Picture this: You're clipping right along at 20 miles per hour through rush hour traffic with a car phone in one hand and, presumably, a steering wheel in the other. Over the radio comes a commercial for a special offer on a magazine that interests you. Now, if only you could find a pen to write down that 800 number.

For reasons like this, publishers have tendered to regard radio mainly as a support tool for boosting single-copy sales. But as Gale Page knows, it all depends on the reception you get.

As circulation director for Air & Space Smithsonian, Page has used radio as a source of new business for the past four years. The medium brings in about 5 percent of the magazine's 300,000 paid circulation--enough to take "some of the pressure off direct mail," Page says. "Radio lets me reach a more general audience. I can't mail to everybody in the world who would want to read this magazine. Some of those people are reading magazines whose lists I can't afford."

Page says running a 60-second radio commercial in large markets nationwide costs a small fraction of what it costs to produce a TV spot, while Air & Space's cost-per-order is comparable to those for direct mail and TV. (The magazine runs spots on the Discovery and Comedy channels.) "It pays for itself."

Ironically, Air & Space does not use radio as a support for single-copy sales. "It doesn't make a lot of sense, because we're not on every newstand," Page explains. "We might not be on your corner."

Notes circulation consultant Doug Newton: "You have to have some appreciable newstand volumes to warrant the radio costs."

Another discouraging aspect of using radio as a newsstand support is that "it's hard to measure the results," says Mary Louise Glynn, circulation coordinator for New Jersey Monthly. "How are you going to know that ad affected sales? At least with direct response subscription offers there's a measurable action taken. I think of radio as more of a public relations tool."

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