward, I think an excellent way to express my appreciation is a hand written thank you note which I now believe is a lost art.
3. Read more business related books – Last week while I was home for the holidays my parents got my niece a Wii. In the excitement to open the box and start playing the games we didn’t take one second to read the instructions and started playing the games immediately learning as we went. We did a pretty good job playing the games but once we sat down and took the time to learn more tricks and tips from the guide it was amazing how much better we did the rest of the week.
Ever since I got into the work force, I can honestly say I have not been a big fan of reading business books relating to sales, motivation, etc. I now realize it’s foolish to think we all can’t learn something. During my flight/car ride home I figured if I gain one tip from a business book that helps me grow one of my Networks, helps an affiliate sell our programming or grows a relationship, then I just improved my ability to perform. Now I just need to get some suggestions on what book to read first so I don’t regret making this one of my resolutions. If you have any suggestions send them along to me at kkowalski@learfield.com.
