The Infinite Dial

A story in yesterday's Boston Globe takes a look at the competition between "official" pre-release leaks of new superstar releases and the unofficial Internet sort. I'm quoted in the story and if it's not clear what I'm referring to, there was a period of several years in which anytime an established artist, particularly on the R&B side, came out with a first single that didn't perform well, the album release was suddenly pushed back. The ostensible reason for recording new tracks was because of Internet leakage. But it usually only happened with projects like Usher (remember "Pop Ya Collar"?) where the first single had been disappointing.

Posted by Sean Ross at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Around the time that WLTW New York brought the "Lite FM" name front-and-center again (after several months of downplaying it, but not dropping it, on the air), two other less publicized changes took place.

One is that WWFS (Fresh 102.7) New York, the station that has made the year so busy for WLTW, has changed its own positioner from "today's soft music" to "today's fresh music." The use of "soft" certainly raised a lot of eyebrows at the time--it seemed like, well, too soft a word for a station that was attacking "lite." And as Fresh's music evolves, there's an increasing amount that you wouldn't call "soft" (e.g., Sugar Ray, "Fly"). Still, I had made my peace with the "today's soft music." The first two words in tandem balanced each other.

Sister WXRK (K-Rock) has also made some musical changes. As the weeks go by, it feels more like an alternative station and less like an active rocker or even a down-the-center mainstream rock station.. A handful of Guns 'N' Roses and Led Zeppelin records are still on the station, but just a few now. And there's more that wouldn't be played on an Active Rocker, such as Damian Marley's "Welcome to Jamrock" (the 2005 reggae hit that K-Rock is now playing as a current) or Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.

Posted by Sean Ross at 5:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Among some radio observers, the decision by CBS to move Chicago radio veteran Steve Dahl from N/T WCKG (pending its reported format change) to WJMK (104.3 Jack FM) seems like an odd fit: a talk host on a station targeting males moving to a music-intensive station with more of a male/female split.

But it's not such an off-the-wall move. Dahl's breakthrough success was at Album Rocker WLUP in the late '70s and early '80s, followed by an equally prominent stint at Rock 40 rival WLS-FM. Whatever you think of the "Disco Demolition" stunt that put Dahl and "The Loop" on the map, it was a good time musically for rock radio, and it's that era that Jack should be harkening back to--particularly if Dahl is willing to play at least a few songs per hour. And another veteran Rock team, CFOX Vancouver's Larry & Willy, turned out to be a surprisingly good fit for the first Jack-FM, crosstown CKLG.

Posted by Sean Ross at 2:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

For all the challenges that the San Diego fires presented local radio last week, one station had a unique issue: Hip-Hop outlet XHMOR a/k/a Blazin' 98.9. While "Blazin' Hip-Hop and R&B" has been in widespread usage as a positioner at various times overthe last decade, Blazin' 98.9 is one of the few with the word in its name. So what do you do when "Blazin'" is suddenly not a good thing?

I didn't get to hear what Blazin' 98.9 was doing until Saturday night, by which time life in San Diego was by no means back to normal, but slightly less apocalyptic. Even then, there were ads that would have been hard to imagine just a few days earlier: a fire safety PSA here, an ad for a fire victims benefit featuring local rappers there.

On Monday, I reached out to OM Lee Cornell about how the station had dealt with both the fire and its name. As Cornell points out, you don't walk away from your identifier lighjtly. Instead, the strategy was to try to keep things positive through good deeds. Besides devoting much of the Website to fire-related info, as many area stations did, and adding on-air updates every 20 minutes, the station also sent its station vehicle to evacuation centers. It's now tying in with the Red Cross to raise money for "Fireaid 2007," by allowing listeners to text in their pledge.

Posted by Sean Ross at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I've commented in these pages before that for a number of us in the business, interest in music programming began with listening to "American Top 40" and coming to the realization that some of the hits around the country were different than the hits being played in your market. Whether it was "Rub It In" by Billy "Crash" Craddock in 1974 or "I'll See You In My Dreams" by Giant in 1987, "AT40" was often the only proof those records existed if you lived in a major market. (Conversely, if you lived in a more pop-driven market, it was often the only place to hear anything but the biggest R&B crossovers.)

These days, with the major markets often setting the agenda for the rest of the country, you're a lot less likely to hear more than a handful of songs not being played in your market on "AT40." But I'm listening to the Sunday afternoon countdown on Sirius Hits 1 (starting at 1 p.m. ET) and they've just gone for about 45 minutes without a single record that I'm likely to encounter on any of the four Top 40 buttons available to me on a regular day. The last hour has been full of Dollyrots, Wyclef Jean, Within Temptation, Yellowcard, the new Duran Duran, the new Linkin Park, Rascal Flatts, etc. And it very much feels like listening to "AT40" in the old days.

It has also been noted here before that Sirius Hits 1 is one of only a handful of stations that looks for their own reaction records as aggressively as the Rhythmic-leaning major-market stations (the others are the also previously cited WEZB [B97] New Orleans and WZKL [Q92.5] Canton, Ohio), but the countdown is perhaps the best showplace for that. Today's 16-year-old has a lot more places to hear new songs than sitting around waiting to hear them on a countdown, but I hope there's still somebody whose imagination is fired by this countdown (or AT40) like ours were.

Posted by Sean Ross at 1:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As has been noted here (and elsewhere) extensively this week, the biggest channels in the recently released satellite radio Arbitron numbers have been relatively mainstream choices. All of which makes one of the exceptions stand out. XM's third most listened to channel, "XM13 Willie's Place," isn't its mainstream Country Gold channel, that's "XM10 America." Willie's Place is traditional Country, stretching back to Hank Williams and Bob Wills & the Texas Playboys. There are newer recordings (e.g., Reba McEntire & Asleep at the Wheel covering Classic Country songs), but there is nothing that could be called contemporary.

