Wednesday Blogs

32° - cloudy at 9:45pm

Good evening from Okemos.

From my blogosphere:

Great post: Mark Ramsey on being "Hyper-Local". Read the original post and follow-up comments here. Mark writes about being relevant in a local emergency - using the Southern California wildfires as an example.

My two cents: I couldn't agree more with Mark. In addition to his thoughts - its my thinking that those stations that focus on being local and relevant each and everyday that are the real winners.

I suppose there's a place for automated jukeboxes - but the real successful stations are the ones that truly connect to their local market.

Its a long-term investment - but marketed right the revenue usually follows - and increases the "sticky" factor of your product. Attributes that create a great offense.

I still hear many stations not taking advantage of one of their biggest assets: the world within its coverage area.

Then there's thee stations that really get it. You hear and feel the buzz of their market. And those stations are wonderful to listen to.

AFDI. A term coined by Lee Abrams. And a favorite of mine. In his latest blog post - Lee comes across some old emails from the early days of XM - a great read.

One of those emails concerns the topic of artist IDs:

"..Whenever you get artist ID's, make certain you get them to cut ID's for Christmas, Labor Day and other Holidays. Come Christmas, you will have dozens of custom ID's, and other stations will freak wondering "Where did they get those"!...it's the XM way of going the extra mile".

I'll bet we didn't AFDI this one too well. These are the "little details" that separate radio from AMAZING RADIO. So---It's your choice:

a) Show me I'm totally wrong and pull them out;
b) Suffer through endless pounding of this at future meetings;
c) Start plugging in the hundreds we DO have (special thanks to Mike) and remember to AFDI this at all future ID sessions. .....

The right answers are A or C. Again, it's those little details. The bottom line: Let's flood the appropriate formats with Artist XMas ID's that we have in house...we have a ton in Dalet.

More from Lee - including thoughts on great audio imagery, on PDs providing direction to talent and the product - here.

Passion. Once again - Lee Abrams:

“They don't make records like "Pinball Wizard" anymore. Literally. There was this acoustic guitar in one ear. And then, all of a sudden, twenty five seconds into it, an electric BLARED into the other."

Can't you just hear that song intro when you read that?

(Oh - the term "AFDI". In case you don't know what that means - find the term highlighted here)

Great blog: Edison Media Research's "The Infinite Dial". Lots of fresh observations about our industry - almost daily - from Sean Ross and Tom Webster. Make it part of your daily routine. Here.

And more WGRF/Buffalo. Have I ever mentioned that I think this station "gets it"? A great listener email went out this afternoon highlighting something very local to Buffalo that happened on-air in AM drive:

Breaking news for Bills fans - and giving those who didn't tune-in a chance to hear. Tomorrow would have been too late. Great stuff!