Back On The Job

33° - clear at 10:10pm

It's been a long week. Not yet caught up on rest. And the blog!

A couple of highlights from the Great Lakes Broadcast Conference and Expo held in Grand Rapids on Monday and Tuesday: One was a session on station websites "60 in 60: 60 Web Ideas In 60 Minutes", hosted by Fred Jacobs and Tim Davis of Jacobs Media along with Chris Brunt of Greater Media's Detroit cluster.

My only regret was not being able to see the entire presentation with my conference responsibilities. But there were plenty in the almost-packed room feverishly taking notes. Thanks to Fred, Tim and Chris for making the trip from the Motor City - and congrats on a great hour of website ideas.

The other highlight was the Tuesday Night Broadcast Excellence Awards. It served as a reminder of the many great stations still doing all things local and doing them well. In both large, medium and small markets in the State of Michigan.

Lee Abrams teamed up with Randy Michaels. During the Michigan conference I had a rare chance to check my email and there it was in a R&R news bulletin.

All I could think is "wow". Lee - on his blog (here) writes about Randy:

"He’s possibly the smartest guy I’ve ever met He MIGHT be crazier than me…at least I won’t have to fear being too out there. We ARE going to re-write the future of media. He’s the kinda guy you want to do it with."

First Randy and now Lee. Tribune is one to watch in the coming year.

Congrats: To WKLH's Steve Palec. The longtime host of the station's Sunday Morning "Rock 'N Roll Roots" program adds weeknights 7-9pm to his schedule with the "Legends of Rock". A very cool move.

And speaking of WKLH. I can't help but love this graphic around Bruce Springsteen's appearance Monday Night in Milwaukee. Monday is St. Patrick's Day!

More congrats: To the legendary Tom Kent - who's just launched The Tom Kent Radio Network. Listen for his programming to come to an oldies/classic hits station near you.

Somewhere in my collection I have a quick aircheck of Tom on WHBQ/Memphis in the early 70s. Very few could match the combination of talent and extreme high energy that Tom displayed night after night back then.

And oldies. Edison Media's Sean Ross takes a look at "The New Oldies". A good read here.

I'm still catching up on my reading.

Lee Abrams Unwrapped

+11° - mostly cloudy at 7:15am
Heavy snow warning for tonight!

Getting to know another side of Lee. Former network radio/tv news anchor Marty Davis interviews Lee Abrams on career, industry and life. Read here.

They both worked together at WRIF/Detroit circa 1971.

Thank you Marty for making contact and turning me on to your writing; yours a very cool blog indeed!

Wednesday Blogs

+9° - light snow/wind at 7:23am

Snow day for local schools here today. Last night's rain turned to ice covered by snow. This kids are happy - but its a mess for my commute downtown.

Thinkin' local again. Fred Jacobs sums it all up:

"As WiMax makes it way into cars, and AM/FM Radio is forced to compete against everything else on the Internet, our brands and local identity will be our lifeblood."

"Of course, that's assuming we still have viable brands, strong personalities, and a local presence left. Most broadcasters have worked their entire lives to build great radio stations, but in the past decade, many heritage call letters have eroded into mere shadows of their former selves. No longer do people define themselves by the radio station they listen to, hence the lack of bumper stickers on Camrys and Malibus."

"So, what's it going to be? Slash expenses, shut up, and save money. Or go against the tide of fear and panic, and rebuild great stations, grow and nurture personalities, build viable roots into the local community, and invest in radio's future."

Read Fred's complete piece "Crossroads" - here.

Lots of chatter in the blogosphere about the budget situation at Clear Channel.

Its an unfortunate situation that challenges market manager and programmers to continue to perform with even more limited resources. Time to get creative. Using the resources available to their fullest.

I'm certain we'll see some of radio's brightest and best continue to win in a less-than-ideal environment. The biggest task at hand: keeping staff motivated.

Reminder: As we posted late last night, Coleman Insights offering a free webinar today at 10am and 1pm eastern. "The DNA of PPM" looks to provide some great insights for programmers - both in PPM and diary markets.

Registration and login details here.

Added: Listened more than watched Jon Coleman's presentation this morning. Terrific insights! Complete presentation available after 5pm tonight on the Coleman Insights website.

