How to Get TV & Radio Stations at Your Gigs

By Kenny Love

Copyright © 2005 Kenny Love All Rights Reserved

Did you know that you can get television and radio stations to attend your gigs and give you media coverage? Well, you can, *IF* you are performing the "right types" of gigs.

So, what are the right types of gigs?

Well, in short, these are gigs that are most likely to inspire area stations to cover them because they are, largely, non profit organization and charity fundraisers that benefit human interest causes.

Just a few such charities/non-profit organizations include; Red Cross, American Cancer Society, YMCA, YWCA, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Campus Crusade for Christ, etc. And, along with these few, there are, literally, innumerable more that readily seek musical entertainment to help support and provide interest in their fundraising events.

How to Approach and Get Started:

What you first need to do is contact various non-profit organizations and charities, and notify them of your availability to perform at their fundraising events. They will probably request your media kit for review. Then, if they consider you a match, they will likely add you to their entertainment roster for future consideration.

And, while the above listed charities are national and international in scope, there are smaller sized and regional charities and non-profit organizations that can equally benefit from your musical services as well.

In fact, you may find it both easiest and fastest to work through locally based and regionally based charities and non-profit organizations, as well as local and regional chapters of national and international organizations such as listed above.

Using this method just may serve as a stepping stone and lead to your direct performance with the organizations' corporate sectors on national and international levels.

You should also consider foregoing any performance compensation for these particular gigs and performances in the interest of obtaining repeat performances when the organizations conduct future fundraising events.

Also, keep in mind that, with charity and non-profit events, audiences are usually much larger, more dedicated and supportive, as opposed to regular gig audiences at normal music venues.

As such, in lieu of foregoing compensation, do request to make your CD available for sale to fundraising attendees who enjoy your music and wish to purchase it during or after your performance.

This way, you fulfill and appease to the non-profit and charity requirements by foregoing compensation while also having an opportunity to provide and make your music available to attendees. And, at charity and non profit performances, you are likely to experience greater sales of your music than at normal gigs.

To find charities and non-profit organizations, simply review your telephone directory's yellow pages under such categories as "Charities," "Human Service Organizations," Non-Profit Organizations" or related categories.

Getting Television & Radio Media to Your Gigs

Now that you know what special gigs are most likely to attract television and radio coverage, once you have a charity or non-profit gig, contact area stations and inform them of the upcoming event. You will want to approach stations' news directors, program directors and talk show producers of shows that are most appropriate for covering the event.

Approaching television and radio news departments for your event is as simple as your making a telephone call to them and asking to be connected with their newsrooms, then, requesting to be connected with their news directors.

Similarly, you will contact the stations' programming departments and request to speak with their program directors or assistant program directors in order to learn of their most appropriate talk shows and related programs.

With all, you should explain that you are the entertainment for the particular charity or non-profit organization's upcoming event.

As for program directors, request to learn the particular shows produced by the stations that are most appropriate for either interviews, or which programs may be interested in covering your event as a show topic.

And, to obtain even more favor with program directors and talk show producers, if you have not done so already, you should become fairly well versed in the particular benefit or cause at which you are performing in order to cohesively and effectively discuss it should you be fortunate in obtaining media coverage in any context.

This will go a long way in helping you to further secure feature interviews, in addition to your regular performance, and which not only provides you with interview experience, but can also translate and springboard into more television and radio coverage at national and international levels.

And, even if your event is already scheduled to be covered by the charity or non-profit organization itself, your interview and performance can give stations additional news and topic angles, thus, providing them with more content.

Note: In addition to contacting stations via telephone, as you are probably aware, many stations also have websites where they also post their news directors' and program directors' telephone and email contacts, as well as provide programming schedules that list their various shows. Utilizing their websites for this info will normally generate easiest and fastest results.