End Of My Writer's Block

38° - overcast at 10:27am

My first post of the year. And it's almost March. Haven't had much inspiration to write. Much has happened in our industry over the last several months, most of it leaves an uneasy feeling. That said, my vision now much clearer; as I hope yours is.

One ritual I have early almost every morning is first reading Tom Taylor's daily column. And R&R's Kevin Carter with his Street Talk Daily. Plus Jerry Del Colliano (pictured above left).

I've had this love/hate thing with Jerry since the days of Inside Radio...going way to the pre-net days when it was a black-on-yellow newsletter that would come in the mail. I feel Jerry focuses far too much on the negative.

But Jerry often makes some great observations - and this morning he wrote:

"We've got lots of ways to direct our listeners to someone other than the person playing the music. And don't get me started on texting. Radio stations by and large don't understand how to use texting in a way consistent with how their audience uses it. It is not a blatant promotional tool even if you think it is. To them, it is social connection.

Someone needs to be home."

More soon - including something brilliant I recently read from David Martin.

Monday Monday

32° - mostly cloudy at 7:35am

Last week turned into a busy one between the day job, the night job and everything else. And it didn't stop over the weekend. Thanks for stopping by.

From around my blogosphere:

Jerry Del Colliano has a great piece posted this morning: "Better Radio At No Additional Cost". In it, Jerry remembers Dick Carr of WIP/Philadelphia:

"When Dick prevailed at WIP he had one operating principle that always served him well. It cost no extra money -- it was a way to look for the additional benefits that make listeners appreciate you over and over again. He called it Another Reason to Listen."

"Everything that is done on the air should be designed to give the audience another reason to tune in and stay with the station. As Dick Carr puts it, "Work to create a listener expectation wherein once they heard "a shoe drop", they would instinctively turn to your station"."

Worth your time this morning. Read here.

Related piece from Dave Lange: Dave posts a great read on his blog "Opportunties Ahead #1" In the piece, Dave notes:

"Be Local: No doubt the biggest opportunity for radio is that it's LOCAL. While most of the new media, cable networks, broadcast networks and nearly all the web is national or even world wide most of the audience's world lies in their local area. We all know this, but in the end we do little to capitalize on it."

More here - including some thoughts on what you might do on a day-to-day basis.

Pass along to your GM/GSM: Alan Mason writes about those email "out of office" auto-responders - and something very clever your salespeople could be doing. In fact, I think even programmers or anyone on staff could be doing:

"Whoops. You've caught me at one of the rare times I'm not here waiting to help you. I'm gone for a short period but want you to receive royal treatment. This message has been automatically forwarded to our Sales Assistant, Carla ___. She'll be in touch with you forthwith. By the way, click on this link and you'll see a video of what happens when we do a remote at Van Chevrolet."

Alan does note that "If you're in business today, every e-mail should be forwarded to your PDA or cell phone." Read more here.

Welcome back David Martin. After a brief absence, Mr. Martin is back on his blog. Always worth your time. Read here.

And Dave: I did enjoy our conversation and intend to follow-up as promised. Last week turned impossible.

Belated congrats: To Fred Jacobs and Jacobs Media Web Guru Tim Davis, who created a custom station-branded iPhone application to listen to station streams. Read here. View below:

Ending the Rant of musicFIRST

69° - sunny at 7:53am

Conclave: Under way in Minneapolis. Wish I was there! The Conclave has evolved into radio's premiere event. More here. In preparation, Sean Ross writes about the Twin Cities oldies/classic hits/classic rock stations here.

Those wackos at musicFIRST. Calling radio stations "pirates" for not paying additional fees to use music. What if radio picked a few artists and simply stopped playing their music (if you were an artist - would you want to be on that list?)

As Jerry Del Colliano pointed out in his blog the other day:

"We could really end this desperate move by rich record artists to earn even more by remembering what Sinatra, The Eagles – all of them – would have made if radio didn’t play their music. How about – zero. How about no platinum records. No gold. No silver. No tin. No junk metal. Nothing could be earned without radio airplay. Nothing."

Exactly. NAB efforts gave broadcasters the majority of votes in the House on the performance "tax" issue, as announced on Tuesday. But the fight continues. Meanwhile, record company promotion people continue to beg for radio airplay.

Great Promotion. As tipped by Dave Martin (who was tipped by Emily DiTomo). Entercom teaming up with Guitar Center for "Get Schooled with Guitar Center". Here.

