Engaging Listeners On The Web & On The Air

46° - clear at 8:44pm

Its been some time since this blog checked in with Buffalo's WGRF (97 Rock)...and what PD John Hager has been up to. John is a master at engaging listeners by combining the station's website and the station's on-air programming.

This time around listeners are voting for the best live album of all time - with results to be featured on a live album weekend:

Not only is 97 Rock giving listeners a chance to vote on what the station will feature for a live album weekend, but the station is inviting some lively debate on the voting:

Very cool....and just one example of how 97 Rock has been using its website to invite listeners to help program the station. Simply, it gives the listeners ownership in the product. And that translates into loyalty and TSL.

Its tactics like this that that really make me miss programming a radio station.

Want more examples? Click here.

Come Saturday Morning

37° - light rain at 11:34am

Very cool: Clear Channel's WAXQ/New York (Q104.3) has a great gallery of the "Top Ten Songs From Classic Rock." The feature includes album covers and 7-inch picture sleeves of songs between 1965 and 1987. Check out here.

Again, something any classic rock station can do; much of this stuff is on the internet already; more content to strengthen your heritage rock position, even if your station has only been in the format a few years. You might be able to enhance this with You Tube videos of the same songs!

Speaking of Q104.3: The station has the winners of its "Hottest Mom 2008" Contest. Lots of photos including "Behind The Scenes" video. Very sticky web content for a classic rock station. See here.

Likewise - one of my favorite CGM-savvy classic rock stations is WGRF/Buffalo - and PD John Hager has just posted a photo gallery of the winner and contestants on his station's website here.

John also takes the right path - explaining here a budget-related talent departure to station listeners.


Saying Goodbye to The Lake. Fellow blogger Jim Bartlett writes about the loss of the Madison classic rock station (WHLK) he was working at; wondering why it didn't work.

As only a casual listener of the station via the web, I could only offer some random thoughts in a prior email exchange that Jim shares on his piece here.

More tomorrow. My day includes a trip to Home Depot to price a replacement gas hot water heater before the little leak becomes a flood. The joys of home ownership....

Podell Goes Obama

50° - overcast at 1:44pm

No, beyond my wife and myself, I have no idea who anyone (including this guy) voted for on November 4th.

Clearing that up - below is a great example below of a lesson learned from the Presidential campaign from WCSX/Detroit PD Doug Podell. This past Tuesday the station announced (see blog post here) the departure of its longtime J.J. and Lynne, leaving many WCSX listeners to wonder "what's next"?

As our President-Elect did announcing a running mate (among other things...), Podell is inviting WCSX listeners to register now to know the next big announcement first via email and via text messaging:

And if you're keeping score - this is only the third post on 'CSX this week...LOL.

When It All Comes Together

33° - overcast at 7:17am

Kudos to Greater Media/Detroit's Marketing people again for more brilliance. Back in June, I mentioned here on this blog that the company's WCSX was hitting a home run with "Putting The Workforce Back To Work", with job listings and email updates for registered listeners looking for work.

The company is taking it a step farther with a "networking party" this Thursday night to bring participating employers and potential employees together. Also attending is a career counseling firm. See here.

Very cool. I have to believe that there's some NTR dollars involved here. Add the timely nature of the unemployment situation (especially here in Michigan - far above the national average), plus a web component and you've got a win/win for the station, employers and those listeners sitting on the beach right now. This scores points with everyone.

If you're a PD in a market with high unemployment - take this example into your next meeting with your GM, sales and promotion manager. Ideas like this are worth sharing.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

37° - overcast at 11:14am

Good Morning from Okemos.

After a week of continued great autumn weather with daytime highs in the 70s, colder weather finally traveled across Lake Michigan and yesterday colder temperatures and rain hit with predictions for snow. No white stuff here yet. Spoke too soon. White flakes are coming down as of 10:30am eastern time.

