Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

78° - clear at 1:27pm

How I've been spending my free time: Certainly (I'm sorry to say) not with this blog. The current obsession is getting the internet station "on the air"; while managing one and a half paid jobs plus life.

Listening: My usual Sunday. Bob Stroud on WDRV/Chicago followed by Steve Palec on WKLH/Milwaukee. Stroud featuring CSN on his roots show this morning; Palec with the theme "sex and music" when I tuned in; plus Ringo Starr.

WDRV celebrates its 7th birthday this Tuesday Night with a free listener concert featuring Crosby, Stills and Nash at the Rosemont Theater near O'Hare Airport. Very cool - and congrats to Greg Solk and everyone at Bonneville/WDRV for seven years of great radio.

Speaking of Bonneville. Consultant Jaye Albright points to the website of the company's new "The Sound FM" (KSWD) and its easy to navigate simplicity. Clean and uncluttered like the station's airsound - and going against conventional radio station website thinking. Jaye's comments here.

5 Essential Tools For Good Imaging. A good piece for PDs and production/imaging guys by Rich Van Slyke in this week's FMQB online. Read here.

Buying TV. Univision Radio Executive VP David Eduardo Gleason writes on his site about the December, 1978 launch of KZNT/San Juan, noting how the launch was promoted:

"A day before the weekend of the launch, the final
few days of 1978, I called the GSM's of the San Juan TV stations
and offered to pay 20% of card for all the unsold inventory that weekend. We ended up with nearly 2000 GRPs for a small investment... and the GSM's got some extra dollars at year-end!"

Its not rock radio - but simply a great radio story. Read here. And do hit "home" and read David's other career highlights and stories.

Weird cover song that works. This tipped by Randy Raley on his blog - with one of my all-time favorite artists doing one of my all-time favorite songs:


More performances of the track by Neil on You Tube. And congrats out to Randy Raley - who has moved from St. Louis to become market manager of a 3-station cluster in the Bloomington/Normal, Illinois market.

Video bonus link. Had an email from Chicago production ace Tom O'Toole yesterday with this.

Heading out of town for a few days with the day job. I'll post if I can.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

55° - clear at 10:55am

Good Morning from Michigan.

Baseball: Our local minor-league baseball team - The Lansing Lugnuts - have their home opener tomorrow night - hope to attend, depending on weather. My in-laws arrived here from Denver yesterday for a week-long stay, so baseball would be a great part of their visit.

Listening. My usual Sunday Morning fare. WDRV/Chicago's Bob Stroud featuring music from this day in 1967, followed by 1972. Lots of AM radio favs. Later: Steve Palec on Milwaukee's WKLH.

Reading: John Gorman's Buzzard Blog. John posts here about WMMS World Premiere Exclusives and the cease and desist orders from the record labels that usually followed:

"We promoted them as “WMMS Weekend World Premiere Exclusives.” It wasn’t an original idea. Top 40 radio in the sixties scrambled to be the first with a new single by the Beatles, the Beach Boys, or the Rolling Stones. The station landing the exclusive would play and promote it with great fanfare. To keep our competition from taping it off our air – we’d had a spoken-word “WMMS World Premiere Exclusive,” which we’d run a couple of times within the “hooks” of the song."

Some more great WMMS (and radio) history here.

Rock The Vote. Dave Lange shares some great ideas for stations to get the most out of the upcoming election, especially with their websites. Read Mr. Lange here.

And Fred Jacobs shares results from a mock poll conducted as part of his firm's Tech Poll IV - and offers suggestions and examples of what stations are doing with their websites and email databases. Read Mr. Jacobs Here.

Websites: Making a statement. Earlier this week Fred Jacobs offered some great examples of making a statement with your website, citing Google as an example and what they did a week ago Saturday for Earth Hour. Read here.

April Fools and 97 Rock. Earlier this week this blog posted a web banner from Buffalo's WGRF announcing a "Gay to Z" weekend; and that was only part of the April Fool festivities on the station this past Tuesday. PD John Hager has a review of what the station did posted on the station's website here.

Spring Book. Randy Raley writes on his blog about the ritual many PDs go through every year as part of his series on "Things Radio People Like":

"All you have to do is take something you would do on a daily basis that might be for recreation and replace that action with the word “tight” or “tighten” and you can create your own Radio Person Spring Book Catch Phrase, which I think the Nintendo Wii version is coming out in 2009."

Read more here.

Memories. This week Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight shines on Chicago legend Bob Hale. Here.