Here's Willie's Place this morning at 10:55 a.m.:

Amazing Rhythm Aces, "Yippe Yi Yo Yo"
Faron Young, "Hello Walls"
Bob Willis & Texas Playboys, "Roly Poly"
Vern Gosdin, "Right In The Wrong Direction"
Asleep At The Wheel & Reba McEntire, "Right Or Wrong"
Charley Pride, "Just Between You And Me"
Leroy VanDyke, "If A Woman Answers (Hang Up The Phone)"
Boxcar Willie, "Long Black Limousine"
Ray Price, "My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You"
Jack Green, "What Locks The Door"
Tommy Overstreet, "Don't Go City Girl On Me"
Hank Williams, "Lovesick Blues"
Rusty & Doug Kershaw, "Jole Blon"

There's not a song there that you could expect to hear on mainstream Country radio and only two or three I could even imagine hearing on KXBL (Big Country) Tulsa, Okla. -- a Classic Country FM that actually manages to surprise me from time to time. So how is this station No. 3 among XM channels in AQH and pulling more than 400,000 listeners a week?

XM senior VP/music programming Jon Zellner says that even before the channel was rebranded from "Hank's Place" to "Willie's Place" that "it's always been a huge channel for us. TSL and overall listener satisfaction is the driver. Also, we do very well in the south where Classic Country is and/or could be a bonafide format." You can also look at the surprise success of Easy Listening "XM78: Escape" and argue that XM has done pretty well at creating a tier of channels for disenfranchised older listeners.

It's also worth noting that "Willie's Place" remains one of the most distinct experiences and most produced channels on satellite radio. The two overlapping shifts I heard were both hosted and the first jock was touting an upcoming remote. It is, in other words, a real radio station. And because it is, some records that would sound old and creaky if they were just being segued one after another sound exotic instead.

Posted by Sean Ross at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Four years ago, London's Heart 106.2 scored a surprise upset of then-dominant Top 40 Capital FM with an AC format that anticipated the disco-flavored blend that would eventually materialize at WLTW (Lite FM) New York and other successful U.S. ACs. Since then, Heart and mainstream AC rival Magic 105.4 have become mainstays at the top of the London ratings and it's actually news, as was the case this time, that Capital (which is sounding pretty good these days) had rebounded to third place.

But the news did send me back to Heart for the first time in six months or so. At first it seemed that the station had moved a little further toward the mainstream pop side. The stretch beginning with the Four Tops is more typical, although there does seem to be less actual disco than there was a few years ago. Here's the station at 4:40 p.m. today.

Cyndi Lauper, "Time After Time"
Take That, "Shine" (one of the reformed '90s hitmakers' comeback hits)
Kelly Clarkson, "Because Of You"
George Michael, "Faith"
Abba, "Dancing Queen"
Phil Collins, "Against All Odds (Take A Look At Me Now)"
Plain White T's, "Hey There Delilah"
Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself"
Macy Gray, "I Try"
James Morrison, "You Give Me Something"
Madonna, "Borderline"
Alicia Keys, "Fallin'"
Prince, "1999"
Spice Girls, "Headlines (Friendship Never Ends)" (their reunion single, just released here as well)
Ben E. King, "Stand By Me"

Posted by Sean Ross at 1:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

For all the attention that goes to the terrestrial vs. satellite battle, I was reminded anew of satellite's other rival this morning when I had occasion to check out Soft AC WJZQ (the Breeze) Traverse City, Mich., this morning. WJZQ streams through Live 365 and before my stream started, I heard a promo that asked something on the order of, "Why listen to a few hundred stations on satellite radio when Live 365's VIP service offers more than 10,000 stations with no commercials?"

The promo was a reminder that radio--satellite and terrestrial--is still competing not only with Internet radio, but subscription Internet radio services like Live 365 and Yahoo Radio that offer paid premium tiers of service. Whether it was Sirius and XM's intent to go after some of that business, or just establish their place on the forthcoming Infinite Dial of the wireless broadband era, their (relatively) recent emphasis on Internet listening has clearly been a shot across the bow, occasioning a shot back like this one.

Posted by Sean Ross at 1:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been rather amazed by the way the radio industry trades have covered the story of Arbitron's first release of national Satellite Radio ratings. They correctly point out that Howard Stern's total weekly audience is a tiny fraction of what it once was. But the spin is somehow that this is proof of Howard having made a mistake by leaving 'over-the-air' radio.

Let's do a little math here. If we accept Arbitron's estimate of Howard's weekly cume audience of 1.2million, and multiply that by the standard $12.95 per month subscription, we get over $185million. OK -- Sirius offers certain deals and the average rate is probably less than $12.95. And maybe some of those listeners would have subscribed to Sirius without Howard. Still -- is there any doubt that just on this calculation alone Howard's show is profitable? Probably wildly so?

And that doesn't even count what Howard has done for Sirius at large. This was a company that was in 'serious' danger of becoming 'Betamax' before they hired Howard. They lagged XM badly in terms of market awareness and penetration. Howard closed the gap in a matter of days. So much did he change the battle that Sirius will now be the acquiring entity if the merger goes through.

And yet the other argument one hears is: "But Howard couldn't turn Sirius profitable." Unfair as well. How can one evaluate him other than on what he has done himself? Sirius not being profitable cannot be tagged to Howard. The 'Sirius but not Howard' piece must be incredibly money-losing -- because Howard is making them money.

It is kind of a shame in sort of a metaphysical sense that millions of people don't hear Howard any more. But from a business sense, Howard continues to show himself as one of the most potent entities this medium has seen in our time (Rush Limbaugh being the only other similar force).

Posted by Larry Rosin at 11:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In my recent posting on where to find pre-Beatles Oldies, I didn't delve into where to find deeper, but more recent oldies. Having started listening to Top 40 radio in the late '60s, I'm more interested in some oh-wow songs from that era than in hearing Connie Francis and Bobby Rydell. And for me, the most reliable place to discover new Oldies has been European Oldies radio.

European Oldies radio seems to come in two shapes and sizes. Some are essentially gold-based ACs with a '70s/'80s focus -- not so different from the recently relaunched WCBS-FM New York. Some, however, are much older and deeper, almost anthropological in their approach to the '50s and '60s; (meaning that you get plenty of the pre-Beatles stuff, too, just not exclusively).

