The Weekend Classic Rock FM

41° - clear at 8:09am

Happy Friday!

Earlier this week I was made privy to Chicago's September PPM release. WDRV a solid #1 P25-54, in a 2-way tie for #3 P12+ (with WLS-FM) and #3 P18-49. All numbers M-Sun 6a-12mid. Congrats again to PD Patty Martin.

Around the dial:

Hot Moms 2008! Who doesn't like Hot Moms? New York's Q104.3 (which scored well in PPM too!) repeating their successful Hot Mom contest. Great web promo. Winner gets 5 grand. There's two age groups (under/over 35).

See the finalists so far plus a video message from the 2007 winner here. A great promotion that's right on target with the demo.

Meanwhile...WGRF/Buffalo is searching for Buffalo's sexiest Bills fan. A great promotion as 97 Rock is the flagship station of the team. See the contestants here.

The People's Hall of Fame. WNCX/Cleveland is putting together their own listener-voted rock Hall of Fame. A great website promotion that can engage listeners. See it here.

Very nice! WKLH/Milwaukee midday goddess Marilyn Mee wrapping up Storyteller Week. The stories behind the songs from the artists themselves. And you've been wondering what to do with all those old "In The Studio" disks in your file cabinet! Check out the audio here.

Last Band Standing. Clear Channel's KUFX/San Jose underway with their 5th annual Last Band Standing contest. Competition is between local classic rock cover bands. This can work in almost market large or small and costs almost nothing to pull off. Details here.

Have a great Friday.

Greater Media/Detroit Scores Again!

As we countdown to November 4th - the Greater Media cluster in Detroit has launched (going back a few months now) a great resource site for Michigan voters - Shut Up and Vote Michigan:

The site features voter registration links, a list of sites on where to vote, guest bloggers, videos from WRIF, WCSX and WMGC personalities encouraging listeners to vote, games, clips from SNL and lots more.

A great listener resource put together by the cluster's marketing unit. Kudos to Greater Media/Detroit Director of Interactive Marketing Jennifer Williams and everyone involved!

Wednesday Blogs

60° - light rain/mist at 10am. Left: view from the day job window - a mixed office/residential area on the northside of downtown Lansing.

Good Morning from Michigan. Clouds/fog/rain - but quite warm this morning. A nice rainy fall day.

Around my blogosphere:

Listener Engagement. We've written about this many times over the last 20 months. This morning Fred Jacobs contributes more to the conversation this morning. With apologies to my friend for overquoting:

"A radio station social networking initiative is about engagement. It is about providing listeners with the chance to discuss, dig deeper, and get even more emotional about your people and your programming. Until now, the audience has been forced to remain passive, with the exception of showing up at station events. With social networking, they can get in the game, participate, and become more loyal and knowledgeable about a station and its brand."

"It's just a matter of providing them with the means to connect with one another. We see this at focus groups and Listener Advisory Board groups. Ten strangers come together to talk about your station, and end up in the parking lot, arguing and sharing their views about music, bands, and yes, your station. Many other consumer brands would kill to have the type of emotional connection that many stations have with their customers."

Would kill indeed! Very cool stuff! Fred's post here.

Telling It Like It Is. Mark Ramsey sums up the current PPM controversy/litigation in a few words:

"This is a case of the interests of the radio industry and its advertisers being hijacked by a small number of selfish parties who don't like PPM because PPM doesn't like them as much as diaries do. Pure and simple."

Mark's complete post here.

Webcasting: Monday's Edison Media-sponsored Streaming/Music Royalties was fantastic (although the audio quality a little less than ideal). If you missed, its archived here.

During the webcast - Attorney David Oxenford had some great contributions to the webcast and offered some great real world ideas for radio, especially the smaller markets to expand their reach and consumer convenience.

David mentioned making your newscasts available for listening anytime on the web...and stations that do local sports offering 3 or 4 area games through web streaming; since you can only do one on the air (of course, HD could change that!). High School sports typically means $ for small market radio.

It was time well-spent and kudos to Edison Media's Tom Webster for putting it all together.

Scratch. Pop. Click. Vinyl on the air. Randy Raley's doing it once a week...tracking an album on his classic rock station in Normal, Illinois. Very cool. Read about the adventure here.

Have a great Wednesday!

Online Event Today at 12 noon Eastern

61 - light rain at 9:47am

Sorry for the late notice - intended to include in an earlier post - but my Outlook calendar just popped up with a web meeting today hosted by Edison Media Research. The topic: "Music Royalties and the Future of Online Webcasting".

This will certainly be of interest to anyone involved with streaming - either commercial or non-commercial. From Edison Media's site:

Join us on Monday, October 6th at NOON Eastern (9AM PST) for an interactive panel discussion where you'll hear perspectives on the issue from:

* Tim Westergren, Chief Strategy Officer and Founder of Pandora
* Kurt Hanson, CEO of AccuRadio
* Alan Levy, CEO, BlogTalkRadio
* David Oxenford, Partner, Davis Wright Tremaine, LLP

The discussion will be moderated by Tom Webster, Vice President of Strategy and Marketing for Edison Media Research. Listeners can call in LIVE during the event at (347) 205-9090, or submit questions before the event to Tom Webster.

For more information - or to access the event, click here.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

57° - sunny at 10:50am

Good Morning from Okemos.

Time just seems limited lately with much going on with the day job, including increased duties and responsibilities; sometimes the best intentions to post get sidetracked.

Today its car repair 101 (replacing a ignition switch in the family mini-van) as well as my youngest boy's first flag football game on the season.

Listening: This morning to WDRV's Bob Stroud (surprised?); later if time permits its Steve Palec on Milwaukee's WKLH.

HD Radio. By now you've probably read that there's a proposal to require HD Radio capabilities to satellite radio receivers. ARS Technica reports that the bill would require this of satellite radios that also recieve AM & FM broadcasts. Thinking deeper, this could simply mean that satellite radios could be built without AM/FM capabilities - and thus, no HD.

Of course, would Detroit do installs of (pay) satellite-only radios? I think/hope not. Certainly the requirement could be a shot in the arm for HD. Of course why not simply requiring HD in all radios? Yeah, I understand the Ibiquity royalty deal. Perhaps Ibiquity would have to rethink their license deals. FM didn't take off until it was required in most radios starting in 1974. Before that date, I'm sure their were lots of naysayers questioning whether FM was either neccessary or something the public wanted.

In the meantime - HD-2 and HD-3 channels will succeed with programming thats not neccessarily mainstream - just as FM itself was back through the mid-70s. That includes today's version of "underground radio" (think Detroit's Riff-2), classical music and foreign-language programming.

I pointed out on an engineering discussion list a few days ago that in the early 70s, Chicago had three class B FMs that devoted much, if not all their broadcast day to brokered ethnic programming. Much of this has since gone to weaker suburban AM signals or subcarriers requiring special receivers.

Welcome Jay Philpott. Received an email this past week from Jay who turns me on to his blog and a great piece with audio on Bruce Springsteen - who apparently will be playing at the forthcoming Super Bowl. Check out a piece of rare, wonderful audio from The Boss here.

Congrats: This past week to Detroit's Mark Pennington - who was promoted to PD of the legendary WRIF by OM Doug Podell. A well deserved promotion. Thats to Lee Arnold for the tip.

More Radio Career Stories. Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight this week shines on KXNT/KSFN Las Vegas Program Director Jack Landreth. Read here.

Have a great Sunday.