Sunday Morning Odds & Sods

57° - sunny at 10:50am

Good Morning from Okemos.

Time just seems limited lately with much going on with the day job, including increased duties and responsibilities; sometimes the best intentions to post get sidetracked.

Today its car repair 101 (replacing a ignition switch in the family mini-van) as well as my youngest boy's first flag football game on the season.

Listening: This morning to WDRV's Bob Stroud (surprised?); later if time permits its Steve Palec on Milwaukee's WKLH.

HD Radio. By now you've probably read that there's a proposal to require HD Radio capabilities to satellite radio receivers. ARS Technica reports that the bill would require this of satellite radios that also recieve AM & FM broadcasts. Thinking deeper, this could simply mean that satellite radios could be built without AM/FM capabilities - and thus, no HD.

Of course, would Detroit do installs of (pay) satellite-only radios? I think/hope not. Certainly the requirement could be a shot in the arm for HD. Of course why not simply requiring HD in all radios? Yeah, I understand the Ibiquity royalty deal. Perhaps Ibiquity would have to rethink their license deals. FM didn't take off until it was required in most radios starting in 1974. Before that date, I'm sure their were lots of naysayers questioning whether FM was either neccessary or something the public wanted.

In the meantime - HD-2 and HD-3 channels will succeed with programming thats not neccessarily mainstream - just as FM itself was back through the mid-70s. That includes today's version of "underground radio" (think Detroit's Riff-2), classical music and foreign-language programming.

I pointed out on an engineering discussion list a few days ago that in the early 70s, Chicago had three class B FMs that devoted much, if not all their broadcast day to brokered ethnic programming. Much of this has since gone to weaker suburban AM signals or subcarriers requiring special receivers.

Welcome Jay Philpott. Received an email this past week from Jay who turns me on to his blog and a great piece with audio on Bruce Springsteen - who apparently will be playing at the forthcoming Super Bowl. Check out a piece of rare, wonderful audio from The Boss here.

Congrats: This past week to Detroit's Mark Pennington - who was promoted to PD of the legendary WRIF by OM Doug Podell. A well deserved promotion. Thats to Lee Arnold for the tip.

More Radio Career Stories. Rick Kaempfer's Chicago Radio Spotlight this week shines on KXNT/KSFN Las Vegas Program Director Jack Landreth. Read here.

Have a great Sunday.

Riff 2: Made In Detroit

75° - overcast at 11:52am

While doing some work this morning for the day job, I stumbled across this video via Google.

I feel its a great image piece that sends a strong connection to its target audience on at least a couple of levels:


Riff2 is a digital brand extension of WRIF...and I've mentioned some of their past efforts here.

Brilliant!

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.

HD2 & New Programming

83° - partly cloudy at 12noon

The week just flying by; a great morning as my two boys talked me into a bicycle ride to Starbucks. School here for them resumes right after Labor Day. Its been my first summer ever as a "stay home Dad".

I've written here before about active rocker WRIF/Detroit and their HD2 effort Riff2.

Station management and ownership deserve lots of credit for allocating the resources they have for this sidechannel. It appears to be a tremendous committment.

The programming boasts a full airstaff; and I recently found a revamped and totally cool website that just screams "community". Radio meets MySpace. Peruse the site - you might get some inspiration.

Listen to the stream too - its so much more than an automated jukebox; been listening most of the morning. A real jock - plus concert updates; sports updates. A real radio station. A local Detroit station.

Riff2 came to mind after reading Fred Jacobs' blog this morning:

"We have heard many stations and broadcasters say they will sink more into programming when there are more radios in the overall population."

"But the chicken-and-egg-of-it is that selling more radios isn't going to happen on faith. It is great content that will drive purchases. It is word-of-mouth that will convince people to try HD Radio. It is the ability to be able to walk into a store, hear HD Radio, and tune in cool and interesting programming that will move these units off the shelves."

Riff2 is a great example of developing a great sidechannel product; and adopting various forms of new media with their website.

Clear Channel has also been very active in development with their Format Lab. Inside Radio's Mike Kinosian profiles some of those efforts here.

HD - and radio in general - regardless of the delivery method needs more efforts like this. HD Radio's alleged "lack of interest" appears to more of an issue of awareness. This awareness really won't happen without an investment in programming.

Increased choices for consumers through technology like HD Radio. WiFi and WiMax open many opportunties for today's broadcasters; but those efforts have to expand beyond various flavors of iPod-type formats. Whats in it for you and me? I'm hoping for more job opportunities for programmers and airstaff alike.

Jobs are a good thing.