The Infinite Dial

As representatives of a company which provides research information to broadcasters (among other things), we are regularly accused of "ruining" the very products we are attempting to improve. While we don't exactly agree with this argument, we do know how things can be taken to inappropriate extremes.

This past weekend's broadcast of "This American Life" reminds us all that there are good and bad sides to trying to research art. If you go to this site and click on the "free download," you can hear about a research project to create the least and most preferred paintings and the least and most preferred songs. The songs are hilarious - fast forward the player to the 13 minute mark to hear this part of the broadcast.

If you click through to the site of the people who created the songs, they describe the 'most unwanted song' according to research:

"The most unwanted music is over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos, and features timbres of extremely high and low pitch, with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition. The most unwanted orchestra was determined to be large, and features the accordion and bagpipe (which tie at 13% as the most unwanted instrument), banjo, flute, tuba, harp, organ, synthesizer (the only instrument that appears in both the most wanted and most unwanted ensembles). An operatic soprano raps and sings atonal music, advertising jingles, political slogans, and 'elevator' music, and a children's choir sings jingles and holiday songs. The most unwanted subjects for lyrics are cowboys and holidays, and the most unwanted listening circumstances are involuntary exposure to commercials and elevator music. Therefore, it can be shown that if there is no covariance--someone who dislikes bagpipes is as likely to hate elevator music as someone who despises the organ, for example--fewer than 200 individuals of the world's total population would enjoy this piece"

I have to say that in this case research does seem predictive. But the song is completely hilarious.

It's time to start catching up with the holiday format changes.

Clear Channel's new "93.9 MIA," the former Smooth Jazz outlet WLVE (Love 94) Miami, hadn't been on the air for more than a few minutes when various friends and message board posters began referring to it as "WKTU South." If anything, though, it's more like its New York sister from five years ago -- definitely older and more AC-flavored than the current 'KTU, which ceded the '70s disco to sister WLTW a while ago.

Maybe the most surprising thing about the new 93.9 MIA is that some of the music it plays was, well, M.I.A. in Miami for so many years, since Clear Channel's first Jammin' Oldies station WMGE went away. Miami was (along with New York and Montreal) the city where disco was never a dirty word, even during the reactionary early '80s, and Jammin' Oldies probably could always have found a place there.

South Florida is one of those truly different markets with a lot of its own hits -- even in this era when few markets have local hits on a regular basis. Consider that the biggest hits on Rhythmic WPOW (Power 96) are Kid Cudi's "Day & Night" (getting some airplay elsewhere now) and Macallee King's "Frosty," which hasn't yet spread widely elsewhere. 93.9 MIA isn't yet the treasure trove of local records that WMGE was, but there are a number of freestyle titles (e.g., Coro's "Can't Let You Go") that you won't hear on Rhythmic AC everywhere.

Here's "93.9 - MIA" at 7:20 p.m. on its Christmas launch day:

Michael Jackson, "Rock With You"
Cyndi Lauper, "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"
Jordin Sparks & Chris Brown, "No Air"
Chic, "Le Freak"
Sean Paul, "Temperature"
Prince, "Kiss"
Four Seasons, "December 1963 (1994 Remix)"
Next, "Too Close"
Cover Girls, "Because Of You"
Thelma Houston, "Don't Leave Me This Way"
Puff Daddy, "I'll Be Missing You"
Bee Gees, "Tragedy"
Justin Timberlake, "Rock Your Body"
Everything But The GIrl, "Missing"
Eddy Grant, "Electric Avenue"
Ne-Yo, "Closer"
Amber, "This Is Your Night"
Donna Summer, "Heaven Knows"

Recently, the Lexington [Ky.] Herald-Leader reported that the market's two News/Talk stations were engaged in a promo war over the size of their news departments. Clear Channel's WLAP has one on-air newsperson. Cumulus rival WVLK continues to run promos claiming the largest local news team, "even after the early November layoffs of two of its three news reporters." Both stations cite their partnership with local TV stations as effectively extending the size of the news team; the paper contends that NPR affiliate WUKY is actually the largest radio news staff in the city. There's some cold comfort here in knowing that the size of the news department is something that a radio station still thinks would matter to a small-market listener; it's just something stations are less likely to be able to deliver.

And former WERV Chicago PD Matt DuBiel had this to say about how Chicago stations responded to a recent storm/traffic crisis.

At my house we get DirecTV, and I have it rigged up so that I can play audio from the television on various speakers throughout the house. So, for several years we had MusicChoice, and then XM got the contract maybe three years ago.

When we had families over, the XM channel of choice was Flight 26 - essentially a Modern AC. It worked very well for all ages.

Well, recently we had several families over but the stations had changed to the new XM-Sirius merged lineup. Suddenly, Flight 26 was unavailable to me - there was a whole new lineup of unfamiliar names and stations.

I clicked around with my TV remote - and landed on Channel 51 "The Coffee House." The adults repaired to the living room.

Soon thereafter someone stopped the conversation to ask: "What radio station do you have on? I have loved every song I've heard." The rest of the group - all adults in their 40s -- quickly began to discuss how much they liked the mix of songs they were hearing.

Essentially the station is what many Triple-A stations have been playing on their Sunday morning acoustic specialty shows - 24 hours per day. The channel is a mix of familiar singer-songwriter hits, unfamiliar currents from some known and some unknown acts, and a nice sprinkling of covers - acoustic re-interpretations of famous songs.

And it makes me wonder - why hasn't this been tried (at least recently) as a commercial radio format?

Many readers will instantly think of stations from the 1970s like KNX-FM Los Angeles and WBBM-FM Chicago - the singer-songwriter driven stations of the early FM era. But in the new singer-songwriter era, the genre has landed, but never taken up permanent residence at Modern AC, Triple-A and the handful of commercial American stations. So while a KINK Portland has elements of this music, this is still something else.

So take a look at the slightly Christmas-tinged sample hour below and ask yourself if there just might the makings of a format here. This would be at-work friendly, at-home friendly, and something that could lure adults back to the radio at night besides "Delilah" - essentially all the things that 'Smooth Jazz' has been trying to be for years, but from an entirely different angle.

2008 was a great year for the type of singer-songwriter music that might have otherwise not have made it to the radio. But if there's not another "I'm Yours," "Love Song," or "Bubbly" next year, it won't be because there aren't artists supplying that type of song or audiences who want to hear them - it will be because other formats go in a different direction. So why not a full-time home for singer-songwriters?

Please deliver your comments on this below - is this a potential commercial radio format in 2009?

Here's the channel at 10 a.m. this morning:
Dave Matthews Band, "Crush" (Acoustic)
Ben Harper, "In The Colors"
Jem, "Maybe I'm Amazed"
John Mayer, "Neon"
Joshua Radin, "Brand New Day"
Sixpence None the Richer, "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"
David Gray, "Sail Away "
Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours" (Acoustic)
Freedy Johnson, "Bad Reputation"
Ray Charles & Norah Jones,"Here We Go Again"
Ryan Adams, "Evergreen"
Katie Melua, "Just Like Heaven"
Steve Earle, "Sparkle and Shine"
Catherine Feeny, "Christmas Song"
Elliott Smith, "Somebody That I Used to Know"
KT Tunstall, "Suddenly I See" (Acoustic)
Josh Rouse, "1972"
Jewel, "Foolish Games"

A few years ago, there was a public radio piece on the death of the instrumental. Once a staple of Top 40 radio, instrumentals existed in dribs-and-drabs through the mid-'80s. (Remember "Axel F"? Jan Hammer's "Miami Vice Theme"?) There haven't been many in recent years. Even instrumentalists like Jim Brickman usually end up drafting a guest vocalist. And while some historians think the instrumental was doomed about the time that music stations no longer had to back-time to a top-of-the-hour network newscast, there's more to it than that:

TV shows, a source of instrumentals like "Miami Vice" or "Theme From 'S.W.A.T.," stopped doing their own themes and began using outside, already recognizable music.

Jazz artists and producers, who gave us hits like Herb Alpert's "Rise," Chuck Mangione's "Give It All You Got," and Kenny G.'s "Songbird," eventually had Smooth Jazz to accommodate their music and no longer had to come up with the song that might work at Top 40 or R&B.