Lee Abrams. Once again Lee offers some great insights in his weekly blog post:

"..if you are supposed to provide service, provide it-- or people will DIY." "Companies forget that in today’s environment, it’s easier and easier to DIY if you aren’t at the absolute top of your game."

(DIY: do it yourself - as in consumers using iPODS and other alternative media). Lee's complete post here.

Late Night Notes...

15° - overcast at 10pm

Surfin' the 'net before bed:

Kudos to Entercom. All Access reporting that the company has donated studio space in Austin to non-commercial KOOP - which lost its studios in a fire January 5th.

While KOOP rebuilds, they'll have studio space free-of-charge in the Austin Entercom complex for the next 3-4 months. That's not only generous - but a sign of class!

Radio Stories. John Gorman offers another peak inside his book The Buzzard: Inside The Glory Days of WMMS and Cleveland Rock Radio:

"Though WMMS had a long battle with rival M-105 from the mid-seventies through the early eighties, we never acknowledged our rivals on-the-air."

"But we did raid their promotional events."

"When M-105 secured a Cheap Trick concert co-sponsorship, we parked our van directly in front of the Allen Theater and our programming and promotion staff passed out free “WMMS welcomes Cheap Trick to Cleveland” T-shirts to those going to the show."

More here. I know some guys who should write a book devoted radio competition warfare and games.

Lee Abrams. Lee writes this week on hiring - and makes some terrific points:

"WE ARE NOT BRINGING IN A STAFF....WE ARE SIGNING UP A CAST."

"Natural voices. No Pukers...No forced "Big Voices"...we're all about reality not balls Format Passion. Livers of the format lifestyle. Not "Generalists".....but guys & gals who live and breathe your formats. Never: "Hey, I can do AC, Country,...passion what's that?...I'm a "radio guy". Test them! Play Fawlty Towers and Three Stooges to potential hires to check if a candidate "got it"...."

Lee's piece here.

Have a good night.

Monday Monday Late

27° - light snow at 11:45pm

Left: Mention Rock & Roll (below) and two names come to my mind. The Who....and Neil. Your mileage may vary. Consult your doctor. Void where prohibited.

Long day. Another one tomorrow.

Yesterday I wrote of the Gatorade spots on TV featuring music by The Who and Lou Reed. Tonight its Queen - one spot featuring "You're My Best Friend" - and another "I Want It All". Didn't pay close enough attention to note the advertisers.

Lee Abrams. Few write with the kind of passion Lee does. I still cherish my collection of Z-Rock programming memos that Lee allowed me to copy many years ago when he made a visit to a station I was programming.

This morning Lee blogged about information, technology and rock & roll:

Rock n Roll is a universal term. EVERYone knows what it means from 7 to 70…and pretty much everybody was touched by it. It’s plain un-American to not like Rock n Roll. In 1956 it meant teens, but now, it’s demographically universal. Hell, Obama’s song is by U2 and Huckabee is using Skynyrd! ROCK N ROLL is an attitude that resonates around the World---but it can be and IS being applied to non musical initiatives.

In its purest sense Rock n Roll arguably means: INNOVATION, ATTITUDE, SWAGGER, NEWNESS, BIG—MASS APPEAL, RE-INVENTION, CREATES FANS NOT USERS, POWERFUL, CHANGING, ARTFUL, REBELLIOUS INTELLIGENT…IN A MASS APPEAL WAY LADEN IN MONEY, INFLUENCE AND POWER

Lee's entire post - a great read - here.

Cool resource. Props to consultant Jaye Albright for bringing this to attention. Some great promotional ideas from Sammy Simpson. See photos and browse a great site here.

More here late tomorrow.

New Research Tool: PPM Minute-by-Minute

32° - overcast at 11:15pm

Friend or foe? R&R reporting this weekend of a new product in development by RCS/Media Monitors:

"...a revolutionary new Web-based product with the working name of Audience Response. By combining real-time airplay data from Media Monitors with corresponding minute-by-minute audience information from Arbitron’s Portable People Meter (PPM), programmers can view an electronic graph of their audience flow."

"Clicking on listening spikes or dips in the graph triggers playback of the audio that aired at that precise time, offering insights into how specific programming elements affect actual audience behavior".

In the R&R story - Dwight Douglas of the company compares such data to Wal-Mart's ability to "quickly analyze what’s selling and what’s not".

Read the entire R&R piece here.