Dave writes: "A very cool concept and well done. Creating memorable experiences, real dream come true moments, is powerful magic." Kudos to Entercom and all involved.

Atlanta's Dave-FM/WZGC launches second website "E-Dave". A cool presentation and layout that begs the question: why not just make this "the" website? See here.

Added: From Boston.Com - a review/preview of Wi-Fi ready radios. Here.

Late Night Add: Received a great piece in my in-box this afternoon from Fred Jacobs. A must-read for PDs and air talent. A lesson learned from the late George Carlin. Here.

Have a good night.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

55° - overcast at 11:26am

Good Morning from Okemos, Michigan USA.

Listening: Starting at 8am eastern this morning to Bob Stroud's Rock 'N Roll Roots on WDRV. Bob featuring The Who this morning, celebrating Pete Townshend's birthday. Stroud's stories behind the songs make almost everything he plays special.

Later: Steve Palec on WKLH. Steve with a good dose of Allman Brothers as I'm listening. Steve also a great storyteller with some great sound bites to setup the tunes.

WMMR/Philadelphia. Celebrating 40 years of rock. See the celebration on station's website here.

FMQB with a great historic photo spread on WMMR here.

Building Community. Good read this past week in Ad Week on marketing and "building community." Read here.

Related: Bob Lefsetz posts a letter from an artist who writes:

"It’s really not so much about the music anymore. It’s about how willing you are to market you band/product by putting the time and effort into it to it. Connecting with fans. Creating a community that will keep coming back because your constantly updating your content."

American Idol - Boston style: Fred Jacobs wrote about a dream gig and how it came together this past week. Hint: Boston has a new lead singer - and he's from Home Depot. Here.

Hmmm. WKLH/Milwaukee promoting "The Concert For Big Oil" on Memorial Day Weekend. Say what? See here.

Dolly and Howard. Jaye Albright comments here. Your take? I do note that this is the first I've heard about Howard in many months. See "Sensitive Times" below.

Sensitive Times. You've no doubt read in the past day or so the firing of WYSP/Philadelphia morning talent Kidd Chris and Program Director John Cook over the repeated airing of a "racist" song performed by an in-studio guest.

Me thinks an apology over a one-time live airing would have been fine - but repeated airings may have crossed that line. BTW: a visit to the WYSP website reveals another station running "The Harley Days of May" (that's 2 now).

Added Monday 5/19: Jerry Del Colliano in a post this morning gets it right:

"Radio audiences are increasingly over this type of content. Even Public Offender #1, Howard Stern, has changed the way he offends – albeit it on subscriber-based satellite radio."

"And if you’re wondering what the next generation thinks of these types of racist parodies, consider that Gen Y is a very social generation. They tend to work within the system and see things in one color instead of racially defined preexisting stereotypes from the past."

Have a great Sunday. There's a trip to the zoo know as Sam's Club in my plans today...

Jerry's New Rules for PDs

14° - overcast at 11:17pm

Good evening from Okemos. Been catching up on my reading tonight and checked into Jerry Del Colliano's blog.

Confession: I've had this love/hate thing with Jerry's writing since his Inside Radio days years ago (goin way back to when the newsletter was delivered via snail mail); reasons why not important.

I still read Jerry then and continue to read Jerry today.

On his blog yesterday, Jerry had a great post regarding his "new rules for PDs" - all that sound familiar to an era long ago. Here's some selected highlights from his post:

1. One PD per station. It used to be that a successful program director lived, breathed and experienced his or her one radio station 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This was an acknowledgment that the program director of a successful radio station is a specialist not a generalist. Consolidators anxious to get the most bang for the buck have spread otherwise qualified PDs beyond their core competency.

If you want great radio stations that can program to the available market (which does not include the next generation), then suck it up and pay for one quarterback per station. Stop with the shortcuts and you'll see a better return on your investment. And don't tell me about the handful of PDs who are programming more than one station for you -- imagine what they could do with one?

4. Give full authority to the PD to do his/her job. No meddling. No backseat programming. Leave your PD to either do what they promise or risk being replaced at the end of the year. Oh, no changing the rules in mid-stream.

5. Fully fund the programming budget. Too many PDs have no real budget or the budget they have looks like Swiss cheese. If you suspect that corporate is going to ask for further givebacks during the year, under budget programming by the percentage of cutback you anticipate. You can't expect a PD to do their job without knowing how much money they have to spend.

