And how was your 4th?

80 - partly cloudy at 12:45pm.
above: Oldsmobile Park/Lansing, MI last night

Welcome to Thursday. Had a terrific 4th watching our local Lansing Lugnuts beat the South Bend SilverHawks 4-3 before a season-high crowd of 10,119.

A great game - followed by two (!) simultaneous firework displays: one in the ballpark - plus the city celebration just outside the park. Overwhelming.

Walking into the stadium at 6:30, the Lugnut crew was handing out miniature American flags. Very nice.

Later though - my 11-year old pointed out the words "Made in China" on the bottom corner of the flags. Yipes! Regardless - still another great Lugnut experience as I've written about before.

From the blogosphere:

Fred Jacobs writes here about a great promotion pulled off recently by KYYS/Kansas City. A promotion that involved few dollars but generated tons of attention. A must read.

Building Brand Equity. Alan Mason here with thoughts about sending messages that aren't core to your brand.

Local bands on HD2. From the Post-Gazette comes this piece on WRRK/Pittsburgh. The station is devoting one of its HD channels to the music of local bands. Pittsburgh did bring us Donnie Iris - love his music!

I've long been an advocate of building relationships with the local music community. Nice! Thanks to Radio Daily News for the tip.

Ted Nugent on "The Summer of Love". In yesterday's Wall Street Journal, Ted Nugent writes: "Forty years ago, dirty, stinky hippies converged on San Francisco to turn on, tune in and drop out".

Read Ted's entire opinion piece here. It's Ted - love him or not.

An Idea From The Conclave

80° - partly sunny at 3pm

Are there any salespeople in your building today?

The Conclave. Listened this morning to a podcast from the sessions last week. Hear and download here.

Not a new idea - but a great one from the session "A Programmer's Guide To Strategy and Tactics":

Ask a fellow programmer in your group or someone you know (and respect) in a format similar to yours - to listen to your station and give you feedback about your on-air product. Get their thoughts on what you're doing right. Or wrong. A lot of programmers would be delighted you asked.

Easy to do if you're streaming. I've used some mentors of mine over the years and have had some very constructive feedback.

Hope your 4th of July programming kicks. We're taking tomorrow to do some projects and chores around the house (I've got a small patio project).

Going to top off the Fourth with night minor-league Lansing Lugnut baseball followed by fireworks at the ballpark. Hope the rain stays away!

More here Thursday.

Monday Monday

67° - sunny at 11am

Good Morning. It was a productive Sunday filled with yard work here in Okemos.

Hope your weekend went well.

Staffing up from the listener pool:

House Band Competition. WMGK/Philadelphia is searching for a house band - to play at station events for the next 12 months - plus receive new band equipment and a couple days in a recording studio. Details here.

Hottest New Employee. KGB/San Diego is looking for "one of San Diego's hottest bikini clad babes to hire on as the weekend entertainment anchor."

The hottest employee will be paid to do on-air reports - plus provide some eye-candy on KGB's website with video reports. More here.

Summer Movie Reporter. KLPX/Tucson is looking for a listener to be its movie reporter - albeit for only two weeks. Read here.

Later this week:

Wednesday (7/4) John Mellencamp on CBS-TV's Boston Pops Special
Thursday (7/5) Bon Jovi on ABC-TV's The View (repeat)
Friday (7/6) Elvis Costello on CBS-TV's David Letterman (repeat)

Radio Rumor: This blog isn't big on rumors, but....could Don Imus be returning? Will this be WFAN's fall book promotion? Read more from the New York Post here.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

71° - sunny at 10am

Welcome to July!

Listening this morning to Bob Stroud's Rock & Roll Roots on WDRV/Chicago. Celebrating the Summer of Love with a rewind to this week in 1967. Just head "Omaha" by Moby Grape. Very nice.

Also some quality time yesterday with Buffalo's WGRF. This station just sounds excellent. The station in the midst of a live tracks weekend.

Caught a bit of The Deep End with Nick Michaels - and the station's own "Psychedelic Saturday", hosted by WGRF midday personality J.P.

The Conclave. Today's the final day in Minneapolis.

R&R - reporting on Friday's Arbitron PPM session, notes that PPM data from Houston demonstrated how events drive listening spikes. A specific example cited was a George Strait ticket giveaway on CBS Radio's KILT. Listening levels "soared" each time the contest was conducted during the day.

KDWB/Minneapolis PD Rob Morris offered advice for up and coming PDs including becoming "listener advocates." Amen.

More Conclave coverage at Radio and Records.

Cara's Basement. Got an email late Friday from Chicago's Cara Carriveau telling me that her latest podcast is up - this time talking music (and Foreigner) with Mick Jones. Listen here.

Listening to Cara and Mick Jones triggers some great memories - including seeing Foreigner at Chicago's Uptown Theater back in 1977 - not long after that first album was all over radio. What a great time for AOR FM.