Wow. I've always begged for all the research I could get my hands on. And a tool like the one described above is one just about any programmer (at one time or another) could only dream of having in his or her arsenal.

But - as Mr. T might say: I pity the fool who will program every minute of his radio station based on the galvanic skin response-like data available from this "electronic graph".

I can already picture in my head some over-zealous PD using this data in a minute-by-minute aircheck session with an air talent; or a like GM in a meeting with his PD. Yipes!

If it happens - be it at the station across town.

Mark Ramsey wrote here this past week:

"Forgive me for saying the obvious: Any programmer who "programs by instinct" without taking advantage of listener feedback is a fool. And any programmer who has no instinct and depends utterly on what the audience tells them is likewise a fool."

The meeting of art and science. There is a balance. But you knew that.

In his weekly blog post this week - Lee Abrams writes about the need for radio to evolve from "radio speak" back to "street speak". A great post here. In it - Lee makes this observation - very relevant to this conversation:

"In the 80s and 90s, most radio stations evolved from "Street Talk" to "Radio Speak"......The Most, The Best, Home of, The New, etc... It was part of the data revolution that just went too far! It helped create a very sterile sound."

Kind of scary, yes? Only we can prevent radio from becoming "sterile".

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.

Wednesday Blogs

32° - cloudy at 9:45pm

Good evening from Okemos.

From my blogosphere:

Great post: Mark Ramsey on being "Hyper-Local". Read the original post and follow-up comments here. Mark writes about being relevant in a local emergency - using the Southern California wildfires as an example.

My two cents: I couldn't agree more with Mark. In addition to his thoughts - its my thinking that those stations that focus on being local and relevant each and everyday that are the real winners.

I suppose there's a place for automated jukeboxes - but the real successful stations are the ones that truly connect to their local market.

Its a long-term investment - but marketed right the revenue usually follows - and increases the "sticky" factor of your product. Attributes that create a great offense.

I still hear many stations not taking advantage of one of their biggest assets: the world within its coverage area.

Then there's thee stations that really get it. You hear and feel the buzz of their market. And those stations are wonderful to listen to.

AFDI. A term coined by Lee Abrams. And a favorite of mine. In his latest blog post - Lee comes across some old emails from the early days of XM - a great read.

One of those emails concerns the topic of artist IDs:

"..Whenever you get artist ID's, make certain you get them to cut ID's for Christmas, Labor Day and other Holidays. Come Christmas, you will have dozens of custom ID's, and other stations will freak wondering "Where did they get those"!...it's the XM way of going the extra mile".

I'll bet we didn't AFDI this one too well. These are the "little details" that separate radio from AMAZING RADIO. So---It's your choice:

a) Show me I'm totally wrong and pull them out;
b) Suffer through endless pounding of this at future meetings;
c) Start plugging in the hundreds we DO have (special thanks to Mike) and remember to AFDI this at all future ID sessions. .....

The right answers are A or C. Again, it's those little details. The bottom line: Let's flood the appropriate formats with Artist XMas ID's that we have in house...we have a ton in Dalet.

More from Lee - including thoughts on great audio imagery, on PDs providing direction to talent and the product - here.

Passion. Once again - Lee Abrams:

“They don't make records like "Pinball Wizard" anymore. Literally. There was this acoustic guitar in one ear. And then, all of a sudden, twenty five seconds into it, an electric BLARED into the other."

Can't you just hear that song intro when you read that?

(Oh - the term "AFDI". In case you don't know what that means - find the term highlighted here)

Great blog: Edison Media Research's "The Infinite Dial". Lots of fresh observations about our industry - almost daily - from Sean Ross and Tom Webster. Make it part of your daily routine. Here.

And more WGRF/Buffalo. Have I ever mentioned that I think this station "gets it"? A great listener email went out this afternoon highlighting something very local to Buffalo that happened on-air in AM drive:

Breaking news for Bills fans - and giving those who didn't tune-in a chance to hear. Tomorrow would have been too late. Great stuff!

A Movement?

49° - overcast, cold & windy at 11:51am.

Did I mention that autumn hit Mid-Michigan? It's cold outside!

The past week has brought wise words from wise folks regarding the current state of our industry - much of it sharing a common theme:

Bill Figenshu: "The press has created stars out of financial operators. We have made company leaders personalities, who now believe they can operate radio from the budget line, not the content line. Senior executives with creative content ideas, on-air and online, will be the trend in 2008. Not bankers."