Jerry's complete post here. A great read; but depending on your situation you might get angry.

Congrats: To Fred Jacobs for 3 years of the JacoBLOG. One of my daily habits. And to Doug Podell on his appointment as Director of Rock Programming for Greater Media's Detroit classic rock/rock duo WCSX/WRIF. Thanks to Lee Arnold for the tip.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

40° - fog at 10am Left: via Randy Raley's blog. Just too weird to pass up. More here.

Listening: My usual Sunday Morning fare. Bob Stroud/WDRV currently playing "Some Velvet Morning" (1968) from Nancy Sinatra and (the late) Lee Hazelwood. Video here

Velvet Morning one of my favs - a moment when pop met psychedelia. I see on Wikipedia that Vanilla Fudge covered it; I'll have to dig it up - I can only imagine.

Reading this morning: Jerry Del Colliano's INSIDE MUSIC MEDIA^TM - posting on Friday about Christmas Radio and the PPM success of WBEB/Philadelphia and KODA/Houston. Jerry writes:

"My own personal program director's people meter located right here in my gut tells me that audiences like it when radio stations create a feeling of something special."

My gut too - and this relates entirely to what I wrote last night regarding special programming - be it A to Z, a Top 500 Countdown - the clever stuff coming from John Hager in Buffalo - all that.

Jerry adds:

"Imagine what radio could really do if it tried harder. In fact, imagine what terrestrial radio could do if it tried harder the other 46 weeks a year. Betcha the ratings would soar among existing radio listeners."

"Trying harder" will never be a directive from the home office. It takes initiative at the PD level to make it all happen. Perhaps extra staff time. If it doesn't start with the PD - then where?

And GMs: you do trust your PD to do the right thing, yes? Empower them - or replace them with ones you can.

More: The Legendary Bill Drake - from the year end issue of R&R via Jaye Albright:

"Whoever puts the best on the radio wins. Obviously today you’ve got iPods, satellite and all kinds of goodies. There are some good programmers, but some lousy-sounding stations—and some of them have incredible signals. There doesn’t seem to be that fever anymore."

"I know when we were doing it we were like a brotherhood. We went in to win and did whatever it took. We were totally, absolutely dedicated. It doesn’t come across on many radio stations now. A lot of people just don’t know what they’re doing. Of course, that’s always been true, thank you, Jesus."

Great Audio. KRFX/Denver PM driver Shark recently spoke with the legendary Barry Fey about the concert business - music - and Led Zeppelin.

Recorded on the 40th anniversary of Led Zep's first show in America - in Denver. An act added as a favor to an already "sold out" show. Listen here. Great stories you'll love hearing.

Lee Arnold's moment of epiphany. A great read here.

Have a great Sunday. Tomorrow the start of another great week.

Labor Day Weekend & Coaching Resources

60° - sunny at 8:15am

Conversation at coffee this morning - My wife: "That's yesterdays newspaper". Me: "But it says Monday".

First day of the school year for my two boys - ages 8 & 12. The house is strangely quiet.

Labor Day Weekend. I recall writing after the Memorial Day Weekend and what impact classic rock staples like a "Top 500 Countdown" and "A to Z" still have with the audience.

I noticed (again) the hits this blog received over the weekend - through the search engines with listeners looking for various station Top 500 and A to Z lists - among other programming. This site gets the pings due to past writings on those topics.

Jerry Del Colliano writes here about oldies KOOL-FM in Phoenix running the Bill Drake History of Rock & Roll noting: "Retail establishments that don't play music were turning up the History. And when I questioned the workers they happily knew what it was and what station was playing it."

More: "Rerun quality programming again and again. No one can hear it all and even if they do, it's still great the second and third time or in the case of The History of Rock and Roll -- the 30 plus years later. I programmed the History back in Philadelphia and it worked then as now."

Specials - like a Top 500 or "A to Z" is a powerful tool. Some PDs might think the features are old and tired - but apparently nobody's told the audience.

Congrats to old Citadel friend Kris Abrams - now progamming KOOL-FM for CBS. When PPM hits Phoenix, look for KOOL to be even hotter.

Talent coaching resources. There's a few radio talent consultants offering free talent tips online.

