PD Quiz Number 6 submitted by Dave Byers Two months after your annual budget meetings, your Promotions Director comes up to you and says "Hey! How much budget do we have left? Enough to buy a gross of T-shirts for a big upcoming concert?" You wonder about this for a sec... the GM and GSM never DID give you a final figure after the budget meetings. Those meetings mainly consisted of stuff you'd LIKE to do to promote the station, but no final figures were talked about. You approach the GSM and GM and ask how much of your marketing budget is left. "Why? What for?" is the response. You explain. "No, don't order any more T-shirts." is the answer. You ask HOW MUCH money is left in the budget but it's like you're speaking Mandarin Chinese. In a last ditch effort, you ask if you could take a look at the client list for each of the sales staff. Maybe there's a client who would like to tie in and have his logo printed on the shirts along with the station. "Why do you need a client list?" asks the GSM. You respond. "no. no clients would want to be in on something like that." he says. You ask if you could allocate the budget from somewhere else. "No, we have no more budget." "Could we back the budget out of a large buy?" "No." "Are there any clients who could help provide us with promotional items?" "No, we are not going to ask our clients for anything for the promotions / programming staff. If anything, we're just going to ask for more money." One week later, the GSM come up to you and asks why the competitor in the market is kicking your ass promotionally. Do you: A Calmly and rationally explain that in order to make money, you have to spend money and that the lack of exposure due to lack of promotional materials is hurting the station rather than just saving money. B Give him exceptionally vague answers and let him figure out the solution himself. C Explode, telling him that he must be the most limber person you have ever met because you'd have to be awfully flexible to have your head so thoroughly buried in his ass as he does, tell him to think clearly and somehow, somewhere come up with the budget to be promotionally active. D Say screw 'em both and approach the clients yourself, pissing off two or three of the clients who just spent $12,000.00 in advertising last month by not offering to make them a part of the promotion for free in the first place. If you said C or D you have the potential to be a Program Director.