Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

41° and mostly clear at 11:50am.

This weekend: WBLM/Portland is doing a Beatles A to Z. Adding to the cool is a Beatles "almost A to Z" video collection on WBLM's website. Another idea worth stealing. Check it out here.

Thanksgiving. Finding out what classic rock stations are doing for Thanksgiving programming coming up this week.

In San Jose: KUFX is doing their Beatles A to Z (with selected solo works) - it kicks off Wednesday at noon. Thursday at noon the station will interrupt the A to Z for Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant".

KSLX/Phoenix is putting Arlo's Alice into heavy rotation on Thanksgiving Day...playing it at 8am, noon, 5pm and again at 8pm. The station also kicks off Classic Rock Z to A on Monday, November 26th.

In Buffalo - WGRF is playing Arlo's Alice twice on Thursday; then starting Friday Morning at 6, its 24 hours of nothing but Beatles! 97 Rock also airing the Led Zep syndicated Mothership special.

WKLH/Milwaukee is serving Arlo's Alice once on Thanksgiving Eve - and again Thanksgiving Morning; plus all day Thursday its "classic album sides".

WKLH also running two Led Zeppelin specials - The Mothership and Song Remains The Same.

More Thanksgiving specials to come.

Arguing Arbitron. A follow-up to what we wrote here. WSRT/Traverse City GM Charlie Ferguson comments on Arbitron's response over his complaints on the sampling and recruitment efforts in his market.

"Mr. Mocarsky's statement that 'the sampling rate is so high in Traverse City' is truly laughable. When three diaries were thrown out and the book reissued in Traverse City, WSRT/WSRJ went from a .6 rating in Persons 12+ to a .4 rating -- a drop of 33%! In our Female target demos, the ratings dropped over 21%."

"When ratings-driven revenue accounts for 40 to 45% of a stations total sales, the value of three little diaries in our size market is overwhelming. The remarkable honesty of the majority of media people is outweighed by Arbitron's obligation to provide reliable ratings data that both buyers and sellers can use with confidence."

Charlie's comments were published on All Access this past Friday. He also has an additional issue with Arbitron with the way averages can be calculated with ARB software by agency buyers. We'll see how this all plays out.

Radio Stories. Today Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight shines on WLS/Chicago afternoon personality Roe Conn.

Read here.

And - from the "video comes back to haunt department":

Another Hit for Chicago's WDRV - 97.1 The Drive

When Tuesday's mail arrived here at the Kelley home - it included a package for me from my brother Brian.

Inside was a copy of Bob Stroud's latest Rock 'N Roll Roots CD - Volume 9 - which has been for sale in Borders Book Stores in the Chicago area for a couple of weeks now.

Bob does middays on classic rock/classic hits WDRV/Chicago; and if you're a regular reader to this blog you might also know he produces and hosts a program airing Sunday Mornings called "Rock 'N Roll Roots".

The show focuses on the music that made an impact on the Chicago AM & FM dials in the 60s and 70s. The stuff I heard growing up in suburban Chicago.

The show is a labor of love for Stroud - something he started after joining Chicago's WMET in 1979. A history of Bob's journey up and down the dial is documented here.

The annual CD project features the music thats played each week on the show - a good chunk of it appearing for the first time on compact disc.

The album artwork is excellent too - acknowledging Chicago's musical heritage. Inside - the liner notes document the airplay each song received on the local airwaves back in the day. Very cool!

Bob explained the process to me in a recent email:

"Every April I solicit for suggestions from "The Stroud Crowd" for the upcoming Rock 'n Roll Roots CD release. At the end of the month, I tally up the votes and try to license the songs that received the most votes. Every year over 500 different titles are submitted!"

"We work with SRO in Minneapolis who do all the leg work of tracking down the songs and their publishers. Each year we press up 5,000 copies and retail them at Chicagoland Borders locations. When they're gone, they're gone. I've seen Volumes 1 through 3 goes as high as $75 on E-Bay! Previous Volumes are also for sale through sellers on Amazon."

"This year was the 1st year that we couldn't license a song that had never been on CD before. Volumes 1 through 8 all had songs that hadn't appeared on CD before, most were midwest hits from Chicago bands that were played frequently on WCFL and WLS."

For those outside the Chicago area: WCFL and WLS were the dominant Top 40 AM stations in the market in the 60s and 70s.

Since 2002, WDRV has donated at least $60,000 to charities from sales of the Rock & Roll Roots CDs - and each year its been a different charity:

"It has been a different charity every year while here at The Drive. We try to select one that has a music angle for obvious reasons."

"Children's Home + Aid offers music lessons, amongst many other academic offerings to children who come from needy families. They are also the charity that has been closely associated over time with this year's corporate sponser, Merlin's 200,000 Mile Shops."

Congrats to Bob and the staff at WDRV. The CD is not only a great charity project - but one that reinforces the passion for the station's music and its relationship with audience and the City of Chicago.

I've observed (from afar) others attempting to duplicate WDRV's format in other markets - even calling their station "The Drive". And most have failed - not understanding the attributes that have made WDRV a success.

And the first mistake imitators make is using the name "The Drive"; its a name that is uniquely Chicago and loses all significance almost everywhere else. There's only one "Drive".

Jeff Davis - on Radio Today & Yesterday

I saw this today; thought I'd share...click below:

Jeff Davis on Radio Today & Yesterday

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