Why do radio stations pick Thursdays to make a “big announcement” about an upcoming concert or whatnot? It seems as if all the big announcements and bigger contests and so forth occur on this otherwise boring day of the week. Why?
It is payday for many people that only have the money at that time. 
Maybe they pick Thursdays because it will make them more interesting.
Maybe it’s an actual agreed-upon standard, like how videos all go on sale on Tuesdays. Why’s that the day? Beats me, but I’m sure a statistician had something to do with it.
WAG: I guess many People are making their plans for weekend around Thursday. If the event you announce is to take place this weekend, announcing it on Friday or even Saturday might be too late because people would already have scheduled what to do Saturday night. Announcing too early wouldn’t bee a good idea either because the novelty factor that might help to attract visitors would have disappeared by weekend itself.
Of course this isn’t plausible for events that don’t take place on weekends, or for those that are announced with some advance. But it’s just a guess, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that’s on of the reasons why (at least in Germany), Thursday is the day new films arrive in theatres.
I never in my life thought that reading Danny Bonaduce’s auto-biography would allow me to answer a question in GQ!
“Thursdays are when the rating diaries are due. Ratings, in radio, are figured out from diaries listeners fill out and return to the ratings company. They cover an entire week and are supposed to be filled out every day. No one ever does that. They fill them out the day they are due, so if a radio station can get your attention on Thursday, it might get credit for the whole week.
So, if your favorite radio statin is giving away $1,000,000, it’s no accident that it is on Thursday.”
I figured it likely had something to do with ratings, but was just curious. Thanks for the replies.
And the reason that new videos are released on Tuesday is because of shipping. New releases used to come out on Monday which is the first business day of the week and was conveneient for record keeping. However, in order for stores to have the product ready for a Monday release when they open, they had to receive it and prepare their displays during the weekend. Shipping and store operations are often reduced during the weekend, so stores were complaining. And if the companies shipped on Fridays, some stores would start selling the product during the weekend, which also caused complaints from rivals. So it was decided to use Mondays as the shipping and preparation days and make Tuesdays the official release day.
The following is from a 20 year broadcasting industry veteran.
Thursday is the day because of ratings. Ratings are sampled one week at a time, from Thursday to Wednesday. Each person assigned to be polled is given a book in which they are told to write down which radio (or TV) station they watched that day. The theory is that most people are lazy and will keep track of the book for a day or two and then fill it in retroactively right before it’s due to be returned. Therefore if you do something to get their attention on Thursday, they will write your station down on that day…and then go back and fill in your station on other days whether they actually listened (or viewed) or not.
This is also the reason that network TV puts all it’s big guns on Thursday night.