The Netherlands' Radio Veronica falls into the latter category. Since I discovered it two weeks ago, it's been a good source for obscure '60s oldies, including some local ones. In between, I've come across everything from Sun-era Elvis Presley to a '60s rock instrumental of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic" to French MOR artist Gilbert Becaud. Currently playing: the Moody Blues' 1965 "Stop." As that description suggests, some of it is a little too eclectic for my tastes, but if your goal from an Oldies station is discovery, it's a very good place to hear "new oldies."

Posted by Sean Ross at 9:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

There are some fascinating numbers among Arbitron's just-released Satellite Ratings Report, many of which confirm last week's then-anecdotal observation that -- for all its depth -- satellite listeners are as interested in the hits as anybody else; many of the biggest channels are indeed mainstream formats.

Sirius has six channels that manage an AQH rating of 0.01 or, in one case, more. (The latter, not surprisingly, is Howard Stern's Stern 100 with an 0.04, followed by Stern 101 with an 0.01.) XM has 15 that manage an 0.01 AQH rating, including Opie & Anthony's "The Virus."

Sirius has its highest non-Stern AQH numbers for New Country, Top 40 "Sirius Hits 1," Modern Rock "Octane," and '90s and Now Hot AC "The Pulse." Of the service's Classic Rock channels, Classic Vinyl gets 2-1/2 times the AQH of the deep tracks "The Vault." (The proportion is similar on XM.)

XM does a little better as far as eclectic offerings go. Its best AQH number is for '80s/'90s/now Mainstream AC "The Blend," and Modern AC "Flight 26." But the next highest numbers are for the Classic Country "Willie's Place." The highest rated channels also include Oldies channels "'50s on 5," "60s on 6," "'70s on 7," and "''80s on 8," as well as Country "Highway 16," the Top 40 "Top 20 on 20," Soft AC "The Heart," Classic Rock "Top Tracks," newer Classic Rock "Big Tracks," Urban AC "Suite 62," Smooth Jazz "Watercolors," Fox News, and Standards/Easy Listening hybrid "Escape".

Where there is a turn toward the eclectic here, incidentally, it's to those channels that most clearly target the older listeners disenfranchised by mainstream terrestrial stations in most larger markets. You see it more with the success of the Smooth Jazz, Easy Listening, Classic Country, and '50s channels at XM, but even at Sirius, the listening levels are higher for the pre-Beatles Sirius Gold than they are for the '60s or '70s channels.

In that regard, you can finally say that satellite radio listeners aren't just paying for the radio formats they can hear anywhere else, but you can finally see them paying for the stations that mainstream radio forced them to get elsewhere. PPM has forced terrestrial radio to take a stutter step backwards as far as Oldies, but seeing the relative strength of other older targeting formats should give them pause as well.

Posted by Sean Ross at 4:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A few days ago we commented on this site about the first Jack-FM in the UK, and how its stream comes up immediately when one launches the site. [Alas, the Jack stream won't work for Americans -- the stream is blocked from American IP addresses].

This has led to a lively discussion among many of our radio friends -- why do we support this practice?

First -- let me discuss the most common reasons I hear about why it should NOT be done:

1) People tell us they get annoyed when unasked-for audio pops up on a web site:

This may be true in certain situations. When you go to the site of a hotel and a string quartet starts playing to show you how elegant the place is, that is annoying. But our research has shown that by far the biggest reason people go to a radio station is to listen to your station. Why are we making that act any more difficult on the Internet than it is on a radio? It seems hard to believe that many people who venture to your site would be surprised or angered by hearing audio. They are going to the site of an "audio entertainment" company!

2) It is expensive:

Fair enough. You have to pay to serve each of those streams. But otherwise you are sacrificing potential listenership? Which is more "expensive" in the long run?

3) Your stream should not be served unless people sign up for your "frequent listener club":

We've dealt with this earlier, here. The stream should be one thing, the benefits of joining a "VIP Club" another. I should not have to give you my social security number or have to submit other information for the privelege of listening to the stream. The stream should be perceived as no different from the over-the-air signal. Isn't the goal of radio to get people to listen to it?

Finally -- as electronic measurement proliferates, we will want to get every last instance of listening recorded. Why take a chance on someone coming to your site and failing to listen to your station?

Posted by Larry Rosin at 2:50 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Having been pretty critical in recent weeks about the relative paucity of HD-2 choices in the New York area, it's only fair to call your attention to Susan Whitall's mostly positive article in Saturday's Detroit News calling listeners' attention to "The Secret Radio Dial." With the automakers as potential listeners, Detroit radio has been particularly dilligent about rolling out multicast channels, reflected by the 12 stations listed in the story and at least four others that don't get mentioned for some reason. (There's nothing about either Urban WJLB or Urban AC sister WMXD's channels. There's also no mention of the last two stations on the dial, WMGC and WDTW, as if an editor arbitrarily cut at 104.3 FM, which is too bad because WDTW's Country/Rock "Mother Trucker" is an interesting choice.)

Besides the much publicized WRIF "Riff-2" channel, Detroit does have a few things that aren't available in New York: pure jazz (WVMV-2), gold-based alternative (WDVD, reviving its old Planet 96.3 handle), a public radio music stream (WDET), and the aforementioned Mother Trucker. It also has a lot of the same things: two supersoft ACs (WNIC and WMGC), a N/T simulcast (WWJ-AM on WXTY's frequency), "Future CHR" (WKQI) and Deep Tracks classic rock (WCSX).

Posted by Sean Ross at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

As it says on our site, "We are fans of great radio." Well maybe that should be changed, because we are really fans of the extraordinary power of great audio.

I was searching for something else, and ended up finding this site: www.americanrhetoric.com.

You have simply got to check this site out. On it are mp3 and often videos of the greatest speeches of the last 100 years. Some of my personal favorites, like Reagan's speech (written by Peggy Noonan) delivered after the Challenger disaster -- some of the most incredible words you will ever hear. Of course Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and also check Bobby Kennedy's genius speech given the night of MLK's assasination.

You can enjoy hours of 'audio entertainment' on this site.

