Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

37° - overcast at 11:14am

Good Morning from Okemos.

After a week of continued great autumn weather with daytime highs in the 70s, colder weather finally traveled across Lake Michigan and yesterday colder temperatures and rain hit with predictions for snow. No white stuff here yet. Spoke too soon. White flakes are coming down as of 10:30am eastern time.

Recharging my batteries. Yesterday the day job hosted its 4th annual "Broadcast Career Builder Conference" (BCBC); a day filled with industry leaders talking to college and trade school students who want to enter broadcasting/electronic media. It was awesome to see/feel the enthusiasm for this business from those who want to enter, even after some of the sessions were quite blunt about downsizing, consolidation and the changing skill set needed in today's environment.

One of the highlights of the day was a session titled "Marketing Yourself for a Successful Career in Broadcasting", moderated by local WLNS-TV News Director Phil Hendrix that included a great presentation by Jay Kruz of Bonneville's WSWD/Cincinnati; plus participation by Midwest Communications (Kalamazoo) OM Brian Hayes and former XM air talent Sari Zalesin.

Jay Kruz - who at age 24 and a PD in market 29 was an inspiration for many attendees and wonderful to chat with aftewards. One word of advice from Mr. Kruz to his college audience was to Google yourself and clean up those Facebook pages, among others - if neccessary.

Related: Consultant Harve Alan talks about your online brand (you, not your station) here.

I also had a chance to chat with Rich Padgen from Detroit's Radio Disney station (WFDF). Want to dive head-deep into promotions? Work for a Radio Disney station. They're on the street all the time.

Props to MAB's Julie Sochay for organizing the event for a fourth year as well as to MAB President/CEO Karole White; and to Citadel/Saginaw Market Manager Chris Monk, this year's Committee Chairman of the Conference.

Listening this morning: My usual Sunday routine...WDRV/Chicago's Rock 'N Roll Roots followed by WKLH/Milwaukee's Rock 'N Roll Roots program.

Reading this morning: Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight shines on Mancow, who - aside form his long running syndicated morning show - just landed a prime gig on some legendary call letters. Read here.

Programming: Still getting caught up on posting reading recommendations from my blog hiatus. A series of great posts are from Country consultant Jaye Albright who writes about "Ingredients Of A Great Country Music Radio Station."

Let Jaye's comments serve as thought/discussion starters for your station no matter the format. Part one here. Part two here. Part three here.

Contribute To Revenue. One session yesterday at the above-mentioned BCBC was "Creating Job Security By Creating Broadcast Revenue". Couldn't spend much time in the room with other responsibilities - but as a related sidenote, Fred Jacobs writes in this week's FMQB about PDs contributing to sales in this day and age, offering some specific suggestions. A great read here.

Follow-up: On Tuesday, I pointed to a Seth Godin piece on "Marketing Lessons from the US Election" - and how those lessons relate to radio. Seth's piece also caught the attention of Mark Ramsey. Read here.

Fun Read: John Gorman continues to offer a glimpse into the glory days of WMMS/Cleveland through his Buzzard Blog - and offers a great piece on fighting the battle with the competition. Read here.

Speaking of: Gorman offers a ton of audio, video and related material on WMMS on his blog. As an example, John offers audio from a 1979 Pete Towshend interview here. An example of memorable and timeless material that should be archived and available on the station's website! Audio/Video/Photos...whatever.

Is there someone in your station responsible for archiving your treasured programming assets and making them available on your website? If not, there should be. In radio, too much of what goes over the air is never heard again. This material makes great long-term web content.

Aside from the web, there's got to be much material that can be recycled for use in imaging and special artist weekends. Watch VH-1 or MTV. They save everything and reuse just about all of it sooner or later.

Have a great Sunday.