Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

78° - overcast at 1:20pm

Good Afternoon from Michigan. A nice morning on the back deck.

Listening: This morning/early afternoon to Steve Palec on Milwaukee's WKLH. Lots of Santana this morning. And a tribute to Elvis Costello. Cool! Another great show Steve! Memo to 'KLH: Spend a few hours listening to your stream with a critical ear.

The new iPhone: Radio isn't AM and FM, towers and transmitters anymore. Its distributing content through multiple platforms. There's other ways of getting our content delivered besides FM tuners (or lack thereof). Opinion: The NAB needs a think tank on the subject and spend less time dealing with the "tuner" issue.

Lee Arnold. Lee had a great post a few days back - about listening to the radio, hearing a great track and waiting for the jock to ID it:

"The Jock came on, gave the call letters and went into a spot cluster. NO SONG IDENTIFICATION!!! I went ballistic. I started yelling and cursing at the radio. I pounded on the dashboard a couple times and got out of the car, SLAMMING the door."

Lee's full post here.

Progressive rock radio's past: News Blimps. Remember them? News pieces with topical music. Distributed by the Progressive Radio Network. Was chatting with a friend about these the other day...turns out he (and a friend of his - today a well-known industry consultant) actually produced a number of these during their college days - along with free-lancers from all over the country.

Meanwhile - I did a Google search and found some old News Blimps from California's Bobby Blue online here. Added: Found some more News Blimp audio from WORJ.COM here.

Brings back memories of the old Earth News and Zodiac News services. And (unrelated) the trade publication Walrus.

Added: J Blackburn writes this morning about "news blimps" that were rolled locally at WLUP/Chicago in 1977. Noting that the FCC had content requirements back then: "News had to roll all day, so we put music under it. With FM, it was so much easier. The content depended on the target and the culture. At The Loop we rolled news blimps and illustrated the stories with appropriate music."

Unscientific music research. Or maybe just observation. Cool bars with cool jukeboxes. What are people spending their coin to listen to?

Not long ago, I was in a local watering hole and noted the what was being played; heard some great tracks from Stevie Ray Vaughan, Zeppelin, Seger, John Mayall and others. Most of the coins were being dropped on tracks not heard on the radio.

Would it make sense to get a list of what tracks were being paid for and perhaps include a few of the top ones in a music test? Just thinking...

Redecorating. Consultant Harv Blain shares here.

Great interview: Rick Kaempfer interviews Chicago's Jim Smith. If you don't know his name, you'll know his stations. A must-read for any programmer or radio geek. Here.

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

Lansing webcam; current image
68° - sunny at 11am

Welcome to the weekend.

The Conclave. Sitting home in Michigan, I'm trying to soak up as much as I can from Minneapolis through the trades.

Via R&R - highlights of yesterday's Promotions Summit:

Promotions With No Budget: Maximize exposure at concerts; Expose the station logo during drive times; and partner with local charities.

E-Mail Marketing That Works: "Coupons and discount offers are considered spam" and "utilizing client/product integration, surrounding ads with station information, or adding a client to a strong regular feature."

More Conclave coverage at Radio & Records Online.

The Conclave has a PDF of the promotion session handout on their website. Good tools. Scroll down to find it here.

iPhone out today. Lots of talk and media coverage. Spots all over the cable networks this week to add to the street buzz.

A dream launch. Very impressive.

Ralph Cipolla of Jacobs Media offers his two cents this morning on whether the phone will be "an iPhenom...or iEdsel"? Here.

Meanwhile - Seth Godin has a piece on "The Verizon guy who turned down the iPhone". Read here.

And speaking of Seth: Jerry Del Colliano offers a follow-up to Mark Ramsey's interview with Seth Godin on the future of radio.

Jerry writes: "If you're searching for The Dip, look beyond your towers and transmitters. That's what I'm doing. This is a business I want to be in. Do you?" Jerry's entire post here.

Oldies Radio. Sean Ross writes here about "Oldies' New Lease on Life, Or Maybe An Extended Warranty". PPM changes attitudes. Read it here. Thanks to Dave Martin for the tip.

Have a great weekend. More Sunday.