As the site says on their masthead: "Rationalize rhetoric and it speaks to your mind; personify her and she speaks to your soul."

Posted by Larry Rosin at 3:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After this week's Ross On Radio column comparing the depth on Sirius and XM Satellite Radio's Classic Rock channels, I got the "what about us" e-mail from Music Choice's Justin Prager. It was an fair question. In the days before satellite, Music Choice was an alternaive delivery system that was more informed by radio programming logic than others. As Sirius and XM have mainstreamed, Music Choice has expanded into the Video on Demand arena--where, of course, the radio notion of making every song a smash applies less.

So here's Music Choice Classic Rock at 9:50 p.m. on Wednesday (17). Songs that elude Mediabase's Top 1,000 most played are asterisked:

Jackson Browne, "Running On Empty";
Aerosmith, "Living On The Edge";
* Traffic, "Rock And Roll Stew" -- A one-time AOR staple that is now gone, gone, gone;
Jethro Tull, "Aqualung";
Pretenders, "Brass In Pocket (I'm Special)";
Yes, "Long DIstance Runaround";
* Rush, "Finding My Way"-- From their 1974 debut; sounds like AC/DC in places;
Foreigner, "Double Vision";
* Yardbirds, "Over, Under, Sideways Down";
* John Lennon, "Nobody Told Me" -- Released after his death in 1983, disappeared from the radio almost instantly;
* Ted Nugent, "Love Grenade" -- The only current I encountered in my listening except one of the deep cuts channels;
Bruce Springsteen, "Born To Run";
Rainbow, "Man On The Silver Mountain" -- Their most enduring song at radio.

There are indeed more spikes here than I encountered at Sirius and XM's mainstream Classic Rock channels (although both had deep cuts channels that played nothing but relative obscurities, which Music Choice does not). There's also a lot of that early '70s progressive music that used to be a center lane sound for the format and has selected itself out over the years, particularly at those Classic Rock stations that test both men and women (the latter seem to have less patience for it).

Posted by Sean Ross at 9:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The idea of doing Jack-FM in Europe has always presented a different set of challenges. After all, it's not that long ago that most stations played more than 1,000 songs and spanned four decades -- and that was just the Top 40s! And the BBC's Hot AC/Triple-A hybrid Radio 2 has done a pretty good job as establishing itself as the home of eclectic variety for adults. So we were very eager to hear our friend Clive Dickens' Jack-FM 106 Oxford, U.K., which launched this morning.

The good news is that if you're in the U.K., Jack-FM will begin to stream the minute you open its Website--something we strongly believe in. Unfortunately, because of British industry licensing issues, that stream won't open if you're outside the U.K. But we did manage to hear Jack-FM on its first day to pass along the details.

Certain elements of the station will be familiar to anybody who has heard the version that became the U.S. template. The station is, at least on its first day, jockless, although there is a morning show and news reports in afternoons. There are liners about going into stopsets ("It's not you, it's us. We need a break"). There are a lot of cold segues. There's a liner about an "iPod on spin cycle." And there is, of course, "Playing What We Want." (Our favorite liner: "Two radios did it and Jack-FM was born. We might not have been planned, but we are loved.")

What's different? The voice of the station isn't Howard Cogan, but one Paul Darrow. There are also a few more attempts to explain how the station works, compared to its U.S. counterparts, which sometimes felt like they didn't need any stinking positioning beyond "playing what we want." And the Grace Jones song notwithstanding, this station is more focused pop/rock than many of its U.S. counterparts. (And if there's anywhere where you'd have permission to go heavier on Rhythm and goofy one-off pop novelties, it would be the U.K., where both of those have always been part of the pop charts.)

If this Jack works in the U.K., it will do so by pulling off one or both of the following. It will function as the Classic Rock station--a format that has only gained any kind of traction in the U.K. in the last decade or so. Or it will manage to position itself as a more focused version of BBC Radio 2 (and, to a lesser extent, Virgin Radio).

"Variety without the gratuitous eclecticism" is a hard position to pull off, but some of the U.S. Jack-FMs did manage it. For all that was written about Jack-FM's ability to destroy the variety image of Hot ACs, it also stunted the growth of some heritage Triple-A stations, as some listeners came to realize that they were happier with a variety of familiar songs than just variety for variety's sake.

Here is Jack-FM at 2:10 p.m. local time on its first day:

Duran Duran, "Save A Prayer" (1982 in the UK)
Guns N' Roses, "Sweet Child O' Mine" (1989 in the UK)
Bryan Adams, "Cloud No. 9" (1999, UK/Canada hit)
Wings, "Live & Let Die" (1973)
Coldplay, "Speed Of Sound" (2004)
Cutting Crew, "(I Just) Died In Your Arms" (1986)
Eagles, "Life In The Fast Lane" (1977)
Maroon 5, "This Love" (2004)
Bon Jovi, "It's My Life" (2000)
Grace Jones, "Pull Up To The Bumper" (a UK hit in 1986)
Andrew Gold, "Never Let Her Slip Away" (1978)
ZZ Top, "Gimme All Your Lovin'" (1984 in the UK)
Lighthouse Family, "Run" (2001)
Squeeze, "Take Me I'm Yours" (1978)
Iggy Pop, "The Passenger" (1977)
Human League, Mirror Man (1982)
Oasis, "Champagne Supernova" (1995)
James Morrison, "You Give Me Something" (2006)
Free, "Wishing Well" (1973)
Carly Simon, "Why" (1982)
Aerosmith, "Dude (Looks Like A Lady)" (1990 in the UK)
Jackson Browne, "Doctor My Eyes" (1972--although, interestingly, it was actually Michael Jackson (!) who had the U.K. hit with this song)
Prince, "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" (1994)
Rolling Stones, "Tumbling Dice" (1972)
Julian Lennon, "Too Late For Goodbyes" (1985)
Five For Fighting, "Superman (It's Not Easy)" (2001)

Posted by Sean Ross at 10:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

I have been a TiVo user, and TiVo lover for over four years now. Like most TiVo users, watching television without TiVo has become a frustration -- often I am in a hotel room searching for the non-existent pause or rewind button while watching a ballgame or other show.

