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Are the St. Louis Cardinals the Only Show in Town this Week?
By: Justin Lopinot | 10/05/2009
If you live in the St. Louis area, you may have heard this news already: The St. Louis Cardinals made the playoffs. Yes, it's true. They'll be playing in the postseason starting on Wednesday. What's that? You've heard the news already? Oh, people already know? Really? Almost entire newscasts have been devoted to this news? Wow. And you're telling me the "Tonight Show" will be bumped back by KSDK-TV (Channel 5) each night so we can learn more about the Cardinals? And even KMOV-TV (Channel 4) might feature sports again on all of its newscasts? Crazy.
OK, so maybe I'm being just a tad bit facetious. I know Cardinals baseball rules in this town, and I'm as excited as anybody about the team's World Series title prospects. However, as a communications professional who often dabbles in media relations, the over-abundance of baseball coverage concerns me.
Ratings sell, I know, so the Cardinals will be getting a lot of press and air time. It's deserved. But there ARE other things going on in St. Louis this week. It's a huge challenge for media relations specialists to promote an event during a week like this. Can you imagine the intense pressure the folks at the St. Louis Science Center must be feeling at they try to garner some news coverage of the opening of SciFest on Wednesday? And that's just one of the dozens and dozens of great events lined up for our region that may find themselves on the media bench during October.
So, fellow PR practitioners, how do you sell the local media on covering a non-baseball story while the Cardinals are in the postseason? Would love to read your thoughts in the comments section.
Posted in Public Relations
comments
justin says:
Tue, October 06, 2009 at 2:02:pm
Thanks for the comment. Tying into the Cardinals/baseball could be a tip for PR folks (even though you may have lucked into it this year!). Another person commented to me off-line that we should advise clients to not try to compete at all. Pick another date or wait until the Cardinals win it all (or are eliminated - boo). That’s hard to do when you’re planning a big event like SciFest, which I imagine was planned out at least a year in advance.
Science Center PR says:
Tue, October 06, 2009 at 11:49:am
Justin, thanks for the sympathy! I’m the PR person at the Science Center and it’s been a challenge. Fortunately, one of the sessions at SciFest is The Science of Baseball, so we’ve been able to tie the messages together!