Tommy Kramer - based in Dallas - writes weekly here (and has all his previous columns archived). A good read every week.

Lorna Ozmon - who calls Arizona home - has a great website offering terrific content here. I've had an opportunity to work with her briefly with a morning show; she provides a great outside POV and sound advice.

Lorna and I go back many (many) years ago together to a little radio station in the northern suburbs of Chicago.

Seth Godin on Labor Day: "I'm working today. In fact, if I'm conscious, I'm working. That's largely because it doesn't seem like 'work' today. I'd write this blog even if no one read it." I resemble that remark.

Bruce Springsteen. VH-1 has been touting a premiere for this "Radio Nowhere" video coming up on Thursday - but Amazon beats them to it. See the new video here.

Wednesday Blogs & ARBs

77° - sunny at 10am

Welcome to August.

Last night was a great one for a bike ride around town and through the bike trails with a big old pink red moon overhead. And I did finally water my (browning) lawn. At least the front yard.

Frustration. I'm going to try again - but yesterday I had sent a note to introduce myself to a GM at a ratings-challenged station in a market I'd like to be in. This morning an Outlook return receipt showed that it was "deleted without being read". At least I know it wasn't something I said...lol.

More ARBs. Looking casually over the release spring numbers from the past week - a few stations really stood out: One is KQRS/Minneapolis. The station is #1 12-plus. Added: KQRS dominates 18-49 and exceeds a 12 share 25-54!

WGRF/Buffalo is #3 12-plus - a solid #2 A25-54 and #1 M25-54. Very nice.

From my blogosphere:

Records & Radio. From press reports it appears the recording industry woo'd Congress yesterday with their request for airplay royalties.

This morning Jerry Del Colliano writes about "Radio Royalty Hardball" - read here.

And Fred Jacobs notes here that "...the recording industry still doesn't "get it" that their best avenue for exposure, artist brand building, and sales is still good old radio".

Conclave. From Jaye Albright: materials and session recordings from last month's Conclave are now available - some of those resources are free. Check out Jaye's blog here.

Seth Godin. Seth writes a short blog post about "Toxic" employees. Read here.

My own experience and growth has helped me avoid such hires and to better manage "pre-existing conditions".

Monday Monday

75° - mostly sunny at 10am

More CGM: I've written here before about the importance of listener involvement - it gives them ownership and loyalty in the product. Another great example comes from Buffalo and WGRF PD John Hager.

The station is asking listeners to contribute stories and vote on the 30 top concerts at a legendary but now defunct local venue.

On Labor Day Weekend - the station will recall those stories and play live concert highlights from those shows. See here.

If you're in a market with a rich concert history this is an excellent idea! Very local.

Speaking of: What are you doing Labor Day Weekend? Its an opportunity to do something special over three days and build (or simply maintain) your AQH #s since most of the format's important "at-work" audience isn't at work. These occasional shifts in listener routines demand extra effort on the part of the radio station.

And: How about football season? Even if you don't have the play-by-play you can still take ownership. Think jock content and imaging.

Streaming. Most if not all webcasters are still online - following last week's reprieve by Sound Exchange on the new royalty rates.

This morning Jerry Del Colliano writes about the reprieve and declares "I'm from New Jersey. I'm not buying it." More here.

You may have noticed: Over the weekend - I tested a new "station of the week" feature here on the blog. After having it up for 36 hours, a better approach came to mind. To come.

Have a great Monday.

Weird Al, CBS-FM, Letters & More

69° - sunny at 10:30am

Last Night: Took my kids to see "Weird Al" Yankovic - appearing at our local Common Ground Fest. Near capacity crowd.

While a little bit of Al goes a long way with me - it was a good show - pretty much kid friendly; and I found that both my boys knew the words to most of his parodies. I later shook my head and began questioning my parenting skills. (I'm kidding. Well sort of...)


WCBS-FM returns today. 1:01pm in New York City. Streaming here. Interesting to note the artists featured on the revamped webpage; can you say "classic hits"? This morning Jerry Del Colliano wrote about the station and "classic hits vs. oldies" here.

Added at 1:19pm: Just caught a great year-by-year montage leading up to the 1:01pm kickoff of the "new" WCBS-FM. Great presentation. "The Greatest Hits of the 60s, 70s & the 80s". First song: "Do It Again" - the 1968 Beach Boys classic. First 80s definite "classic hits" type song: "Glory Days" from Springsteen. Start-ups are always awesome...and perhaps even more with this "rebirth".

