Around The Dial...Around The Web

60° - fog at 7:57am

Good Morning from Mid-Michigan. Big time ground fog outside my window this morning. Beautiful!

Congrats in order: To Bonneville's Greg Solk, WDRV/Chicago PD Patty Martin and the entire Drive staff for pulling off the impossible. I can't share details - but let's just say WDRV/The Drive is a very special radio station. Wait for PPM to become currency!

Fun Stuff: WKLH/Milwaukee holding its own "Summer Games". Get these themes: "8 Minute Marathon" (songs longer than 8 minutes, including "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida"); "Torch Light Ceremony" (songs about fire); "Boxing Competition" (songs about fighting); "Thrill Of Winning" (songs about winning); "Agony of Defeat" (songs about losing)...and more. Themes and set lists here.

Classic Rock. Classic Photos. Noted KGON/Portland and a page devoted to classic photos from the station's archives. What a great idea! Certainly there's a file folder of old photos stashed away somewhere in your station. Put 'em on the web! It can make your site just a little more sticky and help enhance your heritage image!

See KGON's "Time Trippin' With Gloria Johnson" gallery here.

Speaking of making your website "sticky": Buffalo's WGRF did it a few months back with their "Hottest Mom" contest. Now its the "97 Rock Bikini Photo Contest". Nice stuff! Local listener-generated content too! Look here.

WCSX and The Who help Detroit: Last Friday The Who announced that all their earnings from an upcoming October concert in the city will benefit two area charity organizations.

The band teamed up with Greater Media's WCSX in selecting the two organizations and the station inviting listeners to "Join Together With The Band to help these great local organizations while experienceing a night of amazing Rock ‘n Roll."

Kudos to OM/PD Doug Podell in pulling this off. An excellent way for a classic rock station to "give back" to the city. More here.

Have a great Thursday!

Bonneville Debuts "The Sound" in Los Angeles

As I write this, I'm listening to the stream as the station plays a live version of Talking Heads' Psycho Killer. Very tasty.

Bonneville this morning (10am Pacific) launched a new AAA in Los Angeles on its newly-acquired station: "The Sound" - World Class Rock. The station on the frequency of the former KRBV (new calls pending). 100.3 was the one-time home of Scott Shannon's "Pirate Radio".

And it sounds fantastic. Listening: Just segued out of Talking Heads into a sweeper and then into Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London". Then into Springsteen's "Tunnel of Love".

All Access reported the first songs played were:

U2/Beautiful Day
LOS LONELY BOYS/Heaven
RILO KILEY/Silver Lining
ROLLING STONES/Gimme Shelter (live)
TALKING HEADS/Burning Down The House
LIFEHOUSE/Hanging By A Moment
SPOON/Don't You Evah
ELVIS COSTELLO/Every Day I Write The Book
THE DOORS/Love Me Two Times
KEANE/Somewhere Only We Know
POLICE/Driven To Tears

All Access has audio of the launch here.

Visit the website (hey, there's lots of job openings!) and listen live here. Kudos to Bonneville for giving AAA another try in LA!

World Class Rock from a World Class Company.

I'm somewhat sensing a voice on the station from sister WDRV/Chicago; (but I could be wrong....) Added later: I could be right. R&R reports that "The Sound" is currently being managed by Bonneville's VP of programming Greg Solk and executive VP Drew Horowitz - both based at WDRV.

Weird Al, CBS-FM, Letters & More

69° - sunny at 10:30am

Last Night: Took my kids to see "Weird Al" Yankovic - appearing at our local Common Ground Fest. Near capacity crowd.

While a little bit of Al goes a long way with me - it was a good show - pretty much kid friendly; and I found that both my boys knew the words to most of his parodies. I later shook my head and began questioning my parenting skills. (I'm kidding. Well sort of...)


WCBS-FM returns today. 1:01pm in New York City. Streaming here. Interesting to note the artists featured on the revamped webpage; can you say "classic hits"? This morning Jerry Del Colliano wrote about the station and "classic hits vs. oldies" here.

Added at 1:19pm: Just caught a great year-by-year montage leading up to the 1:01pm kickoff of the "new" WCBS-FM. Great presentation. "The Greatest Hits of the 60s, 70s & the 80s". First song: "Do It Again" - the 1968 Beach Boys classic. First 80s definite "classic hits" type song: "Glory Days" from Springsteen. Start-ups are always awesome...and perhaps even more with this "rebirth".

Forwards or backwards? WCSX/Detroit kicked off "A to Z" this week. And in Houston, KKRW is doing it it reverse: "Ziggy Stardust" to "A Day In The Life". Backwards makes it fresh - especially if you've done A to Z in recently.

Streaming. With no quick legislative relief in sight - and a report today in RAIN that the US Court of Appeals has denied a stay of the new CRB royalty rates - many webcasters are making decisions about their future.

New rates kick in this Sunday.

Meanwhile: can you afford not to stream? Especially when there's a Wi-Max future not far down the road. Read Mark Ramsey's blog here.

A cool week for email....

Tuesday I received a nice note from Greg Solk, VP of Programming for Bonneville - on my posts about his company's WDRV/Chicago. Thank you Greg!

And yesterday brought wonderful things in my Outlook inbox: First from Marilynn Mee of Milwaukee's WKLH - writing that my comments about her show yesterday "made her day".

Listening to the stream, Marilynn made my day mentioning this blog on her air at least twice!

Another email was from original 1977-1978 WLUP/Chicago air talent Les Tracy - who stumbled across these posts written about WLUP's beginnings a few months back.

I put him in touch with original Loop PD Jay Blackburn and talent Tom O'Toole. Les (or "Lester" as he often called himself on-air) was one of my favs on WLUP "back in the day". His note also mentioned seeing Lee Arnold's name here.

Les Tracy is also a veteran of west coast stations KGB, KPRI, KZAP, KOME, KSMJ - and perhaps a few more call letters in his on-air and programming career.