Dance music became a steady supplier of electronic instrumentals in the late '90s (e.g., Darude's "Sandstorm"). Then producer-driven dance music moved away from the pop mainstream as well. (There's still plenty of dance music on the radio, of course, thanks to "Hot 'N' Cold" and "Don't Stop The Music," but it's coming from mainstream artists, not producers who might come up with an instrumental).

But you still hear instrumentals during the holiday season. I was newly reminded of that this afternoon hearing WAEB-FM (B104) Allentown, Pa., playing Trans-Siberian Orchestra's "Wizards In Winter" and segueing it into "Whatever You Like" by T.I. (That segue is part of a long proud history of variety on B104 that, by itself, would barely rate a mention, by the way.)

So I wondered: Are Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra merely receiving holiday exemptions of the same sort that go to Andy Williams and Burl Ives at holiday time? Or are listeners more receptive to the right instrumental than you might think?

Listeners have been exposed to more instrumentals lately because of "Guitar Hero." They've been to YouTube this week to check out Joe Satriani's "If I Could Fly," the song that may or may not have been the inspiration for "Viva La Vida." And, of course, in today's producer-driven pop world, many hits are signed by a label as instrumental tracks and then deployed as actual songs later.

So could the right instrumental end up on pop radio next year? Your thoughts welcome.

I'm listening to WBTT (the Beat) Ft. Myers, Fla., right now., and night jock "The Big O" just set up a new song something like this:

"Remember the first time we played 'Low' by Flo Rida before anybody else, and it blew up. Well, this song reminds me of hearing 'Low' for the first time."

The song in question was "She Freaky" by Unk. And while comparing anything to "Low" is setting the bar pretty high, Unk is sounding pretty good to me on this first listen -- helped considerably by the recommendation.

"This reminds me of the first time I heard ..." is hardly a new bit. And it's not one you can use very often. But it's surprising how long it's been since I've heard it. Or how rare it is to hear this sort of new music advocacy as opposed to "here's the latest from." Or how rare it is to hear it coming from a jock instead of a new music stager. Or how rare it is in the industry to have anything other than a new superstar release introduced to you on the radio -- as opposed to a sampler or a Website.

It's proof that recommendation still works. And still sets radio apart.

While you can't always count on music radio stations to acknowledge the news these days, I didn't have to wait long to hear a Detroit radio station respond to the Senate's rejection of a congressional bailout plan for the Big Three U.S. automakers last night. Within minutes of turning on Hot AC WDVD, morning hosts Blaine, Lisa and Allyson were discussing the lack of a bailout and the new hopes that the Bush administration would find other funds. ("He needs to do something to fix that legacy," one commented.) A few minutes later, there was a parody of the "Real Men of Genius" spots assailing "Mr. Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Congressman Guy" -- the hypocrisy being willingness to bail out financial institutions. The bit ended with "WDVD -- Detroit, Michigan -- Home of the American auto-industry."

Earlier this year, the music business watched hopefully as Kid Rock's year-old "Rock 'N' Roll Jesus" album returned to the upper reaches of the Billboard 200 chart, propelled by "All Summer Long," the hit single that he would not make available on iTunes, or as a standalone download. A few months later, Kid Rock's label tried a similar experiment by pulling Estelle's then-hit "American Boy," which was selling single downloads but not albums. The effect on albums sales was minimal; (a sound-alike single quickly moved in to fill the void). A few weeks later, the Estelle song was available as a download again.

Yesterday, news broke that NBC was planning a nightly 10-11 p.m. strip for Jay Leno after he turns over the reins of The Tonight Show to Conan O'Brien. The news stories have touched on the relative savings in putting even a big money talent in place of five hours of scripted programming, and on the difficulty of getting traction with any new show in a 10 p.m. hour that consumers have increasingly given over to their time-shifted programming.

Now consider Kid Rock, whose original stardom came at the relative dawn of downloading. Those listeners who came in on the cusp of the "music should be free" era, or at least the "only pay for the one good song" paradigm, remember him as somebody whose full albums they actually owned. To be fair, "All Summer Long" was a bigger hit than "American Boy"; also, "Rock 'N' Roll Jesus" was a year old and some consumers were familiar with previous singles, so paying for a whole album wasn't a complete leap of faith.

The commonality here is that even in an era of changing consumption, people can default to some of their old habits. But it's easier with grandfathered content. Leno, unlike a new series, must be perceived as still having the ability to compel appointment viewing, although it's still a leap to change that appointment from 11:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Kid Rock is somebody who listeners knew they'd want a whole album from -- even if they couldn't just download it from iTunes Music Store.

NBC had the unusual situation of too many superstars and a situation where even a major talent could be deployed to save money., That's hard to extrapolate to the local radio station forced to swap heritage talent for syndicated (or jockless) programming. But with even more evidence that old habits transcend new usage, while new ones are harder to create, there are chilling implications for radio here, unless the same sort of mold-breaking that could bring Leno to 10 p.m. can create some similarly creative solutions for radio's existing assets.

We've previously noted that much of mainstream music radio failed to capitalize on (or even just reflect the interest level of their listeners in) the 2008 Presidential Election. By stark contrast, there's Inner City's heritage Urban AC WBLS New York which has ran promos in the days after the election saluting the President-Elect and identifying the station as "Where Barack Loves Soul." WBLS has also added a front-page-of-its-Website link to transition team news. And it has dubbed its upcoming station show, "The Yes We Can Holiday Jam."

If your favorite part of a Triple-A station is the daily 10 at 10, you may have already discoveredKINK Portland, Ore.'s 40th anniversary celebration of 40 years in 40 days, which started in mid-November. For those who don't, "KINK XL" is up to 1987 today as it works its way forward to the present. Here's the station, as monitored from CBS Radio's new AOL IM app, at 7:30 this morning:

INXS, "Never Tear Us Apart"
Santana, "Bella"
Pink Floyd, "One Slip"
Grateful Dead, "Touch of Grey"
U2, "With or Without You"
Robbie Robertson, "Somewhere Down The Crazy River"
George Michael, "Faith" (the one song that stumped the title/artist screen)
John Mellencamp, "Check It Out"
Chris Rea, "Let's Dance"
Fleetwood Mac, "Little Lies"
Lyle Lovett, "L.A. County"
Sting, "Be Still My Beating Heart"

Over the last year, Edison president Larry Rosin and I have been in a number of client meetings with stations that are facing a similar scenario. The station has made improvements over the last year that haven't yet registered with potential listeners. And there is no money for outside marketing. At this point, Larry will explain that when major advertisers want to compel consumers to try a product again, they do some sort of free sampling. So why not go commercial free for a week? At that point, the PD nervously looks over at the GSM, at least five seconds of silence ensues, and the GM announces, "Well, that's not going to happen."

So it's worth noting that Clear Channel's WUBL (94.9 the Bull) Atlanta launched into a week of what it's billing as "3,000 songs in a row: no commercials, no talk," as first reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Rodney Ho. That's a familiar stunt for the launch of a new radio station. It's less so, as the above stories demonstrate, for an existing property.

WUBL just parted ways with its morning man, so it would be look at a commercial free week and wonder if it portends a transition to further jocklessness -- particularly in this environment. But Ho reports that the rest of the staff is "apparently still there." (And besides, as we've all seen recently, you can lay off your jocks without going commercial free.) Ho speculates that the intent is to attract attention to a station that has evolved since its launch and had disappointing preliminary PPMs -- which would make this free trial week something happening for the right reasons.

In the mid-to-late '60s, it was easy to identify Bill Drake as the single most influential figure in radio programming. By forcing the most possible content into the least possible space, Drake, who died yesterday at 71, didn't just change the sound of radio at the time, but set the agenda for the next 25 years of radio programming development. When Buzz Bennett became the most influential man in radio programming theory for a time in the '70s, it was by further streamlining and intensifying Drake's formula. When Scott Shannon assumed that mantle in the '80s, it was in part by referencing Drake's showmanship -- a debt he has always acknowledged freely.

Somewhere in the early '90s, the notion of trying-to-say-the-most-in-the-least-amount-of-time lost its currency with many programmers, propelled by the market-after-market ascent of Howard Stern. By the end of the decade, the free-thinking PD would brag that he had actually encouraged his morning show to talk more, or get rid of those dumb ol' records that weren't as good as their content, 'cause, hey, anybody could play music.

