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Jerry Lee
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Jerry Lee
Jerry Lee (born April 20, 1936, in Sharon, Pennsylvania) is a crime prevention philanthropist, proponent of evidence-based policy-making, and the former owner of the Philadelphia radio station WBEB-FM 101.1. Currently he is working on promoting the effectiveness of radio commercials, owns SpotQ Services, Inc., is the President of the Jerry Lee Foundation, and is involved in continuing to encourage the adoption of evidence-based criminology.
Additionally, he was the original donor of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania (later the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology), the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and helped found many organizations/initiatives such as the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy.
In 1960, Jerry Lee graduated from Youngstown State University, Ohio with a bachelor's degree in economics. After a brief stint with a management consulting firm, he became the general manager of WAQE FM in Baltimore. This was his first job in Radio before moving to Philadelphia in 1963 where he joined a new radio station being launched.
Jerry Lee was hired by David Kurtz, the owner of WDVR 101 FM radio station, three weeks before the station went on the air in 1963. David Kurtz was trained as an Engineer and gave Jerry Lee the opportunity to work for the fledgling station. Jerry originally offered to work for very low pay but with a very high sales commission and set a goal for himself that the station would be the Number 1 rated FM radio station in Philadelphia in 12 months. He offered to quit if he did not achieve this goal. Originally, Jerry Lee had the title of Sales Manager but soon was running the station.
Originally the station was licensed to broadcast at 5,000 watts of power while the competition broadcast at 20,000 watts. Lower wattage makes it harder to find the station on the dial, which often means a station will have lower ratings and sales. By 1966 despite its low power, WDVR 101 FM had the largest audience of any FM Radio station in the country according to the Arbitron ratings. In order to create such a large audience, Jerry Lee employed a novel strategy for the time. While other stations played familiar songs 70% of the time, he insisted that WDVR play 100% familiar songs.
The station was originally assigned a low wattage because they would have interfered with the signals from two other radio stations. Jerry Lee saw this as one of the primary operational restrictions holding the station back. In 1968 Jerry Lee negotiated a mutual interference agreement with WCBS FM in New York City and in 1970 an agreement was reached with WGAL FM in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that allowed the station to achieve full power.
In February 1967, WDVR was able to move from the Germantown Neighborhood of Philadelphia to the more centrally located Bala Cynwyd. After this move Jerry Lee called a staff meeting, “I will do anything to double our sales in 1968, no matter how far out it is”. The station increased revenue from $339,000 in 1967 to $1,006,000 in 1968.
Some of the sales strategies that came out of that initial meeting included installing new technology like the new automatic IBM typewriter to use as a conversation piece and a continental height bar that was accessed by a sliding door adjacent to his office. The continental height bar proved such a successful sales tool that a penthouse was rented a block away from the studios and an authentic Spanish wine cellar was installed, the penthouse also had moving floors. The penthouse proved to be an even more effective sales tool than the bar adjacent to Jerry's office and automatic typewriter but not as effective as the yacht that was purchased for sales meetings in 1972.
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Jerry Lee
Jerry Lee (born April 20, 1936, in Sharon, Pennsylvania) is a crime prevention philanthropist, proponent of evidence-based policy-making, and the former owner of the Philadelphia radio station WBEB-FM 101.1. Currently he is working on promoting the effectiveness of radio commercials, owns SpotQ Services, Inc., is the President of the Jerry Lee Foundation, and is involved in continuing to encourage the adoption of evidence-based criminology.
Additionally, he was the original donor of the Stockholm Prize in Criminology, the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania (later the Jerry Lee Professor of Criminology), the Jerry Lee Centre of Experimental Criminology at the University of Cambridge, and helped found many organizations/initiatives such as the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy.
In 1960, Jerry Lee graduated from Youngstown State University, Ohio with a bachelor's degree in economics. After a brief stint with a management consulting firm, he became the general manager of WAQE FM in Baltimore. This was his first job in Radio before moving to Philadelphia in 1963 where he joined a new radio station being launched.
Jerry Lee was hired by David Kurtz, the owner of WDVR 101 FM radio station, three weeks before the station went on the air in 1963. David Kurtz was trained as an Engineer and gave Jerry Lee the opportunity to work for the fledgling station. Jerry originally offered to work for very low pay but with a very high sales commission and set a goal for himself that the station would be the Number 1 rated FM radio station in Philadelphia in 12 months. He offered to quit if he did not achieve this goal. Originally, Jerry Lee had the title of Sales Manager but soon was running the station.
Originally the station was licensed to broadcast at 5,000 watts of power while the competition broadcast at 20,000 watts. Lower wattage makes it harder to find the station on the dial, which often means a station will have lower ratings and sales. By 1966 despite its low power, WDVR 101 FM had the largest audience of any FM Radio station in the country according to the Arbitron ratings. In order to create such a large audience, Jerry Lee employed a novel strategy for the time. While other stations played familiar songs 70% of the time, he insisted that WDVR play 100% familiar songs.
The station was originally assigned a low wattage because they would have interfered with the signals from two other radio stations. Jerry Lee saw this as one of the primary operational restrictions holding the station back. In 1968 Jerry Lee negotiated a mutual interference agreement with WCBS FM in New York City and in 1970 an agreement was reached with WGAL FM in Lancaster, Pennsylvania that allowed the station to achieve full power.
In February 1967, WDVR was able to move from the Germantown Neighborhood of Philadelphia to the more centrally located Bala Cynwyd. After this move Jerry Lee called a staff meeting, “I will do anything to double our sales in 1968, no matter how far out it is”. The station increased revenue from $339,000 in 1967 to $1,006,000 in 1968.
Some of the sales strategies that came out of that initial meeting included installing new technology like the new automatic IBM typewriter to use as a conversation piece and a continental height bar that was accessed by a sliding door adjacent to his office. The continental height bar proved such a successful sales tool that a penthouse was rented a block away from the studios and an authentic Spanish wine cellar was installed, the penthouse also had moving floors. The penthouse proved to be an even more effective sales tool than the bar adjacent to Jerry's office and automatic typewriter but not as effective as the yacht that was purchased for sales meetings in 1972.