The New Year

26° - overcast at 9:26am
Left: looking west; downtown Lansing this AM.
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Lots of snow overnight here to bring in the New Year. I'm working up the desire to dress warm and fire up the snow thrower. The kids actually put down their video games to go outside and play. Score one for Mother Nature.

Last Night: Ended the night watching Dick Clark, Ryan Seacrest and Carrie Underwood bring in the New Year. Didn't stay up much past midnight.

Listening: This morning to WDRV/Chicago. Just came out of the 9am (eastern) Legal ID into "Pure & Easy" by The Who. Surprise deep track outside the Mediabase Top 500. Very cool.

The New Year. McVay Media's Dave Lange sums up the first priority in 2008 for program directors in this paragraph:

"The first is making our products exciting again. That goes back to the basics of ENTERTAINING THE AUDIENCE. We are not going to do much entertaining with another list of 400 songs to spin and a big voiced announcer hyping it up between every song over and over till we pound it into their heads. We need to get close to the community and the target audience in the streets and in their computers."

Dave's complete post here.

Reading: Consultant Harve Alan's recollection of his AOR days at WBAB/Long Island. The tail end of the "progressive rock" era - and before the era of Selector and music on hard-drive.

"4 categories of currents rotated with index cards and everything else was "on the back wall" with songs rotated by tracking sheets taped to the album jacket".

Ah...the good old days when it was difficult not to be just a tad bit self-indulgent. Cue up and start one record then turn around in your chair and stare at a wall of albums to pick the next perfect segue. Check out Harve's post here.

Thanks: To reader Gary Moore (KLOS/LA) for the kind words on this blog in the last few days. Gary working on his own blog to debut soon. Looking forward to his thoughts, ideas and POV. KLOS currently in the middle of an A to Z presentation.

Enjoy the day.