During that time, Drake enjoyed a comeback helping programmers, some of them his original protégés, build Oldies stations that channeled the sound of his '60s Top 40 powerhouses. But in recent years, you couldn't quote Drake in a radio station conference room and be certain that every person present would know who you were talking about. Equally dismaying, for the last decade, it's been hard to say who the most influential person in radio programming was. Radio's streamlining continues through this fall's daily layoffs, but anybody who tells you that it's in the service of programmers, not bankers or analysts, is merely putting a brave face on things.

At least one of my more cynical counterparts is likely to look at Drake's passing during radio's lowest time in many years and declare the end of two eras. I would instead refer readers to the changes that have taken place in the last year since the first PPM ratings results came back. All it took was a few months of results from two markets and programmers were jolted back to the realization that trying to cover the most possible content in the least amount of time wasn't such a quaint notion after all.

So not every programmer in 2008 might be a Drake disciple, or be able to channel him effectively. Few will have talent who can deliver a Real Don Steele or Robert W. Morgan-level content in short blasts. But many have already found themselves brought back to his programming fundamentals. And until somebody else steps in to fill the void, that makes Bill Drake the most influential person in radio programming, again.

For another Drake appreciation, click here or here.

During some recent focus groups I came across one of the oldest radio pet peeves and I have to call the radio-industry out on it.

"You know what I don't get," a woman asked, "how come radio stations will say 'here's the latest from Carrie Underwood' when they are playing a song on an album that came out over a year ago?"

Good question. Why do we insist that we are playing a 'brand new' song when any fan of that artist is entirely aware that the song is not at all new? It's just the latest release into the radio bloodstream of currents - and the listeners usually know that.

Instead, why aren't we having our DJs sound smart? Why aren't they saying: "Here's the fourth hit song to come from Carrie Underwood's 'Carnival Ride' album"?

This is good for the listener - they learn something.

This is good for the station - the DJ will sound like a smart musical tour guide instead of an out-of-touch liner-reader.

And it is good for radio's compadres in the music business - the artist and his or her label - because it would make someone understand how many hits can be found on one album at a time when a full CD is becoming a very discretionary purchase.

Radio's listeners are vastly smarter and more sophisticated than we often give them credit for. Let's show our audiences that our DJs are at least as smart and well-informed as the audience is.

For most of this decade, veteran programmer Maxx Myrick has been in the jazz business at XM Satellite Radio. But when he left there last week, following Sirius XM's further realignments, he instead wrote me a format brief on behalf of the blues/Southern Soul format that has flourished in the deep south for years but rarely gets national press. "It is the most underserved format in America with a market of at least 13 million in just 13 out of 23 states with double-digit black populations," he wrote. So since we're running a lot of sample hours lately, I asked for his.

Tyrone Davis, "Can I Change My Mind"
Mel Waiters, "Hole In The Wall"
Betty Wright, "Clean Up Woman"
Big Money, "Da Twist"
Bobby Blue Bland, "Stormy Monday Blues"
Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)"
Los Lobos & Mavis Staples, "Someday"
Sheba Potts-Wright, "Cruise Control"
Johnnie Taylor, "Cheaper To Keep Her"
Sonny Boy Williamson, "Bring It On Home"
Chaka Khan, "Foolish Fool"
Joss Stone, "The Chokin' Kind"
Grover Washington, Jr., "Soulful Strut"
Mick Hucknall, "I Wouldn't Treat A Dog (The Way You Treated Me)"
Ike & Tina Turner, "Dust My Broom"
Otis Redding, "Mr. Pitiful"
Ray Charles w/John Legend, "Touch"
Bobby Womack, "Fact Of Life (Medley)"
Syleena Johnson, "I Am Your Woman"
Muddy Waters, "I Just Want To Make Love To You"
Sir Charles Jones, "Friday"
Beyoncé, "At Last"
Impressions, "It's Alright"
James Brown, "Papa Don't Take No Mess"
Sam Moore, Keb' Mo, & Angie Stone, "Wang Dang Doodle"

If all the titles aren't familiar to you, Myrick's take on the format is not unlike the Southern Soul version of what many programmers have tried to do with Adult Standards in the last 3-4 years, mixing the crossover gold of the genre with the recent practitioners who are lesser known (outside their base) and the contemporary artists who dip their toe into the genre every now and then (like Rod Stewart and standards). And you can't deny the timeliness of the blues.

Okay, so the above is a headline that you could have used any time in the past 15 years. But this week's Ross On Radio suggested that Taylor Swift and other generational change in listener preferences might finally make a younger Country format possible. Readers had a lot to say. See the article and their comments here. And CMT's Chet Flippo contributes to the debate here.

If you've followed this page for a while, you know that every now and then I find a new station that goes deep on R&B Oldies. There's rarely more than one of them streaming at any given time and it's never long before somebody either comes in and cuts the library or changes the format. So I was glad to have the tip from the Radio Stream Directory people about KRJO (Old School 1680) Monroe, La., a recent convert from gospel (which, as of today, is still what's on the Website).

Here's Old School 1680 around 10:30 this morning. At least two of these songs were new to me and few show up at Urban AC with any frequency outside weekend specialty programming.

O'Jays, "I'll Be Sweeter Tomorrow"
Patti Labelle, "If Only You Knew"
Brook Benton, "Hotel Happiness"
Bo Kirkland & Ruth Davis, "Easy Loving"
James Carr, "Pouring Water On A Drowning Man"
Chairmen of the Board, "Pay To The Piper"
Whispers, "A Mother For My Children"
War, "Why Can't We Be Friends"
Masqueraders, "I Ain't Got To Love Nobody Else"
Stevie Wonder, "Signed Sealed Delivered (I'm Yours)"
Sam & Dave, "You Don't Know Like I Know"
Jackson 5, "ABC"
Earth Wind & Fire, "Reasons"
Bee Gees, "How Deep Is Your Love"
Sam Cooke, "Only Sixteen"
Debarge, "Love Me In A Special Way"
Temptations, "I Can't Get Next To You"
El Chicano, "Tell Her She's Lovely"
Major Harris, "Love Won't Let Me Wait"
Isaac Hayes, "Soulsville"
Exciters, "You Don't Know What You're Missing ('Til It's Gone)"
Gladys Knight & Pips, "The Nitty Gritty"
Dells, "Give Your Baby A Standing Ovation"

We wrote a few months back about WAKY Louisville, Ky., the suburban FM that picked up heritage call letters, offered a longer-than-usual Oldies playlist and managed to outlast Cox's long-running WRKA. WAKY is finally streaming here. Meanwhile, check out John Quincy's tribute to the original WAKY here.

It's ironic that when the news broke about Journal Broadcast Group's longtime Hot AC WKTI Milwaukee becoming Adult Hits "94.5, the Lake" ("what will we play next?"), I was listening to CFWM (Bob FM) Winnipeg, the original Classic Hits/Hot AC hybrid, now 6-1/2 years old (and offering "'80s, '90s and more whatever than ever before").

As a hard-rocking Midwestern market, Milwaukee had always seemed like a logical candidate for a Bob- or Jack-FM, not the least of which was because of WKTI's heritage. In its 32 years with the calls, WKTI had often floated back and forth between Hot AC and CHR, or obscured the line between the two. If you were going to put on a station that played guitar-pop/rock from the '80s and late '70s, you would be drawing heavily on the WKTI legacy (as well as that of rocker WQFM).

Instead, Milwaukee got Clear Channel's equally intriguing WQBW (the Brew), which imaged as an '80s rock station but was drawing on a lot of the same music. Phenomenally successful at first, WQBW was finally forced to go harder by Saga's WHQG (the Hog), although it still plays some of the unusual titles that distinguished the station early on (e.g., Slaughter's "Up All Night," the Kings' "This Beat Goes On/Switchin' to Glide," etc.). Clear Channel also modernized its Oldies WRIT, although that station never crossed the line between Classic Hits and Adult Hits.

Then the Bob- and Jack-FM phenomenon leveled off and it could no longer be guaranteed that every market would get some variant of the format. And some of the original Adult Hits successes began to morph in various ways -- newer, softer, or in the case of Winnipeg, a little harder. But every now and then a market like Pittsburgh that hadn't gotten Adult Hits right away would prove that it could still work if nobody had heard it.

Musically, the new Lake as heard this afternoon is leaning more toward the older, more AC version of the format (similar to Bonneville's early blueprint in Phoenix). While "The Cover of the Rolling Stone" and "Electric Boogie" are on this afternoon's monitors, there are relatively few of the "songs that rarely test" that distinguish some versions of the format. There is a little Bob-style whimsy ('more songs than are available on the Internet") but not a Jack-like level of snark.