Lee Abrams: "Most broadcast groups are run by “operators”. They ‘operate’. Talented, but they could be successfully running anything, like a group of Wendy’s franchises..." "That’s how many radio operators are. Disattached from the creative product."


Dave Lange: "The key to our future lies in THE PRODUCT and we all see the need to get away from all the money concerns and the 20 year philosophy that sales and money solves all problems."


Fred Jacobs: "There are thousands of creative, smart people who are silently suffering inside radio stations, dying to re-prove their worth and value."



Mark Ramsey: "...it is time for our industry to step up, and that means our leaders need to step up. This is not about perception. This is not about radio's "image." This is about real, tangible action."


John Rook: "If radio is to reinvent its days of success, it must replant the seeds allowing program directors to take full responsibility of programming. It is they who should be interviewed and quoted about programming, not the company head. Until then radio will be without programmers."

Dave Martin (back in August) quoting author Gary Hamel: "I dream of companies that actually deserve the passion and creativity of the folks who work there, and naturally elicit the very best that people have to give."

Putting these quotes together inspired by Seth Godin and one of his many pieces on spreading ideas:

"The most important thing you can do is choose who you're hanging out with. The second high-leverage thing is to put dynamics in place that reinforce the ideas you'd like to see spread. Celebrate the heroes. Make it easy for those ideas to spread..."


Also as inspiration - Arlo Guthrie's classic 1967 recording of Alice's Restaurant Massacree:

"And can you, can you imagine fifty people a day, I said fifty people a day walking in - singin' a bar of Alice's Restaurant and walking out. And friends - they may think it's a movement."

There's no other business I'd rather be in. An absolute. That said - let's keep this movement going.

Monday Monday

60° - light drizzle at 9:50pm

Good evening. Late post; another busy one today.

I don't sound off too often - but someone please stop the madness I'm about to share...

While checking an email account last night (Sunday) - one I use for station listener and VIP email clubs - I noted an abudance of emails from the same station listener club.

Between Monday and Saturday this station sent me ten emails - each dealing with single topics; many over and over again.

Monday brought 3 emails (2 were duplicates about the morning show) - the other one was notice that ZZ Top was coming to town.

On Tuesday I had 2 emails from the station - one to tell me I could "Beat The Box Office" for ZZ Top tickets on Thursday.

Only one email Wednesday - reminding me again of the ZZ Top pre-sale on Thursday.

Thursday - 10:30am - an email to remind me that ZZ Top Pre-Sale has begun.

Later Thursday - 3:01pm - brought a second email. Subject line: "Did you buy your ZZ Top tickets?" Stop nagging me!

Friday and Saturday brought one email each day - two different topics - to finish out the week. At least ZZ Top was done. Nothing Sunday. Two emails from the station today (so far).

Stop doing this! You're risking your entire email marketing program to spam folders and blacklisting. Think moderation.

I'm just say'n. And I'll have some cheese with that wine - uh, whine.

Sunday while reminiscing about listening to a small Indiana station in 1971, I blogged: "When traveling back in that era one could hear and discover songs & artists on the radio that hadn't made it to my hometown Chicago stations."

Coincidently - Lee Abrams wrote this morning:

"Back then you could also listen to regional stations and hear new stuff that hadn’t broken Nationally yet. I remember hearing “Journey to the Center of the Mind” on CKLW and importing that…or local band Heart getting action on our client KISW and importing that around the country."

Lee on the old days - why the Sex Pistols suck - and more here.

And thanks - to legendary Midwest AOR Air Personality Randy Raley (KSHE/St. Louis; KYYS & KCFX/Kansas City - and others) for the kind email yesterday. Randy made my day - writing:

"Your blog makes me long for a chance to pop back in the game again and put in those 16 hour days like I used to do. Thank you for showing off the stations who still do it right, like WKLH and the great ones who know it's about the content and the connection not just the songs."

Randy mentions he's about to get something many of us only dream of: Saturday Nights on a 50kw AM blowtorch: KMOX/St. Louis.

"Route 66" with Randy Raley will begin Saturday, October 13th - in most of Mid-America on 1120/KMOX - streaming on the web everywhere. More info on Randy's great blog here.

Have a good night.