And, I just as often find myself searching for the same phantom buttons when listening to the radio. My mind wanders as the announcer reads the traffic report . . . and I want to back it up. I receive a call on my cell phone right in the middle of a funny morning-show bit and I just wish I could hit the pause button. I hear a fascinating story on Public Radio and I just so wish I could record it for later playback in my car.

Once you have consumed media in the TiVo way, it is just so hard to go back to traditional media usage.

Since over-the-air radio isn't going to get these functionalities anytime soon it is essential that we fill in the blanks as best as we can.

At minimum over-the-air radio broadcasters need to make podcasting much more robust; Public Radio has amazing offerings of their programming on their Web sites that really do allow me to listen later -- albeit not (yet) easily in my car. But as of today only a tiny fraction of commercial radio stations make their morning show or other non-music content easily available from their web sites.

Millions of television viewers are now trained to DVR functionality. Radio needs to program with this new kind of media consumer in mind.

Posted by Larry Rosin at 8:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Edison's Larry Rosin and I have had a lot of discussions about song length. How many times, he has often asked, does one really need to hear the oft-repeated hooks of "Crazy In Love" or "Jumpin' Jumpin'"? Larry has gone as far as suggesting that in this day of busy schedules and short attention spans, there might be a place for a Top 40 station that edits the songs to give you more of the hits faster.

Using that as a departure, I have found myself lately thinking that a CHR that took songs down to 3-1/2 minutes could play 14-15 records an hour and, perhaps, enjoy the same sort of subliminal advantage that some PDs believe exist in speeding up the records.And these days, a few more of the hits are coming in under 3:30 anyway. But could you get "Lovestoned/I Think She Knows" under 3:30 and maintain most of the Justin Timberlake song's changes? "Until The End Of Time"? "Welcome To The Black Parade"?

The interesting part here is that many of today's listeners are used to truncated songs anyway. Urban and Rhythmic Top 40 listeners have been hearing mixes as a significant part of their stations' programming for more than a decade, and Mainstream Top 40 listeners are hearing more and more. And no matter how hit-driven PDs would like their mixers to be, the airwaves often fill up with songs, old or new, that wouldn't otherwise be on the radio.

This was driven home for me tonight when I came across WWPR (Power 105) New York's night jock DJ Clue while he was in a mix. The record that caught my attention was Soul IV Real's 1995 hit, "Every Little Thing I Do," not a record you hear much on the radio these days. I was still enjoying it when that song segued into Truth Hurts' "Addictive," a big R&B hit that pretty much disappeared instantly after it ran its course in the summer of 2002. That one got a verse and two choruses before Beyonce's "Naughty Girl." Hearing that one wasn't special for me and by then I was in the driveway. A little more of "Addictive" might have kept the motor running for another minute or so anyway.

So how is it, then, that a radio station must play all 4:40 of a song, if that's what the label gives them as the single edit, when a song is new, but five years later, must not play more than 90 seconds of it? And here's another one to ponder: What's safer from a programming standpoint? Pulling out "Addictive" or "Every Little Thing I Do" once in a blue moon but surrounding them with hits and letting them play all the way through? Or stacking up 20 minutes comprised largely of songs that don't sustain--even if you play only a few minutes of each?

Posted by Sean Ross at 9:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A big part of the original promise of Satellite Radio was vastly enhanced variety -- not only across the channels but on those channels that duplicated over-the-air formats.

In this week's Ross on Radio column from Edison Media Research VP Sean Ross, he looks at whether one truly gets more musical variety from some of satellite's most listened-to channels.

We already have a lot of comments to the article -- as Sean's articles receive almost every week. Join the discussion!

Posted by Larry Rosin at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Seth Godin notes an interesting exchange between a college student and his professor on the supposed existence of Viral Marketing, and notes that (despite the professor's position) that Viral Marketing is NOT the same thing as Word of Mouth. I certainly agree with that, but I am not sure that I am willing to settle for Godin's distinction that Viral Marketing is a compounding function, and word of mouth a decaying function. I think it really depends on what your position is on the function of "Marketing" in the firm. It is true that an ideavirus, as Godin puts it, spreads through a population logarithmically, not linearly, and does so with little post-launch effort on the part of the marketer. I also agree 100% that "constant harassment of the population" does not make something 'viral;' you cannot will an ideavirus into propagating.

Where I disagree with Godin is in his implication that Word of Mouth is ephemeral (he notes that it "amplifies the marketing action then fades, usually quickly") or somehow inferior to unleashing a true ideavirus (which he equates to "Winning the Lottery.") If your vision of the Marketing Function is to increase awareness, then perhaps I could get behind these characterizations. But if your definition of Marketing is the ongoing process of moving people closer to a "sale," then I am not so sure.

Missing from Godin's equation is the means of transmission. With viral marketing, it's easy come, easy go. Someone passes a meme, link or funny video to me, and I pass it along to my distribution list. Maybe I have been moved to action, maybe not--but I have transmitted the message. The message is meant to be independent of the messenger, and is propagated on its own merits.

Word of Mouth, on the other hand, relies much more on the ethos of the messenger. If a friend tells me to try a certain restaurant or product, I probably will. But I can be a complete teetotaler and spread a funny video from Budweiser. In the first case, though my friend may have only influenced a handful of people, those people may be closer to the sale, which is the point of marketing in the first place. The Internets are loaded with 'ideaviruses' that became the hot pass-around links of the summer--but can anyone remember the products or services they were marketing, or more importantly, did anyone buy them?

This is not to suggest that Viral Marketing is somehow inferior to Word of Mouth marketing--merely that they address the consumer at different points along the customers' decision-making continuum. And in that, I agree with Godin--they are different.

Posted by Tom Webster at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

When wireless broadband finally brings The Infinite Dial to my car, the stations that get a button will be a lot different. I'll have a regular choice for obscure classic rock (Suburban Phoenix's KCDX), my Country station will be KEEY (K102) Minneapolis, and my replacement for New York's Jack-FM will be one of the original ones from Canada (although I still have to decide between Vancouver and Calgary).