There's some irony here. WKTI could have made this move at various times over the last five years without changing its call letters, and while longtime morning team Reitman & Mueller (which dissolved in 2006) were still in the building. The music the new station is playing was already embedded in the old station's DNA. While Journal obviously felt it was better to start over, given the number of changes WKTI had already been through, it still takes some courage in this daunting environment for format changes to walk away from a lucrative brand name.

The challenges here: The market may feel like they've heard this before, because of the Brew. It's also the 20-year home of Saga's WKLH, one of the original Classic Hits outlets. And for various reasons, Adult Hits hasn't worked as well as it could have in Chicago, which also seemed like an obvious place for it.

The positives: It's a good sounding launch. And Journal also switched while WRIT and Hot AC rival WMYX -- two significant competitors -- were in holiday music. Between that and the name change, the switch will definitely get noticed.

Here's the new Lake at 2:30 this afternoon:

Van Halen, "Jump"
Prince, "1999"
Gin Blossoms, "Follow You Down"
Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing In The Dark"
Abba, "Dancing Queen"
Aerosmith, "What It Takes"
Men Without Hats, "Safety Dance"
Sheryl Crow, "A Change Will Do You Good"
America, "A Horse With No Name"
Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Blinded By The Light"
No Doubt, "Hey Baby"
J. Geils Band, "Freeze Frame"
Chicago, "If You Leave Me Now"
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Looking Out My Back Door"
Bryan Adams, "Summer Of '69"
Fleetwood Mac, "Say You Love Me"
Bon Jovi, "Never Say Goodbye"

It's been almost a week since newly minted AC WNUW (Now 97.5) Philadelphia pushed the holiday music button. In some cases, that would be enough to push an incumbent AC to go Christmas as well, making November a loss-leader in hopes of shutting the other guys down. So it's interesting to see WBEB (B101) Philadelphia doing what a lot of other ACs wish they could do in that situation: make a positive out of not going Christmas yet. As recently mentioned, B101's holiday music poll is asking listeners to vote not just on songs but when they want Christmas music to start: right away, Nov. 15, Thanksgiving or Dec. 1. (Dec. 18, the day I usually feel like hearing holiday music, is somehow not an option.) If any station has the holiday image and the authority to pull off "we're waiting on holiday music because you told us to," it's B101. But letting somebody be first in with holiday music is still a scary proposition for many PDs.

In February, when the Presidential election had already made itself a surprise part of pop culture, we did a Super Tuesday dial scan of New York area morning shows to see how they were acknowledging the election. The answer was that they weren't acknowledging primary day very much. As has been custom, there was more exhortations to vote on Urban radio, but little topicality otherwise, beyond the usual "polling places are now open" mentions in a newcast.

But that was before today's voting was dubbed the election of a lifetime. Before this election returned "Saturday Night Live" to the center of pop culture itself. Before the long lines for early voting and long lines again today. So today, we decided to see what kind of presence the election had by streaming a cross-section of radio from across the state of Pennsylvania, the focus of so much attention in the last few days of campaigning. I put special emphasis on those parts of Pennsylvania that resemble the Midwest as much as the Northeast, figuring they'd offer a different picture than the Philadelphia radio I can hear from our Somerville ofrfices.

The day's listening still hewed to the pattern we heard on Super Tuesday. The Urban station we monitored made a big deal of the election. So did the NPR affiliate. The younger-leaning Active Rock station used the election as the springboard for a very good on-air bit. Overall, however, you were more likely to hear about the election during a stopset or a newscast than in the on-air break that preceded it. Here's what a day's worth of listening in 30-to-50 minute increments turned up:

The first station I tuned in was longtime Oldies/Classic Hits outlet WWSW (3WS) Pittsburgh. Two rotating panels on 3WS' Website led to a central Clear Channel election news page. On the air, though, there was no mention of the election. To be fair, there wasn't much jock talk at all, but there was a mention of a Penguins trade and the station's dining deals feature.

I decided to head for small-town Central Pennsylvania and check out Adult Top 40 WQKX (94KX) Sunbury. No mention of the election on the Website here. And for the first half-hour of my visit, the only mention of the election was two ads for local races. Then a local newscast came on at 11 a.m., (impressive in itself), and the first story was broken machines in Northumberland County that were throwing out any vote for a straight party ticket. The second was on a rise in gun sales, which a local dealer attributed to a rise in pre-election anxiety.

The next stop was Urban WAMO-FM Pittsburgh. On WAMO's homepage, one of the rotating lead items encouraged listeners to "roll to the polls." Clicking through got you advice on voting, such as, "if polling machines are broken, it is okay to complete an emergency ballot. Your vote will be counted" and "nothing supporting the candidates should be worn at the polls." Another link took you to Google Maps to find your voting location.

There was a passing mention of election day during the music sweep. But when WAMO did break for spots, the midday host was joined by a representative from the League of Young Voters and an attorney the ACLU Election Protection office. There was another mention of broken machines (no specific location this time) and the oft-heard reminder on Urban stations that "people have died throughout history" for a right to vote that isn't fully appreciated today. The difference this year was the coda: "so it's great to see all the excitement this year."

From there, we went to Top 40 WRTS (Star 104) Erie. Star also devoted two rotating panels to the election: one offered a number to call to find your polling place, the other led to the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania's voter website. The Commonwealth was also running a get-out-the-vote PSA on WRTS in which half the audio kept disappearing to dramatize what 50% voter turnout would sound like. That was followed by an ad promoting the election news coverage of the local Fox affiliate. The one jock nod to the day was to acknowledge "your Election Day edition of the All-Request Lunchbox."

No mention of the election on the Website at Country WFGI (Froggy 95) Johnstown, Pa., (although there were plenty of other civic events: a school visit program and an upcoming Veterans Day). None from the jock either; (I gave the station an hour since I missed at least two potential breaks--one because of buffering). I did hear the state PSA again, though.

Next to the state house and Classic Rock WTPA Harrisburg, Pa. No mention of the election on the homepage or on-air. Most of the on-air real estate went to the station's "Tanks-Giving Song of the Day." One possible clue to the lack of Election Day content: When the Song of the Day finally played, the on-air jock wasn't the person who announced the winner.

Big contrast at Citadel's Active Rock WBSX (979X) Scranton/Wilkes Barre, Pa., which was using Election Day to encourge listeners to "Vote the Rock," a variant on the March Madness or Battle of the Bands contest, pitting off Godsmack vs. the Foo Fighters, then Nirvana vs. Slipknot in the hours I listened. The mood here was, of course, decidedly light (one promo promised "no debates, no ads, no polls..."), but it was at least the level of topicality you might have expected. And the jock eventually did mention the real election, reminding the listeners of the free stuff that merchants were offering voters that day. There was also an election news link on WBSX's website.

After a day of staying away from Philadelphia I swung by WBEB (B101) Philadelphia, which, as I wrote this, was playing John Mayer's "Waiting for the World to Change." B101's midday host did mention Election Day, urging listeners "after you've voted today, vote again" in the station's on-line Christmas music poll. (Listeners could also vote on when they wanted to hear Christmas music.) "The polls are open anytime," listeners were told, "your vote counts." (There was no mention of the election itself on B101's homepage.)

I ended the day's listening at non-commercial WXPN Philadelphia, which was in the syndicated "World Cafe" where host David Dye has devoted the last half-hour to songs with political connections, from Bill Clinton's use of Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" to Frank Sinatra's "High Hopes" (JFK's campaign song) to Jesse Winchester rewriting "Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt" to mention Pierre Trudeau. WXPN's Website has a "Decision Day" link to NPR News and its photo of the day is a wire-service picture of a voter casting an absentee ballot under a giant American flag.

Again, we weren't expecting gravity here, or for p.m. drivers to become pundits. And the story obviously would have been a little different had we focused on All-News or Talk radio. But there was surprisingly little topicality, even in the heartland sections of the state that were courted so vigorously last weekend. To toggle back from a music radio site to a news site was to feel like you were rejoining the day's major story, not merely experiencing it on a different platform.

