Also called bartering, tradeouts are a little known privilege enjoyed by commercial radio stations and simply means swapping commercial airtime in exchange for products and services rather than cash.
Radio station cars, office furniture, and restaurant arrangements are often reflected in ads for the merchants involved.
Stations can extend the trade further by offering booty as employee perks. An FM station allowed me free meals at a cafeteria for which a spot campaign was airing and an AM station offered me a morning show paid for in hotel privileges rather than paycheck, although I declined the offer.
Part 15 stations can certainly seek tradeouts for goods and services that would otherwise take cash, and we'll ask Tim in Bovey whether he does any of it with KEBS.
Can non-commercial stations trade underwriting messages for goodies? Maybe. Let's ask AMRadioLegend.
Well, here at KEBS I don't do any trade-outs simply because I don't charge local merchants anything for advertising. If you can hear the station over the air commercials are free. I do sell to out of area advertisers at 30 cents per spot. Generally selling a package of 100 for $30. But I've never sought to trade. I take in gobs of out of town advertising which I sell via internet -- mostly to mail order, web based, or corporate ads (the sort for a product that can be purchased anywhere, like running ads for Coca-Cola) and that's where the bulk of revenue comes from. That's not to say the local cafe doesn't throw a free lunch my way now and then 😉
Trade Outs have been huge at every station I've ever worked at. In fact 30+ years ago when I was working in Williston, ND the owner of a station in Devils Lake, ND really wanted to hire me away from the Williston station. He called me about every two days sweetening the deal. Besides increasing salary offers, and paid vacation time, and full coverage health insurance at no cost to me I wasn't interested in moving. He finally offered to send a moving truck and crew - which still didn't convince me to move. It wasn't until he was able to include several hundred dollars a month in trade at the local flight service -- which gave me access to a lot of flight training and use of their rental planes for personal trips, etc that he finally convinced me to accept his offer and move! So for several years I enjoyed lots of flying (a trade out) and got moved for free (also a trade out).
I've worked for people who have traded out the bosses car, traded out gas for salespeople, etc. Also common is a lot of part cash-part trade deals. e.g. we'll sell, say, spots for a concert at half price cash and the balance in tickets. These tickets then are given to staff, used to schmooze clients, and given away on the air. This is very common. In fact my Wife and I just attended a concert last night with trade out tickets given to me by the boss.
One station had it's own currency. It was a trade deal that involved many local merchants. We printed "Z-Bucks" (we had z's in the call letters) and they were good at participating sponsors to spend just like cash (basically worked like gift certificates but we made them into our own currency) and however many $$ in our currency the business took in each month they could redeem for advertising. This was all fine and dandy until the station fell on hard times and tried paying staff with Z-Bucks. You could shop at some stores in town but obviously couldn't pay your rent or power bill with them!
I've also worked where there we're trade outs but with cash. e.g. they would, say decide to trade $500 in merchandise for $500 in ads, but the station and advertiser would exchange checks -- so it looked like they bought $500 in ads, and we bought $500 in merchandise, to keep the paperwork straight.
There's a million ways to do it. And it's done every day.
Whether or not a non-com can do it, I don't know. Certainly, I would suspect, with the "trading checks" plan.
TIB
Neat Z bucks story Tim. Also sounds like a very cool form of promotion for most any kind of business.
Make An Offer
Maybe we can use Z bucks to get some of that equipment Part15 Engineer has for sale.
Hello All:
With regard to Carl's question about LPFM's and other non-commercial stations bartering - It is perfectly legal for underwriting to be exchanged for cash, services or products or any percentage of those as long as FCC requirements for underwriting are met.
Those basic requirements are:
-Giving price information about a sponsor’s products
-A call to action suggesting that listeners somehow patronize the sponsor
-Making qualitative claims about the sponsor or its products or services.
At WLSL-LP we do not solicit bartering as a rule. However there some exceptions. An example would be "Tim's Oompah Hour." Tim allows us to air his program as long as we promote a Non-Profit organization. In Tim's case it's "A World of Accordions." Tim's promotion of KEBS Records however is edited out as violates one or more of the above examples, hence we are a week behind his actual show release time. Generally this is not a problem except when Tim talks about the weather or getting his refrigerator repaired. LOL!
Hope this helps.