Recharging my batteries. Yesterday the day job hosted its 4th annual "Broadcast Career Builder Conference" (BCBC); a day filled with industry leaders talking to college and trade school students who want to enter broadcasting/electronic media. It was awesome to see/feel the enthusiasm for this business from those who want to enter, even after some of the sessions were quite blunt about downsizing, consolidation and the changing skill set needed in today's environment.

One of the highlights of the day was a session titled "Marketing Yourself for a Successful Career in Broadcasting", moderated by local WLNS-TV News Director Phil Hendrix that included a great presentation by Jay Kruz of Bonneville's WSWD/Cincinnati; plus participation by Midwest Communications (Kalamazoo) OM Brian Hayes and former XM air talent Sari Zalesin.

Jay Kruz - who at age 24 and a PD in market 29 was an inspiration for many attendees and wonderful to chat with aftewards. One word of advice from Mr. Kruz to his college audience was to Google yourself and clean up those Facebook pages, among others - if neccessary.

Related: Consultant Harve Alan talks about your online brand (you, not your station) here.

I also had a chance to chat with Rich Padgen from Detroit's Radio Disney station (WFDF). Want to dive head-deep into promotions? Work for a Radio Disney station. They're on the street all the time.

Props to MAB's Julie Sochay for organizing the event for a fourth year as well as to MAB President/CEO Karole White; and to Citadel/Saginaw Market Manager Chris Monk, this year's Committee Chairman of the Conference.

Listening this morning: My usual Sunday routine...WDRV/Chicago's Rock 'N Roll Roots followed by WKLH/Milwaukee's Rock 'N Roll Roots program.

Reading this morning: Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight shines on Mancow, who - aside form his long running syndicated morning show - just landed a prime gig on some legendary call letters. Read here.

Programming: Still getting caught up on posting reading recommendations from my blog hiatus. A series of great posts are from Country consultant Jaye Albright who writes about "Ingredients Of A Great Country Music Radio Station."

Let Jaye's comments serve as thought/discussion starters for your station no matter the format. Part one here. Part two here. Part three here.

Contribute To Revenue. One session yesterday at the above-mentioned BCBC was "Creating Job Security By Creating Broadcast Revenue". Couldn't spend much time in the room with other responsibilities - but as a related sidenote, Fred Jacobs writes in this week's FMQB about PDs contributing to sales in this day and age, offering some specific suggestions. A great read here.

Follow-up: On Tuesday, I pointed to a Seth Godin piece on "Marketing Lessons from the US Election" - and how those lessons relate to radio. Seth's piece also caught the attention of Mark Ramsey. Read here.

Fun Read: John Gorman continues to offer a glimpse into the glory days of WMMS/Cleveland through his Buzzard Blog - and offers a great piece on fighting the battle with the competition. Read here.

Speaking of: Gorman offers a ton of audio, video and related material on WMMS on his blog. As an example, John offers audio from a 1979 Pete Towshend interview here. An example of memorable and timeless material that should be archived and available on the station's website! Audio/Video/Photos...whatever.

Is there someone in your station responsible for archiving your treasured programming assets and making them available on your website? If not, there should be. In radio, too much of what goes over the air is never heard again. This material makes great long-term web content.

Aside from the web, there's got to be much material that can be recycled for use in imaging and special artist weekends. Watch VH-1 or MTV. They save everything and reuse just about all of it sooner or later.

Have a great Sunday.

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

41° - clear at 8:09am

Happy Friday!

Earlier this week I was made privy to Chicago's September PPM release. WDRV a solid #1 P25-54, in a 2-way tie for #3 P12+ (with WLS-FM) and #3 P18-49. All numbers M-Sun 6a-12mid. Congrats again to PD Patty Martin.

Around the dial:

Hot Moms 2008! Who doesn't like Hot Moms? New York's Q104.3 (which scored well in PPM too!) repeating their successful Hot Mom contest. Great web promo. Winner gets 5 grand. There's two age groups (under/over 35).

See the finalists so far plus a video message from the 2007 winner here. A great promotion that's right on target with the demo.

