Celebrating Your Town's Concert History

70° - overcast at 6:45am

If you've read this blog for anytime now - WGRF/Buffalo is one of those stations I love to watch from afar.

PD John Hager has created a station that is all about its market and its listeners.

The station is getting ready for Labor Day Weekend with another great example of listener-generated content (both on-the-air and on-the-web) - plus taking the music it plays and making it "local":

The Top 20 Concerts at Rich Stadium: Vote now

The Buffalo Bills opened their inaugural season at Rich Stadium in 1973. The following summer, Buffalo concert promoter Festival East booked the first ever concert at Rich Stadium on July 6 starring Eric Clapton and The Band.

Over the next twentyfive years, especially in the 1970's and 80's, Rich Stadium hosted Classic Rock's biggest names for some of Western New York's most memorable concerts. The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, The Who, Bob Seger, Yes, Lynryd Skynrd, The Grateful Dead, Van Halen, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Fleetwood Mac, Guns 'N Roses, Elton John, The Eagles and many more played the concert stage at what was then known as Rich Stadium.

97 Rock was the radio station Buffalo concert fans counted on for live coverage and free tickets for these legendary shows. And now we want to know what you thought were the greatest Rich Stadium concerts.

On Labor Day, we are going to count down the top 20 Rich Stadium concerts according to your votes.

See the complete piece here.

Years ago I recall Randy Michaels talking about airing and/or creating "exclusive" - or "difficult to duplicate" content on radio stations. I'm not so certain that this feature falls into the "difficult to duplicate" category - but one thing I've learned in programming is that there are those programmers with the passion to make things like this happen. And its that passion that puts those programmers in a "difficult to duplicate" category among PDs.

Chances are your competition across town doesn't have the passion or drive to do this sort of thing. This creates a tremendous opportunity - take advantage of it!

Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

69° - clear/sunny at 9:40am

Good Morning from Okemos.

Listening. My usual Sunday Morning routine with Bob Stroud on Chicago's WDRV. Bob featuring music from the summer of 1968....and as I write has just played Eric Burdon & The Animal's 7-minute + epic "Sky Pilot" - followed by Clarence Carter's "Slip Away". Wonderful stuff.

Later logging into WKLH to catch Steve Palec's Rock 'N Roll Roots.

Rockin' The Workforce: Back on Thursday, Fred Jacobs wrote a great piece on marketing to those at the workplace - and radio's increasing importance.

Noting that American's are now spending 60% of their waking hours on the job - an all time high - radio is the ideal medium to reach those workers.

Read Fred's piece here. Share with your sales manager.

More PPM: This week's FMQB features Pollack Media Group's Pat Welch reviews what we know so far. Pat opens with:

"...programming tactics that are more PPM friendly should be done regardless of how soon your market is scheduled to make the conversion. Think of this as the world’s largest research project, and take advantage of the lessons learned from markets that have already made the conversion."

Pat's thoughts here. PPM market or not, learn from the research PPM is providing into listener habits.

"Monday is the new Thursday in PPM." #3 in a list presented last week at the Morning Show Bootcamp. See the list here. Jaye Albright points us to a simple promotion to hype Mondays from country KYGO/Denver. Here.

Launching A New Station. Consultant Harve Alan launched a radio station this week and shares the excitement in a piece here.

There's nothing like a start-up!

Seth Godin. Seth writes about the "experience": "A concert isn’t about the music, is it? And a restaurant isn’t about the food." Read here.

Think about "the experience" with your radio station; I do everytime I go to the ballpark.

In case you missed (I did). Last Sunday, Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight was on WLS/Chicago PM drive talent Bill Leff. Read here.

Have a great Sunday.

"20 MORE Things You Need To Know About PPM and Then Some"

Direct from a session today at Morning Show Boot Camp in Denver. Props to Paragon Media Strategies for sharing.

Download the PDF here.

Read comments from Paragon's John Stevens here.

After you review the PDF of the presentation Powerpoint, you might wish you were there; there's some things that need further narrative. We'll be watching the press for further explanation!

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

84° - partly sunny at 2:25pm

Good afternoon from Lansing. A stay-home weekend in our plans. Enough traveling for a little while. And its great to have the kids home from their time in Denver.

Surfing around the web during lunch today:

Your Website: McVay Media's Dave Lange blogs today about ways of making your website just a little more sticky. From Dave:

1. Podcasts - Some stations use them but I bet 90% of you have only 1 or no podcasts on your site.

2. You Tube clips - How much as your station or team posted from station events, guest shots on the morning show, or even just a tour of the station with some pranks from the staff.

3. Collections of morning show bits.

4. Replay the phone calls from your afternoon show.

5. How about a new rock pod cast every week that doesn't air on the transmitter but only on the web with comments on new artists and songs.

6. Maybe a place for local bands to showcase their videos and music complete with reviews and chats.

Dave doesn't mention - but msuci on podcasts might involve additional licensing - but still worth exploring. Dave's complete piece - a great read - here. And some of this material could also be used as stopset filler on your internet stream...lots better than another Ad Council PSA or a pesky P.I. ad.

Meanwhile: Mark Ramsey blogs about non-music content - and as part of his piece talks about value - plus something as simple as labeling:

"Is there a market for the entire podcast of your morning show from February 11, 2008 (for example)? Or is that morning's show so much like every other morning's show that the value of any one episode is diminished and not worth sharing or seeking out?"

"And how do you label such a show, anyway? I may want to find Howard Stern's interview with Pamela Anderson, but not "Howard Stern's show from February 11, 2008."

Good thoughts. Of course as Mark points out, the material has to be worth hearing again too! And someone has to be in charge of selecting the material and getting on the web in a timely manner. Read Mark's complete piece here.

More Alan Mason. Alan promised more the other day and delivers. Check out "There's No Instant Brand" here.

More over the weekend.