Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

41° and mostly clear at 11:50am.

This weekend: WBLM/Portland is doing a Beatles A to Z. Adding to the cool is a Beatles "almost A to Z" video collection on WBLM's website. Another idea worth stealing. Check it out here.

Thanksgiving. Finding out what classic rock stations are doing for Thanksgiving programming coming up this week.

In San Jose: KUFX is doing their Beatles A to Z (with selected solo works) - it kicks off Wednesday at noon. Thursday at noon the station will interrupt the A to Z for Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant".

KSLX/Phoenix is putting Arlo's Alice into heavy rotation on Thanksgiving Day...playing it at 8am, noon, 5pm and again at 8pm. The station also kicks off Classic Rock Z to A on Monday, November 26th.

In Buffalo - WGRF is playing Arlo's Alice twice on Thursday; then starting Friday Morning at 6, its 24 hours of nothing but Beatles! 97 Rock also airing the Led Zep syndicated Mothership special.

WKLH/Milwaukee is serving Arlo's Alice once on Thanksgiving Eve - and again Thanksgiving Morning; plus all day Thursday its "classic album sides".

WKLH also running two Led Zeppelin specials - The Mothership and Song Remains The Same.

More Thanksgiving specials to come.

Arguing Arbitron. A follow-up to what we wrote here. WSRT/Traverse City GM Charlie Ferguson comments on Arbitron's response over his complaints on the sampling and recruitment efforts in his market.

"Mr. Mocarsky's statement that 'the sampling rate is so high in Traverse City' is truly laughable. When three diaries were thrown out and the book reissued in Traverse City, WSRT/WSRJ went from a .6 rating in Persons 12+ to a .4 rating -- a drop of 33%! In our Female target demos, the ratings dropped over 21%."

"When ratings-driven revenue accounts for 40 to 45% of a stations total sales, the value of three little diaries in our size market is overwhelming. The remarkable honesty of the majority of media people is outweighed by Arbitron's obligation to provide reliable ratings data that both buyers and sellers can use with confidence."

Charlie's comments were published on All Access this past Friday. He also has an additional issue with Arbitron with the way averages can be calculated with ARB software by agency buyers. We'll see how this all plays out.

Radio Stories. Today Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight shines on WLS/Chicago afternoon personality Roe Conn.

Read here.

And - from the "video comes back to haunt department":