Nearly five years ago, KDAY Los Angeles got a lot of attention, but never managed to get long-term traction, with a gold-based Hip-Hop format (and the call letters of a revered Hip-Hop-driven AM station of the 1980). KDAY went more current, while Classic Hip-Hop became the province of HD-2 channels and satellite networks, but the generation that grew up with '90s Hip-Hop has long believed in its potential; this week, Classic Hip Hop picks up another terrestrial champion in Phoenix-area KNRJ (the Beat), until recently a dance station.

The new Beat's music spans the late '80s to the mid-'00s. (Those latter songs remind you that, while Cam'ron's "Oh Boy" or Missy Elliott's "Gossip Folks" aren't all that long ago, they've still been gone from the radio for a while.) At a time of format change conservatism, it's a gutsy move. Besides the failure of the format to take root in the past, there's a lot of Rhythmic radio already. Phoenix has two Hip-Hop stations (KKFR and KZON), adult Rhythmic KMVA and KNRJ's "old school" sister station KAJM (Mega 104.3).

One of KDAY's issues is likely to still be an issue for KNRJ. As with pre-Nirvana Alternative music, there just aren't that many songs from the era before Dr. Dre's "The Chronic" that really took hold with a lot of listeners. In Los Angeles, a lot of the original KDAY classics existed only on a 1-2 share AM. In Phoenix, some of them weren't on commercial radio to begin with -- unless they crossed to one of the market's three late '80s rhythmic-leaning Top 40s.

That said, five years is often the difference between format folly and format genius, as evidenced by the gold-based Alternative format that finally got traction at WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia -- four years after the initial format rush, in this case. We've also seen not just the first generation of Hip-Hop fans, but now the fans of '90s hip-hop move into the 25-34 cell, as well as evidence that some of the listeners below them may not be as enamored of Hip-Hop. This is certainly a station that will be of interest to many readers, and I'm interested in your comments after you've heard them.

Here's the Beat at 1 p.m. today:

Ice Cube, "You Can Do It"
A Tribe Called Quest, "Find A Way"
N2Deep, "Back To The Hotel"
David Banner, "Like A Pimp"
2pac, "Do For Love"
MC Lyte, "Poor Georgie"
2nd II None, "If You Want It"
Pharcyde, "Running"
Jermaine Dupri w/Jay-Z, "Money Ain't A Thang"
Cam'ron, "Oh Boy"

You might have seen last Friday's story where Britain's commercial broadcasters complained about their national Top 40 competitor, BBC Radio 1, and the average age of its listener, 33. That, they say, is in violation of Radio 1's licensed target age of 15-to-29-year-olds.

Commercial broadcasters have been complaining for several years ever since Radio 1 and its very successful Chris Moyles breakfast show began picking up steam, making new problems for heritage Top 40s like London's Capital FM. Commercial radio has been doing a little better in the U.K. over the last year, but that doesn't stop the Top 40s (which would really be Hot ACs here) from trying to keep Radio 1 out of their lane.

From an American perspective though, what's happening with BBC Radio 1 isn't as much an effort to wriggle out of its remit, as part-and-parcel with the aging of the format here. In a PPM world, WHTZ (Z100) New York is now No. 1 or 2 in 25-54 many weeks. The mother/daughter coalition has helped both certain CHR records and overall music styles test well over age 35. And I recently saw one heritage mainstream CHR -- once known for its particularly aggressive music -- where the average age was now 30.

There are a few things happening here. For one, there are more available adults with more available time to listen. And the ones above 25 are the ones who are still (relatively) loyal to the radio. The mother/daughter coalition is more possible these days because the teens that wouldn't be caught dead listening to mom's stations are the ones who have selected themselves out of the radio audience anyway.

Also, Top 40 is pretty mom-friendly right now, even with hits from T.I. and Flo Rida (the latter of whom is pretty much filling in for Nelly this year as the all-ages party hits rapper). There's a lot of medium-weight music from Ne-Yo, Leona Lewis, Jordin Sparks, Jesse McCartney, Jason Mraz, and David Archuleta -- much of it with the "American Idol" seal of endorsement. There are certainly pure top 40 records now ("Womanizer," "Let It Rock," "Paper Planes," "Dangerous"), but with the possible exception of the gunshots in "Paper Planes," there's not a lot that anybody's mom would consider harsh.

There's also not an obvious alternative for a 32-year-old listener right now. Hot AC is playing Katy Perry, Leona Lewis, Jordin Sparks, Pink, and Rihanna. And the gold-based format that might galvanize a 1994 high-school graduate hasn't really materialized yet. Z100's gold can include Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z, and Pras' "Geto Supastar," because nobody else quite knows what to do with those songs. We'll have more about that topic to follow shortly.

A few weeks ago, a Ross On Radio column asked what format would be the one that spoke to listeners in this time of economic uncertainty.

Here's one. JobRadio.fm has an interesting genealogy, descended from a job hunting Website and then a podcast that grew out of that. While there are a dismaying number of broadcasters right now who could use its advice, there's also a lot here for HR personnel and managers.

Have you noticed that we haven't written about a lot of format changes in these pages lately? That's because they've slowed to a relative crawl, particularly those that don't involve moving an AM Talk station to FM or otherwise deploying existing stations on to another frequency. The economy is one obvious culprit, but we look at others in this week's Ross On Radio.

A few other things heard this week that rate a mention:

* The launch of Entercom's new Classic Hits WKQK Memphis, the former Rhythmic AC WSNA. Some sort of Oldies or Classic Hits has been an obvious hole in this market for a while, but it's particularly nice to hear top 40 veteran Willy B. in afternoons. (Market veterans Steve Conley and Karen Perrin are on board for mornings).

Here's the first 80 minutes of WKQK:

Bob Seger, "Old Time Rock & Roll"
Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction"
Earth WInd & Fire, "September"
Eagles, "Life In The Fast Lane"
Billy Joel, "Uptown Girl"
Manfred Mann's Earth Band, "Blinded By The Light"
Grand Funk Railroad, "Loco-Motion"
Commodores, "Lady (You Bring Me Up)"
David Bowie, "Fame"
Chicago, "Feelin' Stronger Every Day"
Bee Gees, "More Than A Woman"
Starship, "We Built This City"
Elton John, "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting"
America, "Sister Golden Hair"
Ides Of March, "Vehicle"
Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "Let It Ride"
Gary Numan, "Cars"
Yvonne Elliman, "If I Can't Have You"
Electric Light Orchestra, "Evil Woman"
U2, "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For"

* As long as we're giving farewell tributes this week, Beau Raines did a great job helping to mainstream WKQK's sister outlet KQMT (the Mountain) Denver, while keeping the essence of its initial appeal as a deep cuts Classic Rocker. I was glad that I got a chance to hear them earlier this week. They're worth checking out, particularly around lunchtime when you can hear "Barrel Of Monkeys," the show where listeners have to suggest a song that begins with the last letter of the previous song title.

* "Oh Wow" Songs of the week: "Diamonds and Pearls" by Prince on WISX (My 106.1) Philadelphia; Madonna's "Deeper And Deeper" on Swedish Cityradion 102.7. Cityradion, by the way, is one of those broad European Hot ACs that are becoming rarer. If you appreciate "Sweet Home Alabama" and Eric Benet on the same radio station, be sure to hear them.

There was a time when knowing the word "playlist" meant implied that you somehow had knowledge of the radio business. In fact, when Broadcasting Magazine made a short-lived attempt to do radio airplay charts in the '70s with a feature called "The Playlist," figuring out what that term meant may have been the first "inside" thing I knew as a sixth-grader about how radio stations were programmed.

Now, with the release of "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist," the word has become common currency enough for a major motion picture title. It follows the release of a Babyface album called "Playlist," the Robbins label dance series, "Perfect Playlist," and of course, years of references to playlists on iTunes. The "Playlist," billed that way, is now a staple of radio station Websites as well.

You can also thank a decade of scathing consumer press coverage of radio -- peaking with the frenzy of stories praising satellite radio. There were a lot of references to radio playlists there, usually modified by "restrictive" or "corporate" or "homogenized."

Despite this, the "playlist" has emerged with its honor intact. Of course, the problem is that listeners now think of it as something they would choose for themselves. So if it's okay to have a playlist, can radio use it to reclaim the recommendation franchise?

