MADISON, Wis. — Good Karma Broadcasting LLC was formed by President/CEO Craig Karmazin in 1997. At the time it consisted of two stations in Beaver Dam, Wis., and one in Madison. In the next four years, GKB purchased stations in Watertown and Janesville, also in Wisconsin.
Good Karma Broadcasting has a passion and competence in sports marketing. The first venture was the purchase of WEFL(AM)in West Palm Beach in 2003. The following year GKB entered the largest market in its home state, as Milwaukee’s WAUK(AM) became the third GKB sports station in the state of Wisconsin. Two years after, the company entered the Cleveland market with the purchase of two stations.
In 2008, GKB entered the Spanish sports market in Milwaukee with WRRD(AM) and the creation of ESPN Deportes 1510. More acquisitions have followed. Currently we have eight ESPN affiliated stations, including seven in top 100 markets.
Development
What started as a broadcast company has grown into a marketing enterprise with an expertise in digital, mobile, event, radio, television partnerships, sponsorships and personality endorsements.
I began with the company in 1998 as a receptionist. I have since grown into the office/business manager dabbling in continuity and traffic, but my key role is the accounting side of our business.
Our company is no different than any other in trying to save expenses. We started shopping around for traffic systems in November of 2010. We demoed several, including RadioTraffic.com.
The defining factor that led to our final decision was the cost. Compared to other systems, I’ve asked, “How can this price be right?” Well it’s proven to work for us and with us.
When we were going through the demo, the presenter informed us how quickly the system would be installed and said total training time would be 12 hours. Our team was shocked at the time. But once we were ready for training … true to their word, 12 hours.
We began with the dreaded conversion project.
Our team of six dedicated their evening and weekend hours to the mundane process of inputting contracts and back balances. Our conversion took a little over three weeks, not bad considering the database of our partners and the amount of contracts we had to enter. Our training sessions consisted of an hour each, beginning with the building of the templates and logs. We moved onto orders and back balances, and finished with log reconciliation and the automation side of things.
Our conversion was pretty simple and error-free. We are still learning new things every day. We are fortunate to have great teammates to bounce ideas off of when we don’t understand how something works.
A great feature RadioTraffic.com offers is a forums Web page. It’s a resource for companies to see how things are working at other companies or give you a vision on how to do something a different way. You can also include product enhancement ideas that give the developers at RadioTraffic.com creative ideas that actual users are looking for.
With our radio group, every market is different. Every GM/SM/PD wants their log to look a certain way. With that, every traffic manager sets up their station differently. We’ve used the forums, and sent emails to the developer with suggestions that meet our needs.
Electronic Invoicing
The biggest timesaver for me is electronic invoicing. We haven’t utilized all its benefits yet, but once we are there, our paper costs and output should decrease by 50 percent.Many agencies and local direct partners are going green and don’t want to deal with the headaches of paper invoices.
With the click of a button, monthly invoices are emailed directly. With another click, I input the agency invoices to a clearinghouse we have partnered with. It’s virtually effortless.
Our traffic team has used the color-coding option to separate conflicts. Our continuity director inputs the co-op scripts as she receives them, no longer entering them all on the last day of the month. Monthly billing that once took of team of eight approximately 40 hours is now completed in about 15 hours.
RadioTraffic.com has accomplished a huge task on our end: electronic signatures and a notary seal stamp to invoices. This will give a time savings of 50 percent of our workload as we will not have to sign or notarize invoices anymore.
We are a demanding group and if we have a problem, we want answers now. The RadioTraffic.com team has been supportive. If we need action, they are there. If they don’t have the answers, they find them.
I still have to refer back to our old system for spending history and some reports; I often wonder how we made 11 years on it. Having the ability to log onto a computer and download RadioTraffic.com makes it user-friendly wherever you are.
As Good Karma continues to grow, we hope to help RadioTraffic.com grow. Our ideas give them new heights and ways to expand and enhance their product.
Jill Cullen is the business manager for Good Karma Broadcasting.
For information, contact Dave Scott at RadioTraffic.com in Texas at (866) 500-0500 or visit www.radiotraffic.com.
