WGRF/Buffalo: Remembering Tim Russert

Buffalo's WGRF - connecting with its community - and the loss of a local hero.

Received this email late Friday from 97 Rock's Email club:

And this morning - another:

Connecting. Community. Kudos to PD John Hager and crew.

In The Motor City

75° - scattered clouds at 7:20am. Above: Detroit's skyline captured on webcam this morning. current image

Lack of posts: Found myself with another busy week between the day job, my free-lance work and kids. I need 30-hour days, not 24. But its all good.

In Detroit yesterday (suburban Sterling Heights, actually); had an opportunity to listen to Greater Media's WCSX over-the-air, instead of the 'net. Listening on a car radio in the market during afternoon drive a completely different experience than listening from afar via the internet.

Speaking of Detroit. Lee Arnold posted a bit of nostalgia on his blog earlier this week that I'll rip off and share here:

Dave Martin - who was Lee's boss at the time offers some more thoughts on Lee's event here.

More later today - and certainly over the weekend.

WCSX: Celebrating The Home Town Champs

63° - light rain at 7:38am

Good Morning from Mid-Michigan.

Red Wings Win! WCSX/Detroit offers up a great LOCAL piece on their website - celebrating the NHL Stanley Cup win by their local heros.

Another great example of relating to the local community. Check out the spread here.

Caught: Last night (by accident), CNBC's "The Business of Innovation" - and Mel Karmazin. Video clip here. Mel just one segment of a great hour; even IBM's commercials were wonderful (their spotlight on Harley-Davidson was classic). IBM Harley clip here (on right menu).

Mel's segment focused on the Sirius satellite effort to put video in cars.

While watching, I couldn't help recalling in my mind that Mel wanted nothing to do with one innovation: internet streaming during his days running CBS/Infinity. Props to Harve Alan for posting the video clip.

Dave Martin: A great post on management well worth your time this morning. Here.

Review: As noted here Sunday, our area here in the midwest suffered severe weather three nights in a row...Friday, Saturday and Sunday. I was in a casual conversation yesterday about the efforts of our local broadcasters with storm coverage. The television stations were staffed and generally got a A.

Radio - with one or two exceptions - not so good. While all passed on the EAS alerts to their audience, few did anything else as they were on auto-pilot - the voice-tracked on-air voices unable to relate. Total disconnect. Another missed opportunity at a time when the audience neded you the most; sending the message that "you can't count on us."

More later as the day permits.

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

84° - clear at 10:11am. Above: the skies here Friday around 7pm.

Back to the blog. Just not enough hours in the past few days. Lots of severe weather here the last two nights...thunderstorms and funnel clouds.

Aside from work - my wife and I had to deal with someone stealing my debit card information and purchasing $500 worth of software on my dime. Contacted the company and had the money returned to our account; and with the help of the company (also a victim) was easily able to trace the culprit back to a telephone purchase I had made in the past month. I then exchanged email with the CEO of that company about his "people problem" and had my bank cancel the card. All minor in nature vs. the horror stories of others.

Listening: My usual Sunday morning habits. WDRV now. WKLH later.

Making HD Radio work. Dave Martin introduces a new blog dedicated to the cause. Here.

As I've point out before in this blog - in a reply to comments posted by one of the angry anti-HD fanatics: "HD is here - its the job and obligation of broadcast industry professionals to make it work to the best of our abilities. Our employers expect nothing less." Let's get the dialogue going.

Kudos to Randy Michaels, Lee Abrams and Sean Compton. The new branding and programming changes on WGN America have been noted. In recent years, I've found little reason to watch. Channel surfing Friday Night brought me to WGN and WKRP reruns. Schweet!

Also caught promos for WGN America's new primetime lineup. All this early in the game. I can only imagine good things down the road. And was that Casey Kasem doing the voice work?

P.S. to Randy: consider the name Neal Sabin if you haven't already. A guy in Chicago television who "gets it". I don't know Neal, but I know his work. He's a brilliant tv guy who could probably be a great radio guy too.

Speaking of WKRP: Dave Lange notes:

"Perhaps WKRP could have been a winner if the team had been paying attention more to the audience than how much office space Les Nessman had or who Jennifer was dating this week. But that wouldn't have been funny. KRP is not real it's a sitcom."

Dave's post - with his point - here.

Alan Mason. I've really been enjoying Alan's observations in his blog, especially over the past month or so. His latest post starts with a quote from a Tim Manners: "When that authenticity is compromised, the brand enters decline."

Alan refers to his cell-phone provider's "fine print" that qualifies their coverage claims compares this to what radio has done with its listeners in recent years:

"It’s not that far off of the kind of thinking that says, everyone else is running 16-18 minutes an hour of commercials, so I can too. Everyone else is voice tracking, I can too. Forget that the people formerly known as listeners have plenty of options to choose from, or that it’s doubly difficult to connect and engage through voice tracking, everyone else is doing it so the radio consumer should understand. Wow!"

"Where did things go so wrong, that we try to fool and manipulate the consumer? No wonder people change cell providers all the time, and there’s no loyalty. No wonder listenership and TSL is slowly planing down, there’s no loyalty. Like cell service, we’re in danger of becoming a commodity, where the cheapest (fewest commercials) radio service will be in the lead. You can’t fool Mother Nature, and you can’t fool your radio consumers. It’s not 1965 any more, and you don’t have a monopoly in attention. There are too many choices out there, and if we continue to lower the quality of the content, we’ll soon hear our own “boop-boop” as the consumers tune way, not tune out, but tune away."

Alan's complete post here. Apologies to Alan, I've just printed about half his post!

Gas prices. Lee Arnold comments on the travesty of it all and writes:

"Everyone in your audience is being adversely affected by this. To ignore it is to be out of touch. If you're not being hurt by this because you make lots of money, pretend it's hurting you. You can not have this disconnect from your audience and still be credible."

Lee blogs here (and also offers up a great video example on branding from Harley posted too!).

Have a great Sunday.