Forwards or backwards? WCSX/Detroit kicked off "A to Z" this week. And in Houston, KKRW is doing it it reverse: "Ziggy Stardust" to "A Day In The Life". Backwards makes it fresh - especially if you've done A to Z in recently.

Streaming. With no quick legislative relief in sight - and a report today in RAIN that the US Court of Appeals has denied a stay of the new CRB royalty rates - many webcasters are making decisions about their future.

New rates kick in this Sunday.

Meanwhile: can you afford not to stream? Especially when there's a Wi-Max future not far down the road. Read Mark Ramsey's blog here.

A cool week for email....

Tuesday I received a nice note from Greg Solk, VP of Programming for Bonneville - on my posts about his company's WDRV/Chicago. Thank you Greg!

And yesterday brought wonderful things in my Outlook inbox: First from Marilynn Mee of Milwaukee's WKLH - writing that my comments about her show yesterday "made her day".

Listening to the stream, Marilynn made my day mentioning this blog on her air at least twice!

Another email was from original 1977-1978 WLUP/Chicago air talent Les Tracy - who stumbled across these posts written about WLUP's beginnings a few months back.

I put him in touch with original Loop PD Jay Blackburn and talent Tom O'Toole. Les (or "Lester" as he often called himself on-air) was one of my favs on WLUP "back in the day". His note also mentioned seeing Lee Arnold's name here.

Les Tracy is also a veteran of west coast stations KGB, KPRI, KZAP, KOME, KSMJ - and perhaps a few more call letters in his on-air and programming career.

The Sticker Patrol Returns!

77° sunny - 83% humidity at 10am

Welcome to Tuesday.

New York's WAXQ is bringing back a vintage promotion from radio's playbook for the summer: The Sticker Patrol. Cheap. Easy. Something that tells one listener to another "I'm part of that club too!"

Having stickers on hand at a remote is part of the unwritten contract between most stations and its listeners. And while I've never calculated the ratio, you'll always hand out far more stickers than you'll ever spot on vehicles. But they're going somewhere - and your listeners want them.

More WCBS-FM. Jerry Del Colliano writes "You'd be hard pressed to come up with another time something radio did got so much love and devotion from listeners." More here.

Great Thinking. McVay Media's Dave Lange has a excellent piece on "taking every opportunity you can".

Dave writes: "So many times I see stations that are not reaching out on the air and in the community enough. They just seem content to play the music, run some commercials, take care of the client remotes, and generally phone it in." Read Dave's notes and suggestions here.

Lee Abrams. Over the weekend Lee wrote on old media vs. new. Offsite staff meetings. And shares some great moments from his early career. Here.

Have a great day.

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

76° - sunny at 1pm

Happy Friday...perhaps your weekend began on Wednesday..

How's your stream? Lee Arnold draws awareness to a reality about streaming audio: over half of your audience might be listening to your stream on a dial-up connection. Read more here.

It might be prudent to unplug the broadband and listen to your stream with a 56k dial-up connection and see how it performs.

Meanwhile - July 15th is now less than ten days away - the date the new copyright royalty rates are scheduled to kick in and impact streaming radio.

Jerry Del Colliano writes here this morning on continuing the fight in Washington and declaring war on The Sound Exchange.

Records and Radio. This morning Mark Ramsey writes about the "ridiculous study" that says radio doesn't sell music. Read here.

If this "study" is reality, why haven't the record companies fired their radio promotion staffs and discontinued ads in FMQB and R&R?

Added: The NAB calls the study "bogus" - read here - and quotes pro-radio comments by record company executives.

Found Resources:

AC/CHR Programmer/Consultant (and station owner) Dave Shakes has a great website - with resources relevant for any programmer, no matter the format. Peruse Dave's excellent "tool kit" here.

Historic Audio. The Smoking Gun website now has a archive of historic and celebrity audio (accompanied by video). Browse through it here. You Tube is also an excellent resource for sound.

Added: Jay Trachman - in FMQB - on stationality: "...it enables the listener to remember you. Especially when rating time rolls around." Read here. Great piece on "the feel" of your radio station. Its much more than sweepers.

Thank you Lee Arnold. I do appreciate the kind words - here - on his blog today. They mean a lot.

More here Sunday Morning.