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c h a P t e r 8 sudS, spa rkS, an D Sp onsorSh ip We’re back! We’re fuckin’ back. Drink all the Budweiser, baby! Who’s got Budweiser? Hey, we’ve got some HJY shirts. All right, drink all the Budweiser. Bottled and brewed today, right? All right! HJY’s in the house. Bud, Bud Light, drink it all! . . . Jack Russell’s Great White, how about that? Let them hear it in the back there, everybody! They’re coming out in just a few minutes. Keep it on 94 WHJY, your home of rock ’n’ roll. And drink all the Budweiser in the house. this was the between-set Patter of emcee Mike Gonsalves, radio station WHJY’s late-night DJ, who went by the stage name “Dr. Metal.” Just five feet six, Gonsalves made up for his modest stature with boundless energy and a 100-watt smile. As he tossed T-shirts to the crowd and exhorted them to drink all the Budweiser in the place, directly behind him Great White’s road manager, Dan Biechele, set up an apparatus consisting of cardboard tubes, wires, and a battery. In minutes, the crowd would be treated to some very special effects. Gonsalves, forty, shared some personal history with Jeff Derderian. Each had gotten his start in broadcasting at Rhode Island College’s low-wattage campus radio station, WRIC. Derderian had been its news director, and Gonsalves , the host of a program called The Dr. Metal Show. Upon graduating in 1986, Gonsalves joined WHJY-FM, a rock format station in Providence, where he hosted The Metal Zone every Saturday night and DJ’d from midnight to 5:30 a.m. Monday through Friday. Beloved by night owls, graveyard-shift workers, and hard-rock aficionados, Gonsalves was the station’s “overnight franchise,” according to its general manager, Bud Paras. Like Mike Hoogasian, Gonsalves had been to a Providence Civic Center concert in which Great White opened for Judas Priest. He considered it one of the coolest shows he’d ever seen. So it was without hesitation that Dr. Metal accepted the invitation to emcee Great White’s appearance at The Station. s u d s , s p a r k s , a n d s p o n s o r s h i p 49 Actually, it was also part of his job. As an on-air “radio personality,” Gonsalves was expected to appear at concerts and events promoted by WHJY or its advertisers. In the case of the Great White concert, Rhode Island’s exclusive Budweiser beer distributor, McLaughlin & Moran Inc., was the advertiser who arranged with WHJY for his appearance at The Station. Budweiser’s interest in the concert was to promote its then-current marketing gimmick, “Born-On Dated” beer. Despite decades of touting “beechwood aging” as key to its product’s quality, Anheuser-Busch decided in 2003 to hype beer sold within days of its brewing, presumably to derive competitive advantage from its dozen regional breweries, as compared with Coors’s and Miller’s more centralized distribution systems. With that calculation, Born-On Dated beer took its place beside Spuds MacKenzie and thespian frogs in the brewer’s never-ending quest to persuade Americans to ingest more of its intoxicant. For the marketing program, Budweiser distributors like McLaughlin & Moran conducted “Day-Fresh” promotions at various bars and nightclubs, its trucks delivering beer brewed that same day, which would be given away (“sampled”) to retail patrons. Because The Station was a good Budweiser customer, its assigned salesman thought it a great idea to run a Day-Fresh promotion at the Great White concert. McLaughlin & Moran was a substantial advertising customer of WHJY, thereby earning promotional credits that the beer company chose to collect in the form of promotion of the Day-Fresh gimmick. The rock station agreed to park its distinctive van at The Station the evening of the concert, provide WHJY personnel to distribute promotional items at The Station, air commercial spots for the beer promotion, and coordinate the appearance of Gonsalves. For its part, McLaughlin & Moran would pay a $200 “talent fee” directly to Dr. Metal and provide two three-by-ten-foot outdoor banners for the club’s façade. Festooned with the Budweiser logo, each read: “Party with WHJY and Budweiser” and “The Station Presents Great White.” The Derderians displayed them prominently the entire week before the concert. From February 17 to February 20, WHJY trumpeted: “This Thursday night, 94 HJY wants you to...

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