If one of the signs of the "next hot format" is that broadcasters race each other to put it on within a market, then this should definitely be brought to your attention. Late last month, BMP Radio and Univision both launched Latin CHR stations in Austin, Texas, within days of each other. BMP blew up the second rhythmic format on KXBT (the Beat) to simulcast KXXS (Digital 92.5), giving it more of a ful-market signal. Univision replaced "Recuerdo," the Spanish-language Oldies format on KINV, with KHZS (107.7 Hitz FM).

In doing so, Austin joined several other Texas markets with CHR battles, including McAllen/Brownsville (BMP vs. Entravision), San Antonio (BMP vs. Univision), and the Univision vs. Clear Channel battle in Houston, where the PPM success of KLOL (Mega 101) shoved Latin CHR into the spotlight.

While the format always had its early champions, including Entravision's "Super Estrella" KSSE Los Angeles, and consultant Bob Perry, who helped develop the Mexican CHR brand "Digital" there and in the U.S., it was regarded for years as a niche: first a victim of the perception that younger Hispanics wanted only the English language hits, then upstaged by the explosion in Reggaeton, which proved that to not be the case. It was only when Reggaeton cooled off that stations like KLOL began to fill the void with poppier artists. And even 18 months ago, the suggestion that there might be a Latin CHR hole in a market often ran up against the buzzsaw questions of format innovation: "Is there really enough music?" and "Who else is doing it?"

Latin CHR was also hamstrung for years by a tendency to default to the most adult possible music in the category: the ballads that could as easily be on a Spanish AC. The texture still isn't blisteringly young sounding; (then again, neither is Radio Disney). But a discernable difference has become noticeable over the years, particularly as the '80s synth flavors of Latin pop (which have existed since, well, the '80s and never really gone away) find more of a foothold. The U.S. Digital stations don't stream, but the Univision stations and KLOL are worth hearing.

One of the previously discussed frustrations of the holiday format's rise is that as its hits became apparent over the years, a lot of the R&B holiday music I grew up with disappeared. So when Bonneville's WMVN St. Louis, flipped to Christmas music as a lead-in to a format change, I dutifully threw them on this morning. But I also decided to find an all-R&B Christmas format to listen to, which turned out to be AOL's R&B Holiday channel. Interesting to note that the latter wasn't that different from the AC holiday format as we've come to know it over the last decade: an emphasis on standards with just a few contemporary things (and, as you'd expect, a little more from R&B Gospel acts). Not so surprising -- it's hard to get away from the holiday hits -- but I was still hoping to hear "Santa's Rap" by Treacherous Three show up.

Here's AOL's R&B Holiday channel as heard today:

Kimberly Locke, "The Christmas Song"
Mariah Carey, "Jesus Oh What A Wonderful Child"
Emotions, "What Do The Lonely Do At Christmas"
Kirk Franklin, "Thank You For Your Child"
Luther Vandross, "My Favorite Things"
Donny Hathaway, "This Christmas"
Vanessa Williams, "I'll Be Home For Christmas"
Boyz II Men, "Let It Snow"
Peabo Bryson, "What Child Is This"
Jackson 5, "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus"
Yolanda Adams, "Born This Day"
Take 6, "Oh! He is Christmas"
Gladys Knight & Pips, "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

And, for purposes of comparison, here's WMVN at 11:35 local time:

Michael Buble, "The Christmas Song"
Gene Autry, "Rudolph, The Red-Nosed Reindeer"
Neil Diamond, "Silent Night"
Pat Benatar, "Christmas In America"
Andy Williams, "Happy Holidays/It's The Holiday Season"
Celine Dion, "O Holy Night"
Kenny Loggins, "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas"
Tony Bennett, "White Christmas"
John Lennon, "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)"
Carpenters, "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

A few months ago, longtime CFNY (Edge 102.1) Toronto PD Alan Cross transferred to senior PD of owner Corus Entertainment's Splice Interactive Media. Yesterday, the Canadian group broadcaster unveiled its new music discovery Website, ExploreMusic. The Website is tied to a half-hour daily syndicated rock radio show hosted by Cross. As radio looks for ways to hold on to the music recommendation franchise, Explore promises "real people with real passion and real opinions about music," instead of "predictive algorithms" and "musical robots." Cross also notes that retailer HMV has signed on as a national sponsor for a year while iTunes is an official music partner.

Every now and then, when radio people talk about formats, somebody makes the only-half-joking comment that in the future, all stations will be either some form of AC or some form of Classic Rock.

But there's some serious evidence for that from Rafe Gomez, who until recently, was the producer/host of a five-year-old syndicated mix show heard in 22 markets, "The Groove Boutique," targeted at Smooth Jazz stations. When WQCD (CD101.9) New York dropped Smooth Jazz, "Groove Boutique" lost its largest market and its syndicator.

So it's telling that Gomez is readying a return with "Rockmixx" -- to hear his Classic Rock mixes/mashups, click here.

It had been clear for a while that the new Classic Hits format (the one we used to know as "Oldies") was becoming more like the old Classic Hits format (the one that bordered on Classic Rock) as its musical center nudged further into the '70s. That meant more Fleetwood Mac/Billy Joel and less R&B. But it was still a surprise to look up this week and see King Harvest's "Dancing in the Moonlight" -- the type of '70s song that had disappeared from the radio for years -- getting more airplay than Aretha Franklin's "Respect." For more on this topic, and some interesting comments (including one from a member of King Harvest!) check out one of two new Ross On Radio columns this week. (The other one is on which formats can be expected to perform well in tough times.)

It's always interesting how a given sound goes from being too weird or aggressive for the radio to being heard everywhere, and which artists end up making it possible. Recently, we had the slew of Timbaland-associated hits that sounded like the early '00s underground "electroclash" movement, but my favorite example comes from the late '80s when Samantha Fox's "I Wanna Have Some Fun" beat out many more "credible" dance songs to become the first real example of the Chicago house sound on the radio. Usually the lag time between underground and ubiquitous is about two years.

So it's worth a nod here to Goldfrapp, whose 2006 single "Ooh La La," which got European airplay but never made it to the radio mainstream here, has trace elements in no less than four current singles: Britney Spears' "Womanizer," Christina Aguilera's "Keeps Getting Better," Shiny Toy Guns' "Ricochet," and Fall Out Boy's "I Don't Care" (which also sounds a little like Depeche Mode's "Personal Jesus").

You can find various other blog entries comparing each or a few of these songs to Goldfrapp, but I don't think anybody has yet cited all four of them in the same place. It's not news that you can find a lot of songs with a similar feel on radio at any given time -- I first read about it in the early '80s in relation to all the songs that sounded like Michael McDonald and Kenny Loggins -- but there's often a common producer or collaborator involved.

Then there's Jason Mraz's fast-breaking "I'm Yours," which has a similar appeal to another song that many people have heard, but not on the radio.

Between 1946 and 1949, Julia Lee & Her Boy Friends had nine top 10 R&B hits, two of them No. 1, with titles like "King Size Papa," "Gotta Gimme Whatcha Got," "Snatch And Grab It," "You Ain't Got It No More," and "I Didn't Like It The First Time." (The double entendre of the last song is given away by its subtitle, "The Spinach Song.") "Snatch And Grab It" -- the subtitle here is "Opportunity Knocks But Once" -- was No. 1 for 12 weeks, but for many, Lee exists only as an intriguing entry in Joel Whitburn's "Top R&B Singles" book somewhere between Jackie Lee ("[Do] The Duck") and Levert.

But at Midnight, Lee becomes a core artist for Adult Standards CFZM (AM 740) Toronto, which recently added a program called "Midnight Blue," specializing in the risqué R&B that was part of the incubation of rock 'n' roll. "Midnight Blue" mixes the most famous songs of that era ("I'm A King-Bee," "Sixty Minute Man") with those long lost to history and with their descendents, ranging from "Strokin'" to Christina Aguilera's "Candyman" to "Love To Love You Baby." It's a genre that many of us know only from an occasional cover (Aerosmith doing "Big Ten-Inch Record") or the occasional spin on "Dr. Demento" in the '70s and '80s.

"Midnight Blue" is part of the retooling of AM 740, one of the more durable AM standards stations, under new owner Moses Znaimer and its longtime programmer Gene Stevens. It's a radio successor to the late-night "Baby Blue Movies" that were part of Znaimer's groundbreaking tenure at Toronto's CITY-TV in the '70s and which continue to this day. It's an interesting gambit when you consider that the freshening of the Adult Standards format -- where it still exists -- usually consists of adding more Manilow or Michael Bublé to the mix (something that AM 740 actually did some time back). And although some of the music comes off as more quaint than shocking now, it's still easier to imagine this show existing in Canada where lyrical regulations are less strict -- even before midnight.

