The Weekend Classic Rock FM

51° - cloudy at 1:15pm

Left: classic Koss PRO4AA headphones - Randy Raley's new pride and joy as he prepares to hit the air on 1120/KMOX. More from Randy here.

Welcome to the weekend.

Watching this morning: Streaming video of Jacobs Media Summit 12 sessions. Great stuff. So far have watched "PPM Rocks" and "Punk Marketing". See here. These well worth your time this weekend. Noted some audio problems - just turn off your left channel audio.

In the PPM Rocks session - heard a fun exchange between moderator Fred Jacobs and panel member Charley Lake, PD of Greater Media's WMGK/Philadelphia; Here's Charley answering a question from Fred about having PPM data available weekly:

Charley: "Whereas before we had the 12 monthlies a year...so...you know once a month you sit down and get your data and go all through it and then you'd take it home. And you now get to do that about 52 times a year."

Fred: "So do you throw up every week now or how does that work?"

Charley: "Well some weeks more than others Fred."

Charley Lake. Watching the PPM Rocks video its clear that Charley is a very impressive programmer.

The respect he exhibits for the staff he inherited is admirable - and he was very candid about the fears and concerns he had about PPM.

Charley concluded his thoughts on PPM stating: "If you do good radio and if you have good personality and good content and good promotions and do your right music research and all of those things - believe me they are very very important - as important as ever". Yessir!

HD Radio. Some common sense from Mark Ramsey:

"HD must transparently appear everywhere. And the only way that will happen is if it's feasible to build it into a $15 dollar clock radio. The "HD advantage" must be free and invisible to consumers."

Mark's complete rant here.

Would this not make it reasonable to include HD as standard on car radios? More radios in the field justifies investments in HD programming, personnel and promotion - with less time and effort marketing expensive radios.

Yesterday: This blog mentioned John Landecker's exit from WZZN/Chicago. This morning we read that the great Greg Brown will be filling the 4-8pm shift at the oldies outlet. Kudos to him.

I wrote about Greg here a few months back.

More here over the weekend.

Monday Monday

60° - light drizzle at 9:50pm

Good evening. Late post; another busy one today.

I don't sound off too often - but someone please stop the madness I'm about to share...

While checking an email account last night (Sunday) - one I use for station listener and VIP email clubs - I noted an abudance of emails from the same station listener club.

Between Monday and Saturday this station sent me ten emails - each dealing with single topics; many over and over again.

Monday brought 3 emails (2 were duplicates about the morning show) - the other one was notice that ZZ Top was coming to town.

On Tuesday I had 2 emails from the station - one to tell me I could "Beat The Box Office" for ZZ Top tickets on Thursday.

Only one email Wednesday - reminding me again of the ZZ Top pre-sale on Thursday.

Thursday - 10:30am - an email to remind me that ZZ Top Pre-Sale has begun.

Later Thursday - 3:01pm - brought a second email. Subject line: "Did you buy your ZZ Top tickets?" Stop nagging me!

Friday and Saturday brought one email each day - two different topics - to finish out the week. At least ZZ Top was done. Nothing Sunday. Two emails from the station today (so far).

Stop doing this! You're risking your entire email marketing program to spam folders and blacklisting. Think moderation.

I'm just say'n. And I'll have some cheese with that wine - uh, whine.

Sunday while reminiscing about listening to a small Indiana station in 1971, I blogged: "When traveling back in that era one could hear and discover songs & artists on the radio that hadn't made it to my hometown Chicago stations."

Coincidently - Lee Abrams wrote this morning:

"Back then you could also listen to regional stations and hear new stuff that hadn’t broken Nationally yet. I remember hearing “Journey to the Center of the Mind” on CKLW and importing that…or local band Heart getting action on our client KISW and importing that around the country."

Lee on the old days - why the Sex Pistols suck - and more here.

And thanks - to legendary Midwest AOR Air Personality Randy Raley (KSHE/St. Louis; KYYS & KCFX/Kansas City - and others) for the kind email yesterday. Randy made my day - writing:

"Your blog makes me long for a chance to pop back in the game again and put in those 16 hour days like I used to do. Thank you for showing off the stations who still do it right, like WKLH and the great ones who know it's about the content and the connection not just the songs."

Randy mentions he's about to get something many of us only dream of: Saturday Nights on a 50kw AM blowtorch: KMOX/St. Louis.

"Route 66" with Randy Raley will begin Saturday, October 13th - in most of Mid-America on 1120/KMOX - streaming on the web everywhere. More info on Randy's great blog here.

Have a good night.