Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

Left: Mich State University 10:30am

It could hit 65° today! I'll try to drag my two boys away from their PS2 long enough to join me on a bike ride this afternoon. I could use the exercise.

Elton John is 60 years young today. WDRV/Chicago is celebrating with 60 songs by Elton starting at 11am EDT. Just heard the marathon kick off with "Funeral For A Friend/Love Lies Bleeding".

Added: Its 11:30am and the WDRV stream just got clipped. Here's why: "Due to RIAA guidelines and the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, we are unable to stream Elton John's 60th Birthday Party programming. The stream will be back on at 4:30pm. Thanks for clicking on WDRV.com, we apologize for the inconvenience."

The RIAA strikes again! WDRV is substituting with its HD2 deep tracks stream. Good tunes. Even hosted by a jock (sounds like Steve Downes)!
>>oops - see correction here.<<

Free Stuff. From McVay Media. "60 Ideas In 60 Minutes" - from some great programming minds at the 2007 Canadian Music Week conference in Toronto. Get it here.

Core Artists. Reading Jaye Albright's blog over coffee this morning. She writes about "the only artists you should play once an hour". And those "maybe once every two hours". Jaye does country - but this applies to almost any format - and certainly to classic rock.

Are your artist protection rules set up to give your core artists the exposure they need? AND - do your rules demand that core artists are scheduled consistently? I've used type codes/rules in Selector to define core artists so I don't schedule too many non-core artists in a row. -dan

Fun and Educational. "The Horrors of Clearing Customs...and Good Times In Canada" - by Lee Abrams. Lee writes: "As a consultant I always preferred to get the mechanics like rotations out of the away and then look at the things that were beyond mechanics—what made stations GREAT." Yup.

Tommy Chong. A terrific person and a great interview. And now he's video blogging. See Tommy here.

Right: Tommy and me at WMMQ last year.

Performance License Fees. They just went up for web streaming. Traditional over-the-air radio has always been exempt. Could this change? More here from Mark Ramsey.

April Fools. Its next Sunday - a day off for most morning shows. FWIW, here's this FCC advisory from Broadcasting and Cable.

Have a great Sunday.