But my first button for Top 40 will be still be my local Top 40, WHTZ (Z100). Covering the radio business from New York--a market that doesn't always have the best-in-category of any given genre--has been frustrating over the years. But I've generally been happy with Z100 over the last decade. Z100 emerged as the market leader in New York's last diary Arbitron ratings yesterday. And they deserved to.

Here are some of the things that Z100 does right:

* Even in market No. 1, where they would certainly be entitled to be conservative, they find their own hit records. And while it doesn't happen as often as some industry folks might wish, they will occasionally play songs that are not on any other reporting Top 40 station.

* They pay a lot of attention to pop culture. Z100 is usually the first stop (and always among the first stops) for Radio Disney artists on their way to the mainstream, from Hilary Duff to Vanessa Hudgens to the Jonas Brothers to Miley Cyrus, whose "See You Again" is in rotation only at Z100 and XM-20.

* It makes good use of library material. During its late '90s success, Z100 was a Top 40 station that did several music tests a year. It reportedly has returned to library testing recently and has been filtering in a lot of unusual titles. And somehow it gets away with "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls and "Ayo Technology" by 50 Cent on the same radio station.

* In fact, Z100 uses both current and library testing the way most of us would like to see them used--to intelligently take more shots on music, not fewer.

* They do a good job of associating themselves with new platforms (a lot of the on-air real-estate now is going to the station's social networking site, the Z-Zone).

* Z100 makes good use of benchmarking during the day. There are as many regular features between 5 p.m. and 9 p.m. (the hours when I tend to hear the station most) as most morning shows.

* They have made better use than most of Clear Channel's new presentational austerity without sounding sterilized by it. (It usually feels like some thought went into the cold segue between the first and second record of the hour, for instance.)

Posted by Sean Ross at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

Jerry Lee from WBEB (B101) Philadelphia has been enjoying a deserved spate of praise for his many unique positions.

I'd like to back him up on his pleas to have radio test their commercials. He of course is so right that the advertiser would find radio all the more effective if he engaged in testing before running spots.

But the listener would benefit so much as well. They would not only hear better commercials, more crucially they would hear bad commercials less often. We sometimes forget that spots can 'rotate' at levels even the most aggressive Top 40 station would never tolerate. Just as you wouldn't play a bad song over and over, you should not be playing commercials that are sending the listener away.

Hire Jerry, or hire Edison, or hire someone -- but please radio do as Jerry says: Test The Commercials.

Posted by Larry Rosin at 7:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I've been consistently amazed when I talk with radio people about the impending shift of television to digital-only how few know about it. Indeed, on February 18, 2009 -- just 16 months from now -- television will be turning off its analog signals. You will no longer be able to watch television on an analog television -- your old Sony Watchman will not work at the football game any longer. ALL analog televisions will not work any longer without a converter box.

Radio's television cousins are about to engage in a marketing campaign to explain this to the public. In that it will involve the notion that your old television simply will not work any longer, I'm wondering what the potential spillover impact might be in radio? Might people think that their radios won't work either?

And while I'm asking questions, try this one on...what would happen if radio DID turn off the analog signals in the future? How many people would buy the necessary converter boxes or new, digital radios?

Posted by Larry Rosin at 5:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Here is a great example of 'leaving deeper footprints,' a phrase I first heard from Scott Shannon 15 years ago. If you have never ordered shoes from Zappos, you are missing out on the best customer service on the web, and this blog post from a Zappos customer epitomizes why.

Leaving deeper footprints is something great stations do on a regular basis. One of the best places to find them in Country radio is on Jaye Albright's blog--she makes a regular point of celebrating the great things that Country radio stations do everyday for their communities. What are some of your favorite radio examples? Post them here--I bet this thread could crash our servers, and I hope it does.

Posted by Tom Webster at 4:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

You may have read by now that the HD Radio Alliance has loosened its rules for the next year to allow limited sponsorships on HD-2 multicast channels, as well as making it easier for owners to change format on their HD-2 channels without clearing it with the other Alliance members. Stations are now also allowed to promote their own HD-2 channels instead of the generic HD Radio spots that have become a subject of derision in some quarters.

The best news here is that it shuts down the biggest excuse that most broadcasters have for the benign neglect that goes into most multicast channels: Why should I improve my HD-2 station if I can't make any money with it? Most HD-2 stations, despite their limited available over-the-air audience, still have Webstreams and broadcasters are doing a little better at selling those these days. And as we head toward The Infinite Dial, that is probably where most of these stations will be consumed anyway.

As for divvying the formats, I can only say that in New York, the previous rules never really served their purpose of keeping HD-2 channels away from existing formats or from each other. At least two HD-2 multicast formats in this market would seem to be direct competitors of terrestrial stations. WWPR-HD-2 (Power Latino) covers the same ground as WCAA (La Calle). The Gospel format on WRKS-HD-2 preceded a commercial Gospel format on rival Inner City's WLIB-AM, but it certainly didn't go away once there was a Gospel station available.

Then there's almost everybody else. Technically, Deep Cuts Classic Rock WAXQ-HD-2, Soft AC WLTW-HD-2, "Jack-FM" WCBS-FM-HD_2, and WPLJ's '70s and '80s stations are entirely different formats. (And I can certainly say that I've never heard Sammy Johns' "Chevy Van," a WPLJ-2 staple, on any other station.) But they all cover a lot of the same '70s/'80s territory as each other and (in most cases) their HD-1 counterparts.

Meanwhile, New York still has only one HD-2 station expressly devoted to new music (WHTZ-HD-2) or that could be said to be in any way targeted to the next generation of radio listeners (again WHTZ-2). It provides no special audience programming not already found on analog radio--it's hard to imagine that a Caribbean or Bollywood channel, or Clear Channel's existing gay-targeted channel, wouldn't find a larger New York audience willing to buy HD receivers than most of what exists now. And for all the '70s/'80s pop/rock overlap, there's not even a variety of old music: no Classic Country, no R&B Gold, no '80s Alternative, although all of those things exist on satellite radio.