Very good read: Bob Hale was the MC at a concert in Clear Lake, Iowa on February 2, 1959. Need I say more?

More memories: Had a nice note/comment this past week from Fred Johnson of Ames, Iowa - who added his memories of WVFV/Dundee to a post I wrote on air talent Greg Brown last June.

Fred worked at WVFV when it signed on (1967, as I recall) and shares a few stories from that time. Scroll down to comments here.

Have a great Sunday.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

37° - overcast at 11:09am

Listening: The usual Sunday Morning fare. WDRV/Chicago - and Bob Stroud with Rock 'N Roll Roots.

Stroud segue: "She's A Rainbow" (Stones) into "Susan" (Buckinghams). Both with that 60s psychedelic violin thing. Later: Heard Leon Russell's "A Song For You". I've forgotten what a great song that is.

Wondering: Where is Steve Palec? Steve hosts "the other" Rock 'N Roll Roots program on WKLH/Milwaukee. Station has been filling his slot the last few weeks with various syndicated programs. Hope all is well.

Caught my ear: the new Gatorade TV Commercial. Music is "Sparks" from The Who's Tommy album. Very nice.

Caught another Gatorade spot during SNL last night with the bass riff from Lou Reed's "Walk On The Wild Side". It's a classic rock party!

Underwhelmed: Consultant Harve Alan tries the new Ford/Microsoft Sync voice command system and declares it "not ready for prime time".

Harve also notes that while the voice command system works through the radio - there are no voice commands for the radio. And that's wacked. Harve's blog here.

Still waiting: but not complaining - for Jay (J.) Blackburn's (JDB) radio novel based-on-real-life. "The Radio Gypsies" due out in just weeks.

JDB sharing the cover artwork with me in an email back on Thursday.

I'm on the list for one of the first copies off the press. And I promised JDB I'd plug-plug-plug. Stay tuned!

Goodbye: To the "One-To-One" Newsletter. Publisher Jay Trachman writing in the last issue:

"I am closing it down because the enterprise is no longer profitable, and the industry is – to me – no longer recognizable.

"There was a time when I could write “Talent Tips” columns with the comfort that hundreds, if not thousands, of jocks would read and consider the advice. It’s just not that way anymore."

Read Jay's sign-off in FMQB here.

Jay Trachman's words remind me of something Randy Raley had on his blog here at the end of a post about the late KYYS:

"The business I miss is no longer the business anymore."
-Randy Raley March 2007

It ain't like it used to be. I don't think anything ever is. I go back to my hometown in the Chicago suburbs and its nothing like the small village I roamed all over on my Schwinn bicycle as a child.

My parents said the same thing about the town when I was a young.

In the mid-70s at age 18 - I joined CBS' WBBM/Chicago as "Continuity Director" - replacing a retiring gentleman by the name of George Clare. George's time at WBBM extended back to radio's first golden era.

Back in the 40s he was a sound effects guy on radio drama and entertainment programs. I remember George sharing stories from that period of his career and echoing something similar to Randy Raley's line above.

Speaking of WBBM: Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight this week shines on Newsradio 780 morning traffic anchor Bart Shore. A good read about a great radio career here.

Thanks: To WGRF/Buffalo PD John Hager for the kind words in an email this past week. Also to media sales pro, radio station broker (and lifelong friend) Roger Rafson for the nice note too!

More here tomorrow morning. Monday Night; the jobs getting in the way of the blog again!

KYYS/Kansas City now "The Boulevard"

35° - overcast at 9:50pm

KYYS Web Statement? Certainly there was a better way to begin this message to former listeners. Looks like a cut and paste from someone's memo..."here's the web statement..."

KYYS/Kansas City signed off at 1pm today - after playing Billy Squier's "In The Dark". And then "The Boulevard" signed on with Jackson Browne's song of the same name.

Entercom Market Manager Dave Alpert was quoted in All Access: "It had nothing to do with the staff - it was all about two stations playing the same music."

With the change - some legendary air talent is on the street with the change...including longtime AM drive talent Max Floyd.

Floyd signed on the original 102.1 KYYS as PD in 1974 after coming to the market from the same post at then-AOR KLZ-FM/Denver.

Following a format flip on the 102.1 frequency in 1997 - KYYS was resurrected on the 99.7 frequency with most of the former 102.1 staff joining including Floyd.

Randy Raley remembers KYYS - including the KY102 days - here.