Meanwhile...WGRF/Buffalo is searching for Buffalo's sexiest Bills fan. A great promotion as 97 Rock is the flagship station of the team. See the contestants here.

The People's Hall of Fame. WNCX/Cleveland is putting together their own listener-voted rock Hall of Fame. A great website promotion that can engage listeners. See it here.

Very nice! WKLH/Milwaukee midday goddess Marilyn Mee wrapping up Storyteller Week. The stories behind the songs from the artists themselves. And you've been wondering what to do with all those old "In The Studio" disks in your file cabinet! Check out the audio here.

Last Band Standing. Clear Channel's KUFX/San Jose underway with their 5th annual Last Band Standing contest. Competition is between local classic rock cover bands. This can work in almost market large or small and costs almost nothing to pull off. Details here.

Have a great Friday.

Greater Media/Detroit Scores Again!

As we countdown to November 4th - the Greater Media cluster in Detroit has launched (going back a few months now) a great resource site for Michigan voters - Shut Up and Vote Michigan:

The site features voter registration links, a list of sites on where to vote, guest bloggers, videos from WRIF, WCSX and WMGC personalities encouraging listeners to vote, games, clips from SNL and lots more.

A great listener resource put together by the cluster's marketing unit. Kudos to Greater Media/Detroit Director of Interactive Marketing Jennifer Williams and everyone involved!

Wednesday Blogs

60° - light rain/mist at 10am. Left: view from the day job window - a mixed office/residential area on the northside of downtown Lansing.

Good Morning from Michigan. Clouds/fog/rain - but quite warm this morning. A nice rainy fall day.

Around my blogosphere:

Listener Engagement. We've written about this many times over the last 20 months. This morning Fred Jacobs contributes more to the conversation this morning. With apologies to my friend for overquoting:

"A radio station social networking initiative is about engagement. It is about providing listeners with the chance to discuss, dig deeper, and get even more emotional about your people and your programming. Until now, the audience has been forced to remain passive, with the exception of showing up at station events. With social networking, they can get in the game, participate, and become more loyal and knowledgeable about a station and its brand."

"It's just a matter of providing them with the means to connect with one another. We see this at focus groups and Listener Advisory Board groups. Ten strangers come together to talk about your station, and end up in the parking lot, arguing and sharing their views about music, bands, and yes, your station. Many other consumer brands would kill to have the type of emotional connection that many stations have with their customers."

Would kill indeed! Very cool stuff! Fred's post here.

Telling It Like It Is. Mark Ramsey sums up the current PPM controversy/litigation in a few words:

"This is a case of the interests of the radio industry and its advertisers being hijacked by a small number of selfish parties who don't like PPM because PPM doesn't like them as much as diaries do. Pure and simple."

Mark's complete post here.

Webcasting: Monday's Edison Media-sponsored Streaming/Music Royalties was fantastic (although the audio quality a little less than ideal). If you missed, its archived here.

During the webcast - Attorney David Oxenford had some great contributions to the webcast and offered some great real world ideas for radio, especially the smaller markets to expand their reach and consumer convenience.

David mentioned making your newscasts available for listening anytime on the web...and stations that do local sports offering 3 or 4 area games through web streaming; since you can only do one on the air (of course, HD could change that!). High School sports typically means $ for small market radio.

It was time well-spent and kudos to Edison Media's Tom Webster for putting it all together.

Scratch. Pop. Click. Vinyl on the air. Randy Raley's doing it once a week...tracking an album on his classic rock station in Normal, Illinois. Very cool. Read about the adventure here.

Have a great Wednesday!

Local Hero

67° - drizzle at 7:09am

Good Morning from Michigan.

This is simply a great promotion - from WPYX in Albany. Has localism, heart, community and listener participation. And can be done with any similar jobs in your community.

With the anniversary of 9/11 coming up, this is very timely. But it really can be done anytime of the year.

Check out WPYX's web execution here.

A great job WPYX!