I don't want to again belabor my lack of HD-2 choices--something that I've made a regular topic here. But a lot of the changes in the Alliance rules are the sort of common-sense things that many broadcasters we speak to have privately wished for. Multicast stations have been and will remain hampered by the same lack of resources that all stations deal with these days. So one hopes that these other changes will make it easier for the medium to move forward.

Posted by Sean Ross at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Heard tonight on WCBS-HD-2, New York's home of "Jack FM" ever since it was exiled to the HD-2/Webstream to make room for the return of Oldies (and imagine the trademark sound of Jack-FM voice Howard Cogan here): "ILikeJack.com: It's better than no Jack-FM at all."

Posted by Sean Ross at 8:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The call came from somebody outside the business who had found an old Ross On Radio column about the former WRLL (Real Oldies 1690) Chicago and its pre-Beatles format. When the 1690 frequency became the new home of News/Talk WVON, the old format remained on-line and he continued to listen. But now, he said, even that stream was starting to filter in some music from the mid-to-late '60s. What about all those other stations I wrote about at the time, back in 2003-'04 when many in the industry were hoping that pre-Beatles Oldies would allow every Adult Standards station in America to update?

Sorry, many of those stations are gone as well: no more WWKB Buffalo, N.Y., WSAI Cincinnati, WCOL Columbus, Ohio, or WKAP Allentown, Pa. Of those stations, only WKAP got significant ratings traction for a while. Others, like WOKY Milwaukee, quickly settled in a mix of eras not that different from the FM stations they replaced. (I just checked out WOKY and it was playing "Lyin' Eyes.")

WRLL's Web stream, by the way, still plays a lot of pre-Beatles music. When I flipped them on, they were going from Little Willie John to Eddie Cochran to the Flamingos. But there was also "Michelle" by the Beatles and "Sunny Afternoon" by the Kinks. And even on new Oldies AMs like WMTR Morristown, N.J., and CKWW (AM580) Detroit that play some pre-Beatles songs that you don't usually hear elsewhere, you're still going to hear late '60s and even early '70s. Only the '50s channels on Sirius and XM continue to concentrate primarily on pre-Beatles and, remember, even they are adding a little early '60s to their original '50s emphasis.

A lot of the pre-Beatles Oldies AMs were claimed by the rise of Air America and liberal talk. And when the rush to blow up Oldies FMs slowed down a little this year, there wasn't the same sense of opportunity that had existed a few years ago. My favorite station for obscure oldies, WNYH Long Island, N.Y., plays a broad mix that ranges from standards to '70s with a lot of deep pre-Beatles in between. But they don't stream yet.

So it's hard if you're a purist. But here are some stations that might be worth checking out:

* KXKL (Kool 105) Denver's "Kool 105 Classics" HD-2 channel: Kool 105 has made the same era move into the '70s as most of its counterparts. But their HD-2 station has picked up the slack; it went from the Flamingos into the Ronettes into Paul Anka when I turned it on this morning.

* The "Real Oldies" format at the Clear Channel Format Lab: It was created by the same people who gave us WRLL, WSAI, and many of the others. But it now contains mid-to-late '60s as well.

* WMID Atlantic City: Again, I heard Mitch Ryder's "Sock It To Me! Baby," which is never a problem for me, but I also heard the Angels into Johnny Mathis' little-heard "Small World." And they bill themselves as "broadcasting from the doo-wop capital of the world."

* WMTR - As previously mentioned, they've moved into the late '60s and early '70s now--not nearly as deep as they were a year ago when it was possible to hear a Royal Teens song other than "Short Shorts." But there's still a lot of pre-Beatles music on there. And it's still the station I go to when I have an urge to hear "Killer Joe" by the Rocky-Fellers.

* Suburban Detroit's WPON, which bills itself as "talk and rare Oldies."

* WSAI's successor, WDJO, which has some of the same staffers and plays a 50/50 mix of pre- and post-Beatles.

For what it's worth, I miss the pre-Beatles AMs, too. I started listening to pop music in 1967, so a lot of the late '50s and early '60s are lost on me--particularly the Connie Francis/Neil Sedaka/Paul Anka ballads. But WSAI--the best of the category, I thought--was a well-produced, well-executed radio station, the kind that could make me sit through a song I didn't like. (Besides, they were all two-minute songs!) There are doubtlessly Internet-only stations specializing in pre-Beatles. But I'd rather hear them in the context of a full-service radio station.

But please chime in with your suggestions on pre-Beatles Oldies and where to hear them by clicking the comments tab above.

Posted by Sean Ross at 11:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBacks (0)

If you Google "Radio Now 93.1" today, the third entry is a petition asking WNOU Indianapolis owner Emmis to return the station to the air. Emmis exiled WNOU to HD-2 on Monday, making it the future home of News/Talk WIBC. It didn't take long. Radio One, which recently sold off two of its other Mainstream Top 40s, still saw value in picking up Mainstream Top 40 as Radio Now 100.9 on the frequency of Jazz WYJZ. And they should have. WNOU was fifth in the market 12-plus at the time of its demise.

Seeing WNOU go away three days after WBZZ (B94) Pittsburgh was relaunched was proof already that the current health of Top 40 was in the eye (and pocketbook) of the beholder. Emmis might have wanted the lucrative WIBC on FM. For a lower rated Smooth Jazz station, even younger targeted Top 40 was a more saleable proposition. And it's good news for those of us who remember the early '90s where brand name Top 40s went away and, in many markets, nobody moved in to replace them. (That said, there were also places where brand name Top 40s were replaced by rimshotters which went away a few years later themselves.)

By the way, if you want to hear the new Radio Now, you can do it merely by opening the Website, something which many industry observers wish more stations would do.

Posted by Sean Ross at 3:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It's interesting how many of the big money deals in the music industry--including the one reported this morning between Madonna and concert promoter Live Nation--involve artists who have pretty much lost their footing at mainstream current-based radio in the U.S. Whether it's the issuing of David Bowie bonds in 1997 or ZZ Top's multi-album deal with RCA in 1992--six years after their final hit--there's something about the veterans that induces mad optimism. The Wall Street Journal quotes industry observers as saying that Madonna would have to sell 15 million copies of each of the next three albums. And while Madonna's talent for self-reinvention is legend, 15 million copies is no longer easy for any artist, particularly one whose last true U.S. Top 40 radio hits were 2001-02 (and that's assuming you count "Don't Tell Me" and "Die Another Day").