But with the end of one format is the beginning of another. 99.7 The Boulevard debuted at 1pm - here's the first hour of music:

• Boulevard/Jackson Brown (1980)
• Beautiful Day/U2 (2000)
• Hey Nineteen/Steely Dan (1980)
• Refugee/Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers (1980)
• Madman Across The Water/Elton John (1971)
• One Headlight/Wallflowers (1996)
• Sunshine Of Your Love/Cream (1967)
• While You See A Chance/Steve Winwood (1980)
• Blinded By The Light/Bruce Springsteen (1973)
• Losing My Religion/REM (1991)
• One Of These Nights/Eagles (1976)
• Train In Vain/The Clash (1980)
• Suffragette City/David Bowie (1972)

Sounds like a great mix of music. While I hate to hear of some legendary calls going away - The first hour of the Boulevard sounds like a radio station I could easily listen to. I'll be listening over the weekend. Added: My thoughts on first listen here.

And - when The Boulevard hires an airstaff - there's some choice local legendary talent formerly on 99.7/KYYS available that might just fit in fine with the new approach....just a thought.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

38° - clear at 12:53pm

Happy Sunday. Next week the routine returns to normal. Whatever normal is.

Wireless router troubles this morning. Signal kept disappearing. The hammer was a passing thought. This happens once or twice a week and requires powering the router off and on a few times before it gets stable. A replacement on my wish list; perhaps one with built-in DSL modem.

Friday I wrote about Consultant Jay Mitchell and his new blog. Jay's blog has in fact turned me on to another great blog: Greg Cavanaugh's Triple A Tunes.

In his latest post - Greg writes about Bob Seger - and Tom Petty - and how Classic Rock Radio largely ignored their recent releases. Well...some did/some didn't.

Check out Greg's blog here.

This blog: due for a facelift (new imaging!). Have been looking for a new template to freshen things up but nothing has caught my eye.

Listening this morning - between wireless outages - to WDRV's Bob Stroud (as usual); this morning highlighting the year 1973. Bob played Cheech & Chong's "Basketball Jones". Its been decades since I've heard that!

And yesterday I was sent an MP3 (dubbed from vinyl) of the late 70s Canadian prog rock band "FM" and their album "Black Noise". Something else I haven't heard for at least a few decades; and an album I played on the radio when it was new. Very tasty stuff!

More music: Randy Raley has been writing about his Top 100 albums of all-time; plus his "one-hit wonders" - reminding me of some great music long-forgotten. Scroll down on his blog here.

TV: Caught promos last night on The History Channel for a new special on the year 1968 - hosted by Tom Brokaw to debut on December 9th. I've marked my calendar. Read more here.

Back to radio tomorrow. Have a great Sunday.

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

58° - cloudy/windy at 10:11am

Summoned this week for my civic duty - but escaped the call to serve.

Last night: Storms and tornadoes hit much of Mid-Michigan with at least three different warnings affecting our town between 8pm and 1am. Tornadoes reported to have touched down doing damage just east of here.

More winners from the summer book: WGRF/Buffalo - programmed by the brilliant John Hager posts its best 12+ numbers in five books. 97 Rock - another station that is totally locked into both its market and listeners. Another one to admire.

And in Minneapolis/St. Paul - longtime 12+ leader KQRS does it again . I wrote about KQRS the morning of the bridge disaster in that market - during the summer book here.

Added: More 12 + numbers released Friday. In Milwaukee - WKLH up a half point. KCFX/Kansas City up just shy of a full point.

Added even later: Randy Raley emails to point out the performance of classic hits KCMO-FM/Kansas City. KCMO-FM is #2 12-plus in the summer book; its best performance in at least four books. My bad for overlooking!

Randy also with some kind words for KCMO-FM PD Don Daniels: "He is truly one of the last great guys left in the business and I couldn't be happier for him."

Verizon rocks. First AC/DC. Now Zeppelin. Fred Jacobs writes here and calls it "The marriage of classic rock and digital technology".

Admitting your mistakes. I give a lot of credit to Clear Channel/Chicago RVPP Darren Davis for saying this yesterday: "I obviously made a mistake in replacing MELISSA a year ago, and the ratings have suffered."

Darren referring to replacing morning drive talent Melissa Forman with syndicated Whoopie Goldberg on Chicago's WLIT. Davis now dumping Whoopie and returning Forman to the morning drive shift. There's much credibility and respect to be gained by admitting "you blew it" to your listeners. Kudos to Darren!

Great interview. KINK/KLTH Portland PD Dennis Constantine. Deep roots in progressive rock radio and one of the original KBCO/Boulder staff.

See FMQB here.

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.