Moneyball: Banana Ball Reminds Radio

Nuvoodoo Research: Lee Jacobs & Carolyn Gilbert

The radio business came to mind last week while watching the CBS 60 Minutes segment on Banana Ball last week. Depending on where you live and the media you consume, it’s completely possible you’re unaware of Banana Ball, yet the games sell out major league baseball stadiums and NFL football stadiums when the league tours the country.

Banana Ball is the creation of onetime wannabe major leaguer Jesse Cole. He cites P.T. Barnum and Walt Disney as idols. Like them, he is a showman. The type of thinking beneath his zany redesign of baseball used to be commonplace inside radio stations: strive for predictable unpredictability; build community; pay keen attention to entertainment value.

The daily demands of a radio station have always been there to overwhelm being able to consider the bigger picture. Scheduling music and talent, keeping up with promotions, satisfying client requests, reporting up through the chain of command, putting out fires, etc. These things leave little time to think about gathering and maintaining an audience so that advertisers can build their businesses. Yet that’s job #1 (actually, protecting the license is job #1, but that’s for another day).

We are wise to remind ourselves that commercial radio is the advertising sales business. In a sense the entire business is a bunch of buskers in the town square trying to gather an audience. But we’re not passing a hat at the end of the performance – we’re urging those who enjoyed the free performance to patronize the local businesses who are paying for our supper. Sometimes we do the show right there at their place of business hoping that people will come by to enjoy the show in person. It’s all about entertaining an audience and Banana Ball holds back nothing in that pursuit.

Banana Ball’s creator studies those who attend games to see when they start looking at their phones or if they head to the exits before the game is over. He then looks for ways to change the rules for the boring parts of baseball. If a fan catches a foul ball, the batter is out. Watch the video to see what happens at ball four (of course there are no “walks” in Banana Ball).

Listeners loved when radio had a phony commercial spiked into a break some of the time (some folks listened more attentively to commercials in hopes of catching one of the phony ones). We’ve shown data about how many listeners appreciate when stations broadcast live from around town. Great radio contests were designed to give away a desirable prize in a highly entertaining manner – the showbiz was designed into the promotion. These things take more effort, but they make stations more memorable, they draw more attention from the audience, and they do a better job for clients.

These days it’s likely that you’ll need to reach outside the programming staff to get things done, but everyone in the station is in the advertising sales business … and that’s what this is all about. If you and your staff are having fun, it’s more likely you’ll figure out how to ensure that your audience is having fun. In 2025 it seems that instead of Moneyball, the sports world metaphor we’re looking to is Banana Ball.

If a last-minute music test would help tune up your station or a tightly targeted digital marketing campaign would support your participation in a collective contest, NuVoodoo would love to help. An email to tellmemore@nuvoodoo.com will get quick attention from the right member of our team. Additionally, NuVoodoo marketing guru Mike O’Connor is publishing important insights from our latest general marketing study every week at nuvoodoo.com/articles.