Sunday Afternoon Odds & Sods

48° - mostly cloudy at 1:19pm

Happy weekend from Michigan.

Listening. This morning to Bruce Springsteen's first album as I'm ripping music to use on my soon-to-come internet station. I've forgotten what a great record 1973's "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." is.

My internet station - purely a hobby - remains nameless, but formatics are coming together in my head. Still determining whats practical for a one-man band. Still 2-4 months away from debut.

PPM Lessons. In this week's FMQB, Arbitron's Gary Marince talks about branding, focus, call letters, music and more. A great read here. Quoting Gary:

"It’s all about anticipating what the brand promises and delivers. Bottom line, listeners will tune to your station at their convenience. If they tune to the station in the middle of a four spot break, and they know through experience that they’re very close to hearing their favorite song, they will stay with the station through the commercial break. So it’s not the minute-by-minute analysis and programming that made the audience hang through the commercials, it is the brand and the expectations people have for the brand."

April Fools Day. Before you plan anything for Tuesday, read this from Radio-Info's Dana Hall.

No Repeat April. Heard from friend Roger King on Thursday. Roger is production director (or some title like that) at Clear Channel's KRFX/Denver.

Roger was in the midst of putting together imaging for a "no repeat April" - with the station promising not to repeat any song 10a-7pm weekdays for the entire month of April.

I asked if that meant lots of "deep cuts". The reply: "deep and wide, baby!".

Spring book begins Thursday. But you knew that.

DJ Update. Rick Kaempfer (pictured) catches up with Bob Skafish for an update on his (almost) new job as afternoon driver on Chicago's WDRV (97.1 The Drive). Plus updates from Scott Childers and Wendy Snyder.

Read the Chicago Radio Spotlight here.

Spring cleaning this weekend at the Kelley home. Time to get back to it.

Monday Monday

Heat Wave. Winter has left Mid-Michigan - at least for a day or two. Today's high 61 - almost 70 about 25 miles south of here.

Coming home tonight: my 12-year old filled me in on new cool gadgets at the CES in Las Vegas - watching coverage on G4 TV.

Catching up on blogs from our industry leaders:

Station Review: Dave Lange writes this morning about keeping your station fresh.

As Dave points out - first of the year is a great time to take a look at everything. More here.

As you review everything - keep this in mind from Lee Abrams today:

"I’ll never forget when I was in Australia and a noted programmer asked “Why is it that all American radio stations give away prizes to the ‘9th caller’? It is some sort of regulation? I replied “Sheep”."

HD2 done right. We profiled WRIF/Detroit's "RIFF2" HD channel here back in August.

This morning RIFF2 Program Director Mark Pennington blogged about putting it all together - and lessons learned. A great read via jacoBLOG here.

PPM: Look Before You Leap. A great piece from Arbitron's Gary Marince. Gary shares:

"Case-in-Point #1: I routinely hear “cut way back on station IDs and calls.” Whoa! The rationale looks good on paper but falls short in practice. Certainly the PPM device will know which stations are being heard by which listeners. But the assumption people are already listening to my station, therefore I don’t need to clutter my air with calls and frequency mentions, might be compromising a wonderful marketing opportunity."

Very good. Read Gary's complete piece in FMQB here.

A name from my past: Broker Bob Heymann. Bob one of those responsible for me being in the biz; Highland Park, IL. about 38 years ago. Wow.

Bob home from college then - doing summer fill-in air work; yours truly just entering high school spending almost all my free time at a radio station. Bob Heymann in the news today as he opens a Chicago office for Media Services Group.

Calling it a night. Day started this morning shortly before 4; woke up during the nightt with my mind racing with ideas. A great feeling.

The Weekend Classic Rock FM

70° - sunny at 10am
Left: old bridge just up the road here

Welcome to the weekend. A busy one for our family - shopping for the kids - clothes, school supplies.

School resumes here on Tuesday.

PPM. Arbitron's Gary Marince writes in this week's FMQB: "WARNING: While learning about programming through PPM, resist the temptation to form hasty conclusions."

Gary continues with some observations on the PPM increases by male-dominated formats - especially rock:

"If you think about it . . . the majority of the workforce is male dominated. And someone who works is more likely to be out-and-about either working or coming to-and-from work. Often, the unemployed, which includes everyone not working, spends more time with TV than radio. More simply stated, there is a greater likelihood that an employed male is using radio – they have more listening occasions with radio."

There's lot more here - read Gary's complete piece here.

Meanwhile - Mark Ramsey "Seduces PPM" with a presentation at this year's NAB Radio Show.

Mark writes: "We looked at several months of PPM ratings across both Houston and Philadelphia with specific attention focused on what stations did from a marketing and programming standpoint, whether or not it worked, and how it worked."

More on the presentation here.

Big wow in Albuquerque. Its only a trend - but classic rock KIOT jumps from 12 to 6 in rank 12+. Congrats.

This blog is pretty low key on criticism - but KIOT really needs to fix their web presence. There's no (apparent) strategy. Someone doesn't get it - big time.

Say goodbye to KIOL/Houston. Radio-Info's Tom Taylor reports that the station will trade classic rock this morning for Jack. This move likely to benefit classic rock KKRW.

Enjoy the last weekend of summer.