Wednesday Blogs

67° - scattered clouds at 8:33am

Good Morning from downtown Lansing.

Striking A Chord. Fred Jacobs writes here about whats he's been hearing from station Listener Advisory Panels.

Much of it is right in front of your eyes; I'm very surprised that there's not more gas promotions taking place right now.

Workplace Online Listening. It's getting big. Even many of the smaller markets are beginning to stream, though its surprising how many still don't. Arbitron and Edison Media release a new report on workplace listening. Harve Alan writes here.

Pizza Wars. Jaye Albright on successful stunting from Pizza Hut and Papa John's. Here.

The last successful stunt I saw observed was Bubba "The Love Sponge". I'm not sure who started what between two competing morning air personalities, but it paid off big for Bubba.

20 minutes. Yesterday I spent 20 minutes on the telephone with someone who helped give me my start in this business - when he had just started shortly before me. Bob Heymann - who is with Media Services Group in Chicago these days.

As Bob calculated, it had only been 37 years since we last spoke. It was 20 wonderful minutes that I wish could have gone 3 or 4 hours. There's a road trip to the Windy City soon.

Added: Another case for Radio. Edison Media's Sean Ross writes about the renewed and continued success of WCBS-FM/New York:

"When WCBS-FM New York dropped Oldies in 2005, it had a 3.0 share 12-plus. When WCBS-FM came back last summer, it returned with a 3.7 share and has held there through the recently released winter 2008 book."

"In that time, WCBS-FM's many disenfranchised listeners had no shortage of choices that could have taken them away from terrestrial radio. They were directly targeted by Sirius Satellite Radio and its hiring of Cousin Brucie. They had their iPods. They could have found no shortage of customizable Internet-only Oldies channels."

"They had plenty of options - many of which would have been seen by some industry people as far superior to the old WCBS-FM during its problematic last year. But when WCBS-FM came back, the listeners came back, too."

Read "For Some, Radio Is Still The Best Way To Hear Music" here.

Monday Monday

Heat Wave. Winter has left Mid-Michigan - at least for a day or two. Today's high 61 - almost 70 about 25 miles south of here.

Coming home tonight: my 12-year old filled me in on new cool gadgets at the CES in Las Vegas - watching coverage on G4 TV.

Catching up on blogs from our industry leaders:

Station Review: Dave Lange writes this morning about keeping your station fresh.

As Dave points out - first of the year is a great time to take a look at everything. More here.

As you review everything - keep this in mind from Lee Abrams today:

"I’ll never forget when I was in Australia and a noted programmer asked “Why is it that all American radio stations give away prizes to the ‘9th caller’? It is some sort of regulation? I replied “Sheep”."

HD2 done right. We profiled WRIF/Detroit's "RIFF2" HD channel here back in August.

This morning RIFF2 Program Director Mark Pennington blogged about putting it all together - and lessons learned. A great read via jacoBLOG here.

PPM: Look Before You Leap. A great piece from Arbitron's Gary Marince. Gary shares:

"Case-in-Point #1: I routinely hear “cut way back on station IDs and calls.” Whoa! The rationale looks good on paper but falls short in practice. Certainly the PPM device will know which stations are being heard by which listeners. But the assumption people are already listening to my station, therefore I don’t need to clutter my air with calls and frequency mentions, might be compromising a wonderful marketing opportunity."

Very good. Read Gary's complete piece in FMQB here.

A name from my past: Broker Bob Heymann. Bob one of those responsible for me being in the biz; Highland Park, IL. about 38 years ago. Wow.

Bob home from college then - doing summer fill-in air work; yours truly just entering high school spending almost all my free time at a radio station. Bob Heymann in the news today as he opens a Chicago office for Media Services Group.

Calling it a night. Day started this morning shortly before 4; woke up during the nightt with my mind racing with ideas. A great feeling.