AM740 can be streamed here. It can also be heard throughout the northeast at night. Here's last night's show:

Julia Lee, "My Man Stands Out"
Wynona Carr, "Ding Dong Daddy"
Roy Brown, "Cadillac Baby"
Chaka Khan, "Fever"
Marvin Gaye, "Sexual Healing"
Dusty Springfield, "Spooky"
Sheba Potts-Wright, "Private Fishing Hole"
Crown Prince Waterford, "Move Your Hand, Baby"
Dorothy Ellis, "Drill Daddy Drill"
David A. Stewart f/Candy Dulfer, "Lily Was Here"
Barrelhouse Annie, "If It Don't Fit, Don't Force It"
Etta James, "I Just Want To Make Love To You"
Red Prysock, "Purple Whale"
Orioles, "Hold Me, Squeeze Me"
Bull Moose Jackson, "I Want A Bowlegged Woman"
Barbara Stanwyck, "Take It Off the E-String (Play It On the G-String)"
Dominoes, "If You Don't Like Chicken, Leave That Hen Alone"
Sylvia, "Pillow Talk."

It's been a long time since I expected to be informed of a major breaking news story on a music radio station. The last time it happened was Columbine and that I had to hear about on London's Capital FM, which still did top-of-the-hour news throughout the day in 1999. If I'm at my desk listening to music radio, it will probably be a co-worker or a stray visit to a news-oriented Website that fills me in.

In the case of the House of Representatives' decision to reject the bailout bill this afternoon, I did get the news via IM. I didn't hear it mentioned on the music station I was listening to. But a few minutes later, I switched over to student-operated commercial Modern Rock outlet WBRU Providence, R.I. Almost immediately, I heard a news bulletin about the bill, right between One Day As A Lion and Stone Temple Pilots. Fifteen minutes later, there was another top-of-the-hour bulletin, this one featuring a different newscaster. It was a lot of news on a music station by today's standards.

It makes one realize that if there are fewer places to train jocks, then where else would you expect to hear a newscaster-in-training except a college-run station? And wonder: where do these newscasters go next when they graduate (literally or figuratively), particularly if they want to report hard news? In any event, it reminds one again that news will be one of the things that allows people to connect with their radio station in times of uncertainty.

With the obligatory talk about the importance of localism at every NAB Radio Show, I've yet to hear anybody bring up community hometown KAZI Austin, Texas, the community R&B station celebrating its 26th anniversary this year. Like Triple-A KGSR or Country KVET, it's a station that couldn't exist anywhere else -- but it's the kind of station that you wish could be everywhere. And it's an encouraging moment at a convention that points up the challenges faced by both R&B radio and local radio overall.

KAZI doesn't stream, so if you're in Austin for NAB, they're worth a listen. They're an eclectic Adult R&B/talk hybrid that harkens back to the days '70s progressive days of stations like WHUR Washington. Yesterday morning, the Wednesday/Thursday morning talk host addressed another host who had apparently announced his attention not to vote. This afternoon, they're going back and forth between blues, jazz and, in the last few minutes, a zydeco song called "Drop It Like It's Hot." Hear them at 88.7.

When WWFS (Fresh 102.7) New York launched last year and actually made rival WLTW (Lite 106.7) sound older and scramble for a minute, WBEB (B101) Philadelphia was one of the stations to try and pre-empt a potential rival by acquiring the rights to the "fresh" name and giving the word some presence (although hardly a starring role) on the air.

Since then, WLTW has regained much of its footing and "Fresh" has not proven to be an unstoppable force in other markets. But we'll still get to see how well B101 has girded itself with this morning's launch of Greater Media's Now 97.5, on the site of former Smooth Jazz outlet WJJZ. Billing itself as "a younger approach to today's soft rock," the new station has lobbed some decent liners at B101 in its first hour: "now there are more than five songs in a row" and "the way you work has changed" among them.

In the station's sign-on promo, it also attempted to link B101 with the Easy Listening format it once was . . . in 1981! (For the record, 97.5 was Rock 40 WPST Trenton, N.J., in 1981, but you could also use a format swap to link this station back to 94.5 which, in that era, was Christian teaching.)

Musically, there's not much difference yet between the two stations--both of which played two '70s songs an hour in the 9 a.m. hour, although B101 went back further. In that hour, B101's average year was 1992. Now was 1996. But if B101 continues its modernization to block Now, that could be good news for Greater Media's WBEN. It will also be interesting to see how B101 responds to Now's "Commercial Free Workdays."

Here's Now 97.5 in its first hour at 9 a.m.:

Pink, "Who Knew"
Police, "Every Breath You Take"
Lee Ann Womack, "I Hope You Dance"
Mariah Carey, "Always Be My Baby"
Jimmy Buffett, "Margaritaville"
Daniel Powter, "Bad Day"
Tina Turner, "What's Love Got To Do With It"
Bonnie Raitt, "Something To Talk About"
Lifehouse, "You And Me"
Fleetwood Mac, "Don't Stop"
Jesse McCartney, "Beautiful Soul"
Genesis, "Hold On My Heart"
Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love"
John Mayer, "No Such Thing"
Kelly Clarkson, "Because Of You"

We've been expecting a resurgence of activity in the Modern AC/Rock-based Top 40 area for a while. There's been too much good, pop-flavored rock product in recent years falling in the cracks between Modern Rock (not enough critical mass to break a lot of its own hits), Top 40 (still mostly rhythmic leaning) and Hot AC (still taking a lot of its cues from Top 40).

So CHUM Radio's newly revamped CHIQ (Q94) Winnipeg, which recently segued from Adult Top 40 to what it's calling a "hybrid pop/alternative format" as Curve 94.3 rates a listen. The core artists on the station's press release and/or Website include Nirvana, Coldplay, and Red Hot Chili Peppers, but also Pink, Jay-Z, Amy Winehouse, and Notorious B.I.G.

It's a mix reminiscent at times of WHTZ (Z100) at the beginning of its Top 40/Alternative hybrid from the early '90s. (There are also interesting jingles that sound like teen punk with lyrics like "I love eating cookies/and I dunk them in a cup of cold Curve 94.3.")

Here's Curve 94.3 as heard at 4 p.m. on Monday:

Killers, "When You Were Young"
Mobile, "The Killer" (Canadian band that sounds like New Order and thus like the Killers, so an inspired segue)
Moby, "Porcelain"
Nelly Furtado, "Say It Right" (Canadian)
Coldplay, "Viva La Vida"
Snow Patrol, "Chasing Cars"
Linkin Park, "Leave Out All The Rest"
Suzie McNeil, "Hung Up" (Canadian pop along the lines of Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone")
Snoop Dogg, "My Medicine"
John Mayer, "Waiting For The World To Change"
M.I.A., "Paper Planes"
Arcade Fire, "Rebellion" (Canadian)
Bush, "Glycerine"
Faber Drive, "Sleepless Nights" (Canadian)

Okay, we knew it was going to be a tight race between Katy Perry and Kid Rock for the Summer Song of 2008.

We knew it was going to be a highly charged topic when we opened the comment line last week.

Now we've chosen. You can see our choice -- and the immediate debate it prompted -- in this week's Ross On Radio.

I heard an interesting segue earlier this week on WRNJ Hackettstown, N.J., a small-market AM that is doing a cross between Oldies and Soft AC.

It was Brenda Russell's "Piano In The Dark," cold segued into Peggy Lee's "Fever."

They were both jazzy. They were both atmospheric. "Fever" has the sort of distinctive opening that sounds okay coming out of anything (except maybe Godsmack, and even then you could make a case for it working in a goofy way).

It was a segue you could hear on a lot of restaurant tapes.

But not a segue you could expect to hear often on the radio.

"Piano In The Dark" is one of those songs that has floated away at Mainstream AC (too soft) and Urban AC (too pop). You might still hear it on Smooth Jazz, but that's getting harder in a lot of places.

"Fever" is a mainstay of Adult Standards, but those stations have disappeared in most places. It's from what Casey Kasem used to call the "rock era" (1958), but few Oldies stations would see it as an oldie, and, besides, how many records from 1958 still endure at Oldie, er, Classic Hits stations these days. (Again, a smart Smooth Jazz station might have played it as well.)