Then again, as other observers have noted, that's not where Live Nation is likely expecting to really make its money back. The deal is an acknowledgement that Madonna, like Prince, Bruce Springsteen and other contemporaries, is more vital now as a touring act. And with labels now making deals that include participation in touring, there's no reason a concert promoter wouldn't want to be in the label business. As with Paul McCartney and Joni Mitchell's Starbucks deals, a lot of the non-traditional deals are actually codifications of what was happening anyway: veteran artists reaching their audiences through methods other than airplay at current-based radio.

There was, you'll recall, a minor controversy last year when Madonna's "Confessions on a Dance Floor" album -- by general consensus, her best in years -- didn't yield any Top 40 hits in this country. That led to a fan petition claiming that Clear Channel stations were "boycotting" Madonna because of her political views. So there's some irony in any deal with Live Nation, which was spun off from CC several years ago.

Of course, the real reason that "Confessions" didn't get traction in the U.S., is that Madonna had waited a few years too many to do what many were waiting for her to do -- go back to being the "old Madonna." Look at any artist who loses their foothold at Top 40 and you'll usually find a long stretch of so-so singles that did become hits by the dint of their popularity--in her case, about 70% of what came between "Vogue" and "Ray Of Light." And while a truly great record will often will out, there does come a certain point where veterans have a really hard time getting back to Top 40, if only because they used up their goodwill earlier.

So on this week's Top 40 charts, the most consistent hitmakers represented are Pink, Nickelback, and Avril Lavigne--all of whom had their breakthroughs less than 10 years ago. Matchbox Twenty, Jennifer Lopez, Backstreet Boys and, of course, Britney Spears fight week-to-week to keep their momentum. The Eagles and Bruce Springsteen may have their best singles in years, but it's hard to ever imagine them on Top 40. There are a lot less multi-decade comebacks these days. Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons were hitmakers in the '60s, came back in 1975 after more than a few fallow years, and ended up on Top 40 again in 1994 thanks to the "December 1963" remix. Even with "Jersey Boys" and a new heavily publicized Valli album, that is unimaginable now, even if another remix just put the Four Seasons back on the charts in the U.K.

As a result, this has become a business of workarounds, whether it's the large-scale ones (Starbucks, Live Nation, Radiohead) or the smaller scale commercial tie-ins that foist Feist and Ingrid Michaelson into the mass consciousness and on to the sales charts without radio play, There are still true radio stars who also sell records--Justin Timberlake, Kanye West--but fewer and fewer. The music business is now experiencing Paul Simon's "days of miracle and wonder" (said here with all the irony that he attached to that line), and there will now be paradigm-shattering announcements on a weekly basis. But if Madonna and Live Nation come up with the record that gets her back on the radio, that will be paradigm-shattering too.

Posted by Sean Ross at 1:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

I correspond with lots of folks in Radio every day. Some really have a way with effective email communications, while others, to quote Steve Martin, not have way. Part of the reason is that we are very good about increasing responsibilities in this industry (i.e., "finding synergies," or to put it another way, "having the CHR guy also program the Sports/Talker") but do lag a bit in the teaching of the all-important "soft skills." So I offer this, one of my favorite links from one of my favorite bloggers, Merlin Mann. His "Inbox Zero" series at his productivity blog 43 Folders is legendary, and worth linking here for those of you who haven't seen it. Quarter after quarter, I win Edison's coveted IT Director Gold Star for having the cleanest inbox on our Exchange server, and this is how I do it.

Posted by Tom Webster at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Just for fun, I decided to see what you get when you enter certain search terms, as a consumer perhaps might do when looking for something to listen to, into Google.

So first I just typed in "Great Radio". The first link is the truly distinctive KEXP-FM in Seattle -- the University of Washington eclectic station. I had some real fun listening to that.

Then, I tried "Great Rock Radio." The first link was ChristianRock.net, not my taste, and they didn't make listening on line too easy by making me pick from an endless list of players, many of which required "plug-ins"...which sounds scary. The second link was RockRadioFM from the UK, which wouldn't let me get their stream...I assume because of my American IP address. The third link was for K-Rock in New York. The fourth station was Planet Rock, another digital station from the UK, which I could stream with no problem.

Next up: "Great Country Radio". Interestingly, the first link there was CMT's surprisingly robust radio offerings page. WYCD, CBS's station in Detroit, came second.

Lastly tonight I tried "Great Hip-Hop Radio." That took me the HipHop Express Radio Show , a podcast featuring "Mad Exclusives from Some of Today's Hottest Underground & Independent Artist (sic) in the Business."

I listened at least a little bit to everything I found (that would let me). Tons of fun. A great way to spend some time online. Traveling along the Infinite Dial is the modern equivalent of lying in bed in the early 1970s and listening to AM radio stations from around the country. But now the excitement is listening to "Great" radio, not simply being wowed by the fact that you could hear stations from New Orleans or Montreal.

Posted by Larry Rosin at 9:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We've reported from time to time on the various attempts by broadcasters to replace the spot sales model with sponsorships. That quest exists on the TV side, too. Advertising Age reports that AMC's well-received Madison Avenue/early '60s period drama "Mad Men" will finish the season with a commercial-free episode sponsored by DirecTV, with an eye toward eventually being able to move to a sponsorship-only model.

The story also notes that one alternative to spots -- product placement -- hasn't proven to be a bonanza for the show, often because of its edgy content. Creator Matt Weiner says that Jack Daniels, which has one of the few product placement deals with the show, has "this whole list of how it can be used . . .They don't want to see people fighting. They do not want to see people having sex immediately after drinking. You're sort of like, 'What is the purpose of Jack Daniels if there's no sex after it and no fighting after it.'"

Posted by Sean Ross at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)