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.

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.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

Good Morning - Happy Mother's Day!

Billboards. I mentioned here ten days ago about the Bob & Tom controversy in Boise. Since then a few other billboards have raised eyebrows in their respective markets. In Cincinnati, WLW has attracted attention with its "The Big Juan" campaign. More here. Not all positive, btw.

And in Baltimore - a defaced Rush Limbaugh board has one city official there under fire for praising the action.

Mark Ramsey writes here that "If defacing outdoor achieves this level of publicity then I'm speaking for everyone in the radio industry when I say: We should have tagged our outdoor long ago."

I know of one station who has done that to their own board in the past - and yes, it works.

Meanwhile: An idea for a new way to promote your station at the gas pump here from Fred Jacobs.

A Classic Rock Radio Critic. And his visit to New York's WAXQ to chat with PD Bob Buchmann. This piece three years old - but still an interesting read. Here.

Tom O'Toole. This past week, I received Tom's latest VO and imaging demo. Tom has some great produced promos and sweepers his CD. Get a copy for yourself by sending an email to Tom here.

btw: Tom's one of the original 1977 WLUP talents I've mentioned here in the past.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

Left: Down my street. 11am Sunday.

Green. Wore an old green sweatshirt yesterday for St. Patrick's Day; and also for Michigan State's appearance in the NCAA. (They lost last night to North Carolina 81-67).

Back to our show - already in progress:

Nuts & Bolts: $20,000 a month to promote your morning show. Its yours right now. Read why and how to use it best with this from Rich Van Slyke.

Superfans. Get them to listen longer and write it down! Jaye Albright writes about what two country stations are doing here. Could this be adapted for classic rock?

WLUP 30th Anniversary Part 3: Exchanged email Friday with Tom O'Toole - one of the original Loop air talents. Here's Tom writing about the early days: "We did have a fun time in those early Loop days--just a bunch of crazy ass punk kids having fun on the radio!" More WLUP here.

Roadmap. Check out this story of an alternative station in Salt Lake City. Many of the strategies related to its success can be applied to any classic rock station.

Be sure to note "A Surprise In Every Daypart"; "Location, Location, Location" (especially when it talks about imaging); and "Good Casting". Thanks to Dave Beasing of Jacobs for sharing.

Related. I've been fortunate throughout my radio career to have a lot of great influences and mentors. Here's one: Jack Evans.

When he was in Denver with Jacor in the early 90s, Jack taught me that the real power of a radio station was between the records. You heard it on his KRFX (The Fox) - and emphasized its importance as my consultant.

Added 10/07: An update on Jack Evans here.

Since then - when I drive into a market, I punch around the dial to see who "gets it" or not. I hear a lot of radio stations with perfect music rotations and good air talent - but miss it when it comes to integrating the local market into its content and imaging. Do I hear the vibe? Who would I rather compete with? Do I hear opportunities?

Did I mention that I'm not a big fan of most national "show prep" services? As a PD, I've come close to doing away with them more than a few times. In fairness, they're good in small doses - but give me local market content first.

Have a great Sunday!

WLUP/Chicago: 30 Years of Rock

Chicago's WLUP signed on 30 years ago in March 1977. The station now celebrating their 30th Anniversary with just a ton of memorabilia available on their website - old logos, old promotions, tv spots and more.

At the beginning of 1977, Programmer Jay Blackburn was hired by the Chess family (of the legendary Chess Records) to turn around then-jazz WSDM. His solution was a female-friendly AOR format.

In a email just today - Jay said it took 3 months to rebuild the facility or as he puts it "that old tube station" (under a very tight budget as I recall from a conversation with Jay years ago); and after the rebuild "it took us 7 months to become the number 1 AOR in the market", eventually running ABC (94.7) and NBC (101.1) out of the format in Chicago.

Jay hired some air talents from smaller markets who have since become legends in the business: Bill Evans, Patti Haze, Dave Logan, Les Tracy and Tom O'Toole. Yours truly was a fan of the station while I was doing radio in the suburbs.

The station was then sold to Heftel - who brought in Lee Abrams - and took it to yet another level - the rest is history. 30 years worth. Here. The history of this station is an education for any classic rock program director.

To the left: the original 1977 WLUP logo. Jay admits that by the time Heftel and Abrams came in, it was due for change.