Brainstorm Session

65° - mostly clear at 11:00am

Driving into downtown Lansing this morning, I was tuned to NPR's Morning Edition. On the air was Reporter David Greene with one installment of a series titled "Take Me To Your Leader"; interviewing andspeaking with leaders (who are not neccessarily politicians).

In this morning's installment, he spoke to a small town fire chief and the challenges of his job. Listen here.

It was great storytelling and terrific radio. What came to mind as I was listening was how a classic rock station could do something similar. And not with just "leaders", but with everyday listeners.

I feel there's lots of interesting stories you can share listener-to-listener...be it about their job, hobbies and activities - including sports and volunteer work...even great concerts they've attended.

Of course the common denominator is that they listen to your radio station!

Thought for use: 60 to 90sec stopset fill for your internet feeds. Beats the crap out of Smokey Bear or another McGruff PSA. Make them available as podcasts/downloads on your website. Plug them on the air using the names of the listeners. Make your listener "stars". Everybody has their 15-minutes...why not with your station?

All a great way to bond and make them love you for life. The kind of word-of-mouth that no ad budget can buy. Some stations have been doing this visually on their websites (example above right and here) for some time now - and thats wonderful too. Perhaps these audio pieces could tie in with a like campaign.

Thought for production: Edit the bits well so they don't get too slow. Background music is likely appropriate; but watch licensing issues if you'll be podcasting.

Thought for recruitment: Don't make this a "sign up" feature on your website. Its not a contest.

Interviews could be part of a Listener Advisory Board meeting; or you could do what has been suggested on this blog before and have your airstaff call listeners in your database to thank them for listening; perhaps do a little informal perceptual research on their feelings about the station; and then probe them a little for what they do for work, their off-time hobbies and interests and the so forth.

With this "screening" process, you then can suggest that you'd like to talk further with either an invitation to the station or go out in the field with a recorder. Sometimes natural sound in the background can add lots. Bring some swag to show thanks.

You and your staff you could take this, refine, improve and take to the next level.

Radio needs more storytellers. Why not have some of those stories come from your listeners and make them part of the product? Think "ownership".

I'm reminded of something Dave Martin contributed to this blog a month of so ago. In a comment on this blog, Dave shared a "trade secret" he gives his TV clients:

"One of our best practices is called "Names make news." We are in the hunt for local folks doing things right,locals celebrating (new job, promotion on the job, anniversary, wedding, birth, achievements by their children), locals coming together for good (church bake sale to benefit a family, charity auctions)."

"When people get together they talk about PEOPLE. Our clients are never challenged on this because the competition thinks it's goofy. It is goofy only to those in the business."

This idea certainly similar in nature.

Just a little brainstorming this morning....have a great Wednesday.

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

80° - light rain at 11:27am

Good Morning from downtown Lansing.

My 9-year old. For the past couple of weeks, he's been roaming around the house singing/humming "Carry On My Wayward Son"...courtesy of Guitar Hero.

Last weekend, I got him a CD of the Kansas album "Leftoverture"...perhaps he'll discover the rest of the album. My classic rock kid!

Even more PPM explained. Last week I passed along a link to Paragon Media Strategies - explaining the first ten of "20 More Things You Need to Know About PPM", as presented at the Morning Show Bootcamp.

Paragon's now posted narrative for another five of the twenty. Here.

Being an old album rock guy from the 70s - one caught my eye: "The art of the musical segue will be re-born in PPM. Keep ‘em listening, and don’t give ‘em reasons to tune out."

President of Radio. I've been following Fred Jacobs and his very clever and much needed session/discussion at upcoming Jacobs Media Summit. Fred has announced two more names for the panel; plus has published the entries for the 10th panelist (or "President"). Great stuff.

See the ideas here. Details on the session here.

Good Read: "Radio Law Is Meant To Be Broken (Strategically)". Edison Media's Sean Ross writes here.

Your station website. Earlier this week Broadcast Attorney David Oxenford posted a great piece on his Broadcast Law Blog regarding websites and localism. Copy and take to your next website strategy meeting. Here.

