Monday Monday

84° - sunny at 12:30pm

Good afternoon from Michigan

Halloween. I'm reminded by KMJX/Little Rock of a great way to drive traffic to your station website: a list of haunted houses in your area. Easy to do. See their list here.

Perhaps your sales staff pitches it to one of those seasonal halloween costume/supply stores to sponsor. Just thinkin'....

Managing Talent: McVay Media's Dave Lange writes this morning about coaching your talent. Dave notes that he's seen "PDs crawl behind the computer screens dealing with the 'machine' that seems to run the programming" while the talent is "just rolling along on the air" (without much help from the PD).

Dave offers up some great tips:

• Avoid the Critique - Looking back at all the mistakes or blown breaks and ranting while the talent squirms in the chair won't improve their game;
• Listen - Not just to their shows, but also to them. What are their struggles?
• Don't scare them - The more they dread the 'meeting' with you the less productive it will be.
• Lastly make sure you have a plan for each of the people you work with.

Read the complete post here. And thank you Dave. Its nice to read that I'd been doing something right in recent years...

The streaming factor. From Arbitron via Jaye Albright. Released last Friday. "..less than 1% of in-tab diaries continue to contain listening to Internet radio." Jaye advises:

"If you haven't done so yet, contact your ARB rep and get the latest internet listening report for your market. If more than 1% of your total station's total quarter hours come from your streaming, DO NOT STOP STREAMING. BUT, do reassess the verbiage you use to tell your listeners about it."

"Consider the phrase: 'turn your at work computer into an FM radio..' or something similar. The day will come when you'll be able to sell that streaming audience for enough money to make it worth showing it off on its own, but that day is not today with 45% now streaming our audio, but 8 out of 10 of us still unable to honestly call our streams a simulcast."

(The study update just released is based on the returned Spring 2007 SIPs: 45% of AM/FM stations indicated streaming. 20% of AM/FM stations reported 100% simulcast streaming.)

Arbitron calls streaming a simulcast when 100% of the on-air product is on the web. That includes all commercials; if you're covering/inserting spots on the internet, its not a simulcast to Arbitron. But you knew that already. I guess the trick is hoping those online listeners with diaries think they're listening to the radio and record it as such.

She don't read so good. Not that it matters. KGB/San Diego has the winner ("Stacy") from the "Hottest New Employee" contest on the web - doing a weekly entertainment news update.

Not that it matters what she's reading. See Stacy's videos here.


Led Zeppelin. We mentioned earlier today CIRK/Edmonton's Led Zep reunion flyaway.

Another station in the Zeppelin mood is Miami's WBGG - who doesn't have a trip - but has a great Led Zeppelin tribute ("Zepptober") on their website.

See here.

Calling All Drummers. Back in June, KYYS/Kansas City put together a promotion - scoring a Guinness World Record for the largest number of guitar players playing the same song at the same time. Refresh memory here.

Now KZOK/Seattle is part of promotion to put together to break the world record by assembling the largest number of drummers with drum sets playing one song simultaneously. And its a charity project too. Very cool.

Read about "Woodstick 2007" here.

While they've got a song picked already - I'd love to hear the drum solo from In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Just thinkin'.....