Celebrating Your Town's Concert History

70° - overcast at 6:45am

If you've read this blog for anytime now - WGRF/Buffalo is one of those stations I love to watch from afar.

PD John Hager has created a station that is all about its market and its listeners.

The station is getting ready for Labor Day Weekend with another great example of listener-generated content (both on-the-air and on-the-web) - plus taking the music it plays and making it "local":

The Top 20 Concerts at Rich Stadium: Vote now

The Buffalo Bills opened their inaugural season at Rich Stadium in 1973. The following summer, Buffalo concert promoter Festival East booked the first ever concert at Rich Stadium on July 6 starring Eric Clapton and The Band.

Over the next twentyfive years, especially in the 1970's and 80's, Rich Stadium hosted Classic Rock's biggest names for some of Western New York's most memorable concerts. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Who, Bob Seger, Yes, Lynryd Skynrd, The Grateful Dead, Van Halen, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Fleetwood Mac, Guns 'N Roses, Elton John, The Eagles and many more played the concert stage at what was then known as Rich Stadium.

97 Rock was the radio station Buffalo concert fans counted on for live coverage and free tickets for these legendary shows. And now we want to know what you thought were the greatest Rich Stadium concerts.

On Labor Day, we are going to count down the top 20 Rich Stadium concerts according to your votes.

See the complete piece here.

Years ago I recall Randy Michaels talking about airing and/or creating "exclusive" - or "difficult to duplicate" content on radio stations. I'm not so certain that this feature falls into the "difficult to duplicate" category - but one thing I've learned in programming is that there are those programmers with the passion to make things like this happen. And its that passion that puts those programmers in a "difficult to duplicate" category among PDs.

Chances are your competition across town doesn't have the passion or drive to do this sort of thing. This creates a tremendous opportunity - take advantage of it!