The Weekend Classic Rock FM

35° - mostly cloudy at 10:24am

Welcome to the weekend.

Listening: This morning to the new KYYS/The Boulevard from Kansas City.

After expecting a laid back approach to imaging - like WDRV/The Drive in Chicago or KFOG/San Francisco - I was somewhat surprised by what I heard. Far more upbeat and in your face - similar to a Hot AC.

The Boulevard uses the positioner "quality rock from the artists that matter". Here's a 6 song set heard this morning:

• Rock The Casbah/The Clash
• You Make Loving Fun/Fleetwood Mac
• Clocks/Coldplay
• Reeling In The Years/Steely Dan
• Sympathy For The Devil/Rolling Stones
• Head Over Heels/Tears For Fears
  

Listen live here. Heard later: "The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway" - from Genesis; "Baba O'Riley" from The Who. Its still very much classic rock.

If I were to place labels on the format: Classic Hits or even Rock AC would apply. Its simply a female-friendly Classic Rock station.

KYYS didn't change format - it simply came up with a fresh approach to what they had been doing.

KYYS/The Boulevard sounding very similar to the 1977 debut of WLUP/Chicago - which became the third AOR station in that city against ABC's WDAI and NBC's WKQX. WLUP using a female-friendly approach. And this is certainly remains a viable alternative to a crosstown male-focused classic rocker.

More over the weekend.

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

67° - heavy rainfall at 11am

Happy Friday.

Bliss. I feel like I've been in a time-warp all week! Over the last several days, I've been enjoying reading David Martin's discussion about the ABC FM rock stations of the 70s as well as the AOR programmers from that era. Scroll back on his blog here.

There has to be hundreds of untold stories from this time that need to be written and preserved - and shared with today's programmers - especially those doing classic rock.

Right: KSAN does Beatles A to Z back in the day. That feature now a staple on many of today's classic rock stations.

I'm looking forward to Tom Teuber's contributions to the conversation on Dave's blog.

PPM and P1s. Lee Arnold writes here this morning about new PPM research - and P1 listeners. Another great read on how PPM will affect our future. Added: Morning Mouth Publisher Don Anthony offers PPM tips in this week's FMQB here.

Steve Loomstein. Who? Its Steve Loomstein day in St. Louis and the second annual launch of "Steve 96" radio. Ralph Cipolla of Jacobs Media explains what this is all about here. Its just great radio.

Have a great weekend. More here Sunday Morning.

Wednesday Blogs

Overcast/85° at 1:15pm

Good afternoon.

Post-Memorial Observation: I use Google Analytics on this blog to see what part of the country (and world) my visitors come from - and whether they come to the blog directly or through a search engine such as Google or Yahoo - and what search terms (or keywords) on those sites brought them here.

In the past several days - I've had a plethora of visits via the search engines looking for various station Memorial Day Top 500 lists. If you did a countdown and don't have the list up on your website, get it up! And its a great indicator of the power of this classic rock staple!

From my blogosphere:

Strategy without tactics. And visa-versa. A great read here from Alan Mason.

Speaking of strategies. Lee Abrams writes here about how some companies handle programming changes. Its about eight paragraphs down in the post.

You've got to be familiar with Lee's previous writings to truly appreciate his POV.

Time to reboot the bad radio. Dave Martin writes about leadership and attitude. Here. In the same post, Dave remembers Bill Todd - someone I spent a lot of my youth listening to on Chicago's WDAI.

HD Radio. Sony jumps aboard HD. Mark Ramsey offers some thoughts here.

Meanwhile Gizmodo reports that Samsung is developing low cost HD radio chips for receivers which will hopefully bring the cost of radios down significantly. Read here.

Perhaps this will be the incentive for stations to invest more in their HD2 programming.

Speaking of HD. Jacobs Media released the good news and bad news for HD radio as part of their "Tech Survey III". See the results here.

Have a great Wednesday.

Live tracks & a rewind weekend

Partly Cloudy/61° at 8:20am

Good Morning.

I wrote yesterday that I did some listening while on the road over the weekend. Caught WDRV/Chicago's "Live Drive" Weekend. Pink Floyd's live version of "Run Like Hell" was the right song at the right time on I-80!

Doing "live track" weekends in the past, its been nice to throw in some surprises. I've got a collection of radio concert broadcasts and pulled individual tracks from it the past (promoted on-air as "live bootlegs"); including gems such as The Police performing "Message In A Bottle" live for the first time.

Add the proper staging and it makes a great classic rock radio experience.

Also listened a bit to the WLS/Chicago "Big 89 Rewind" special; a Top 500 Countdown on WRKR/Kalamazoo - and A to Z on WRCC/Battle Creek.

The WLS/Chicago "Big 89 Rewind" - which was a one-day revisit to its Top 40 past complete with much of its legendary air talent (though missing a few names as Dave Martin pointed out last week) - got me thinking how classic rock radio could pull off something similar.

Imagine bringing together a market's legendary AOR talent together to revisit the past - complete with old airchecks of stations that have come and gone.

In my head I hear the veteran air talent sharing stories of meeting the bands that now make up classic rock; great concerts that took place in the market - and perhaps remembering some great promotions. Disco demolition is one that comes to mind.

Apologies if you're from outside the Windy City - but having grown up there - I could imagine a station bringing together talent from the early days of WXRT, likewise with WLUP; perhaps the Bob Pittman AOR era of WKQX - the long-defunct WDAI, WGLD and WMET.

Perhaps add talent from the soft AOR days of WBBM-FM - or even Saul Smaizys - who had the long running "Triad" prog rock show on brokered WXFM (along with Triad Magazine).

There's so many names that come to mind between all the stations; maybe more than practical - but more than enough to make it work.

If your market has a cool AOR history - what could you do? And when its all over - what could you recycle for future use - either on-air or on your website - to enhance your image as the classic rock station in your market? All just a thought.

Later this week:

Wednesday (5/30) Ozzy Osbourne on ABC-TV's Jimmy Kimmel
Friday (6/1) Lindsey Buckingham on NBC-TV's Conan O'Brien