Bob & Tom TV. Randy Michaels and company brings some of radio's best to the tube via WGN America beginning in November. More here.

New AC/DC. Bob Leftsetz writes a great review here. Having read Bob's blog for several years now, I know his enthusiasm is genuine.

Have a great one.

Around The Dial...Around The Web

60° - fog at 7:57am

Good Morning from Mid-Michigan. Big time ground fog outside my window this morning. Beautiful!

Congrats in order: To Bonneville's Greg Solk, WDRV/Chicago PD Patty Martin and the entire Drive staff for pulling off the impossible. I can't share details - but let's just say WDRV/The Drive is a very special radio station. Wait for PPM to become currency!

Fun Stuff: WKLH/Milwaukee holding its own "Summer Games". Get these themes: "8 Minute Marathon" (songs longer than 8 minutes, including "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"); "Torch Light Ceremony" (songs about fire); "Boxing Competition" (songs about fighting); "Thrill Of Winning" (songs about winning); "Agony of Defeat" (songs about losing)...and more. Themes and set lists here.

Classic Rock. Classic Photos. Noted KGON/Portland and a page devoted to classic photos from the station's archives. What a great idea! Certainly there's a file folder of old photos stashed away somewhere in your station. Put 'em on the web! It can make your site just a little more sticky and help enhance your heritage image!

See KGON's "Time Trippin' With Gloria Johnson" gallery here.

Speaking of making your website "sticky": Buffalo's WGRF did it a few months back with their "Hottest Mom" contest. Now its the "97 Rock Bikini Photo Contest". Nice stuff! Local listener-generated content too! Look here.

WCSX and The Who help Detroit: Last Friday The Who announced that all their earnings from an upcoming October concert in the city will benefit two area charity organizations.

The band teamed up with Greater Media's WCSX in selecting the two organizations and the station inviting listeners to "Join Together With The Band to help these great local organizations while experienceing a night of amazing Rock ‘n Roll."

Kudos to OM/PD Doug Podell in pulling this off. An excellent way for a classic rock station to "give back" to the city. More here.

Have a great Thursday!

Wednesday Blogs

64° - overcast at 9:21am

Good Morning from Okemos.

More catching up....

National Vinyl Record Day. It was yesterday - a somewhat informal celebration organized by Madison's Jim Bartlett (who also does weekends on classic rock WHLK). Catch the action on his blog here.

Rick Kaempfer. Rick has posted a number of great radio pieces on his "Chicago Radio Spotlight" as of late. This includes an interview with the legendary Clark Weber; WXRT's Lin Brehmer; WIMS/Michigan City owner Ric Federighi; and actor/personality KC Lupp. Good stuff. Start scrolling back here.

Bob Buchmann. Yesterday All Access quoted a New York Daily News article on the now-former WAXQ/New York PD. He applied for the Q104.3 job ten years ago after the then-manager of WNEW-FM declared that "rock radio could no longer work in New York". And on philosophy:

"We always took the long view," said BUCHMANN, "You can get a quick bounce by a TV ad campaign, but that's not the way we wanted to do it. If you build one listener at a time, they'll stay with you."

Good words. Brands are not built overnight. The Daily News piece is here. Another great read.

New York's Rock & Roll Tour. Had an email back on Monday from Jonathan Paisner with a company called City Listen. The company is offering an audio "guided Rock & Roll Tour of Manhattan":

"Walk in the footsteps of Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Bruce Springsteen and many more. New York City DJ Ken Dashow (WAXQ) takes you on a fascinating tour throughout the East and West Villages in Manhattan to some of the most legendary locales captured on vinyl."

Very cool. Website here. Reading that starts the brain thinking about what a station in a city with great rock heritage could do on air and on the web. Brainstorm with your staff if your city fits the mold.

Congrats. To Clear Channel programmer Tony Coles on his promotion to oversee the company's Chicago cluster. A great guy who will make great things happen.

Home today with a bug of some sort. More later.