CHAPTER 3: A Hobby Becomes a Business

Our first season of Ravens coverage at Ravens24x7.com ended when Tennessee Titans kicker Gary Anderson connected on a 46-yard field goal with 29 seconds left in the AFC Wild Card Game. The AFC North Champs hosted Steve McNair & Co. at The Bank. The Titans came into Baltimore sporting a (12-4) regular season record. Despite picking off McNair three times in this Wild Card Game, the Ravens offense struggled as Tennessee held the AFC’s leading rusher, Jamal Lewis (2,066 yards), to just 35 yards on the ground. Jeff Fisher’s squad dared Anthony Wright to beat them. He could not!

That said, the season was deemed to be a success for the Ravens and it was a learning experience for Ravens24x7.com and of course, yours truly. My focus shifted towards the offseason and towards ways to improve upon this new hobby of mine.

Guest radio appearances became more regular and that certainly elevated the awareness of 24×7. With a growing audience, Ravens24x7.com was developing into a more worthy platform for businesses to promote their products and services. Up to this point, I was able to convince some small businesses to support us in a nominal way. Almost all of these businesses were operated by friends of mine. But it was a start and I’m forever thankful.

The first challenge was to understand our traffic, see where and how it was generated, and then implement appropriate strategies in order to provide customer value. But I had no clue what “value” meant. I didn’t really know how to price web ads. Clearly, a case of on-the-job training.

Eventually I figured it out. New customers were slowly trickling in as were new site visitors, particularly after radio guest appearances. The words of my friend who originally suggested that I keep an open mind to radio came drifting back into my consciousness. Maybe we should consider radio as a complementary component to growing traffic for Ravens24x7.com.

Coincidentally at that time, I was randomly approached by someone who had heard me on radio and thought that he could be a good co-host to sit by my side. His name was Patrick “Lucky” Lund.

Lucky’s encouragement was appreciated but I must admit, that I still had some inhibitions about radio. It’s one thing to be a guest on a show and answer questions tossed my way by the host. It takes a completely different skill set to drive a show, keep listeners engaged with worthy guests and insightful analysis while working within the structure of radio programming that required smooth segues to stay on time, and effectively present the messages of sponsors.

While pondering Lucky’s offer to co-host there were some other challenges to consider, not the least of which were finding a radio station willing to take us on, and of course, finding sponsors to support the show.

Keep in mind, that this was 2004. Podcasts were not yet a thing. But I did learn about brokered programming. For a fee, we could buy airtime. I had some friends who worked at Green Pastures Mortgage, and they hosted a show on AM 680, WCBM. They seemed happy with the platform and to my surprise, the fee wasn’t prohibitive. After some lengthy discussions and coaching from Green Pasture’s host Tom Costantini, I was willing to give it a shot. We signed on for a 13-week stint at WCBM. Thirteen weeks represents ¼ of a year and I learned that that was a radio industry benchmark.

So Lucky and I got things going. We reached out to Hall of Fame sports journalist, the late, great Ted Patterson. Ted was a consummate gentleman and at his core, a kind and caring man. He invited us to join him on his WCBM sports talk show to help us jump start our program which we called, “Gametime”.

Things were going rather smoothly on WCBM – or so we thought! Judging from the number of callers we generated, the feeling was that we were gaining traction and that the marriage of radio and the web would be a successful one for us. I asked our board op to get the email addresses of all callers and after several weeks I ask him for the list. To my shock, he didn’t have one single email address. When I asked why he said, “Tony, I ask every caller and they say that they don’t have an email address because they don’t have a computer.”

Imagine the look on my face!

We were on air to drive listeners to our website only to find out that the demographic which WCBM attracts, largely consists of elderly people who don’t navigate the internet because they don’t have a computer! A look at our traffic told the same tale. We weren’t moving the needle in site visitors through our radio program the way we did as a guest on various sports programs in town.

If we planned to stay on the radio, it was time for a change in venue.

(In Chapter 4, we’ll talk about the new venue for Gametime, a big snafu on my part and a feature of Ravens24x7.com that raised concerns for one of our loyal visitors.)

[Click here to catch up on previous chapters of The History of RSR]