NYU Medical Center Launches "Doc Talk" Radio Show

Based on my observations about hospital marketing in my local area, there seems to be three broad campaign approaches. The first of them emphasizes the quality of care delivered in the system. A previous marketing slogan used by a local academic center was based on the slogan: Knowledge Heals. A second type of campaign runs to the more pragmatic. One hospital system in the region advertises a no-wait emergency department experience on billboards. A third type that I have noticed emphasizes the human/emotional element of healthcare with images of patients battling adversity and dedicated nurses who bond with their patients and support them through their illnesses.

Staying with this idea of hospital marketing and branding, the NYU Medical Center has come up with a novel idea that has great appeal to me. It's launching a 24-hour "doctor radio" talk show on SIRIUS, one of the satellite networks (see: NYU Med to start doc talk radio station). Below is an excerpt from the article announcing this initiative (boldface emphasis mine):

SIRIUS Satellite Radio and the NYU Medical Center have announced that they will launch a new, 24-hour radio channel called "Doctor Radio." ...[T]he channel will feature medical experts speaking on a wide range of topics in taped and live shows around the clock and call-in shows that allow people to speak to real doctors in real time about their health issues. A recording studio will be set up at the NYU Medical Center to make it more convenient for working doctors to contribute to the project....The show will have a panel of about two dozen doctors that will be "regulars" on various programs, but a variety of guest experts and specialists have already been approached to be included in the line-up..."Doctor Radio on Sirius represents the wave of the future for personal medical advice and knowledge," NYU Medical Center Chief Executive Officer Robert Grossman said in a press release....SIRIUS is planning on launching Doctor Radio by early 2008. It will be aired on SIRIUS channel 119.

This idea strikes me as a very clever way for a medical center to both enhance its prestige and also perform a service to the community. It's no surprise to me that such an idea surfaced at a New York medical center -- New York is one of the country's media centers. I wonder, however, about some of the basic financial and management challenges associated with such a project. How will the physician "talent" be recruited from among the medical center physicians? Although many academic physicians are accustomed to lecturing to medical students, are these skills transferable to talk radio? Although call-in shows would be a natural for such radio programming, I suspect that some of the hypochondriacal callers could also get a little tedious. Finally, I wonder if such a project is revenue-generating for the medical center or whether it would need to be subsidized as part of the hospital marketing budget.