As last week's debate against "songs that don't test" continues in the Ross On Radio pages, this segue was a good example of why "radio law" is meant to be broken . . . strategically.

If you heard an Oldies station that played too many outliers from the Soft AC or Adult Standards world too often, it might not be what you came for. But together, the two songs were undeniable.

I'm a big fan of strategically breaking radio law. I'm also a big fan of strategically using records that don't test on the radio.

The only problem with the latter is that "oh wow" songs don't stay "oh wow" for very long. When WCBS-FM New York was "Jack-FM," I remember getting to the point where I was actually tired of hearing "Fox On The Run" by the Sweet or "I Was Made For Loving You" by Kiss on the radio -- and I'm one of those people who was never in the least ashamed about liking them. But if you think it's not exciting to hear "Sweet Home Alabama" six times a week, imagine how fast "Don't Misunderstand Me" by Rossington Collins Band loses its "oh wow" value.

Breaking radio law on a regular basis without diminishing returns takes a lot of work. That's why many programmers never try. And it's hard to understand that if you only need to come up with enough "oh wow" songs for a weekly show or jocking at a party/club. But I'm glad people try, and Brenda-meets-Peggy justified the effort.

Okay, we're a week away or so from the annual Ross On Radio column on the Summer Song of 2008.

So far, I'm wavering. It's either:

Katy Perry, "I Kissed A Girl" -- So inescapable in June and July that even NPR listeners thought of it as the big summer song. It never reached No. 1 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart, although with seven weeks atop the Billboard Top 40, that might hardly matter. And here in the New York area, anyway, it's started to fade a little bit in the last month.

Or...

Kid Rock, "All Summer Long" -- It's got the obvious title in its favor. It touched even more formats than Katy did. It became so big that even the stations that wouldn't normally play a Kid Rock record couldn't ignore it. It made listeners buy albums -- even this week when a knockoff cover version became available on iTunes.

So you've got a week to make the case for Kid or Katy (or somebody else) by leaving a comment below.

I was very pleased to see the inclusion of a wiki in Bonneville's new website for The Sound in Los Angeles. To find it, roll over "Be It" in the menu, and select Sound Wiki (or heck, just click here). The wiki runs on the MediaWiki platform, which is the same engine behind Wikipedia, so there is plenty of power under the hood. I love the idea of having a wiki on a radio station website, but before you commit to throwing one up on yours, you need to figure out what kinds of content your listeners will be motivated to create, and whether or not your listeners will perceive your wiki as the most logical place to do that.

If you are asking your listeners to build profiles and engage in the same sorts of social networking behaviors that they are already participating in on Facebook or MySpace--good luck. Those sites do this better than your station possibly can. But if you are looking to build listener-created content based upon your music or your local community, then you have a play. The key is to do it in a way that does not force listeners to replicate an existing behavior, but plays upon everyone's natural urge to tell stories.

Let's examine this in the context of The Sound. Most of the pages in their wiki are about the artists that are played on the station. However, the station has taken the liberty of "pre-populating" the artist wiki pages with content from Wikipedia. Let's set aside the appropriateness of simply recopying Wikipedia content aside for a moment. What a fully-fleshed out page of content like this says to the reader/listener is this: "read me." The art, heart and soul of a wiki, however, is a page that says "write me." "Write Me" is engaging and asks for a commitment from your audience that is instantly rewarded. Changing those pages and telling their stories is the "pro quo" they get for the "quid" of signing up to your station database to gain the privilege of making those edits.

In the case of a fully-formed page about David Bowie, the average listener is going to see this page and be intimidated by it--what more could they possibly add? The "super-fan" might be motivated to comment, but are just as likely to do so on Wikipedia, where these sorts of artist biography pages belong, and to write you nasty letters for ripping Wikipedia off in the first place. Encouraging content contribution on a wiki is as much about structure as it is subject matter. In the case of the former, the key is to provide enough boilerplate content in the form of a template to encourage your audience to easily change it (no one likes to tackle a blank page) but not so much as to be a deterrent to contribution.

Subject matter, however, is even more important. Your station cannot possibly "own" David Bowie on the Internet--you probably don't even "own" him in your market, in the grand scheme of things. The entries on Los Angeles music venues are perhaps more promising, but the average listener doesn't know or care about the history of its construction. They do, however, have stories to tell--seeing Black Sabbath for the first time, getting laid in the parking lot, getting arrested at the Night Ranger show (presumably for attending it), etc. Sharing those stories is a logical purpose for a radio station wiki, and a nobler cause than simply as repository for venue history. You don't need to replicate Wikipedia (or even remotely resemble it). Start modestly, as an online cork board for sticky notes about great concerts your listeners have seen or other truly personal remembrances of the various venues in your market. Eventually, your listeners will engage with you, with each other, and even with some well chosen, carefully placed sponsors that make sense and are relevant to the page or topic.

Having said that, a big BRAVO to Bonneville for designing a website that doesn't look like Yahoo, circa 1999. Good, clean designs are not "decorations," they are conduits to your content.

A lot of discussion about this week's Ross On Radio column, "What's At The Bottom Of The Music Test?" The response of many readers to a list of songs that brought up the rear in recent music tests was to supply a list of their own favorite stiffs/local hits/obscurities. All of which tends to prove that a lot of left-field songs end up in the music test because program directors want to uncover lost nuggets, rather than from that vast radio conspiracy to torture listeners with the same 300 songs.

Some interesting programming for the next few weeks at gold-based AC WVBW (the Wave) Norfolk, Va., which is saluting a different year between 1970 and 1989 in "20/20: 20 Years In 20 Days" starting with 1970 today. The Wave's version is (and should be) more compact than "It," XM Satellite Radio's year-by-year tracking of the entire history of pop music, but if you've ever wanted to hear "Mississippi Queen" on an AC station, here's your chance.

Here's The Wave's salute to 1970 in the 3 p.m. hour today:

Brian Hyland, "Gypsy Woman"
Carpenters, "We've Only Just Begun"
Rascal Flatts, "Bless The Broken Road" (set up with a stager about not forgetting the best of today as well)
Supremes, "Stoned Love"
Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young, "Teach Your Children"
Originals, "The Bells"
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Who'll Stop The Rain"
Tom Jones, "Without Love (There Is Nothing)"
Neil Diamond, "Solitary Man"
Taylor Swift, "Teardrops On My Guitar"
Sly & the Family Stone, "Stand"
Mountain, "Mississippi Queen"
Stevie Wonder, "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)"
Sugarloaf, "Green-Eyed Lady"
Edison Lighthouse, "Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)"

Some of the obituaries for Isaac Hayes, who died Sunday at age 65, haven't gone much beyond "Soul Man," "Shaft" and Chef. Or they dwell on the '70s image of the man with all the gold chains -- the net effect of which is a bit like reducing Elton John to his glasses and "Crocodile Rock."

Seeing Hayes and David Porter interviewed in June at Conclave was instructive for me. Porter reeled off a string of Memphis '60s and early '70s classics beyond those that the two had written and produced together and talked about how Hayes had often casually come up with something -- a bridge, an arrangement -- that made those songs work. And Hayes' overall contributions to R&B also went far beyond his own work.

It was 1969's "Hot Buttered Soul" album and 1970's "The Isaac Hayes Movement" that helped expand R&B's creative focus from the single to the album, nearly two years before Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye could compel the release of their own transitional efforts. Hayes' two albums with their emphasis on monologues and longer songs were part of a template for sales success that didn't depend on a major pop hit. ("Hot Buttered Soul" went gold without one.) The mellower, more complex soul opuses that artists like Hayes created through the '70s would eventually demand their own place on the radio in R&B's late night's "Quiet Storm" programs. Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye would transition into the progressive R&B era, but it literally gave Hayes his voice as an artist.

In the '90s, when radio in all formats began to look to the artist ranks for on-air hosts and voice-talent, Hayes would do mornings on WRKS (Kiss-FM) New York, then his own Quiet Storm-type program on WRBO (Soul Classics 103.5) Memphis. It's telling that the most prominent of the other icons who Urban AC tapped into at the time, Barry White (the voice of WRKS) and Luther Vandross (the voice of WVKL Norfolk, Va.) are no longer among us either. All gold-based formats have seen their artist ranks depleted by the passage of time, but Classic Soul has seemed disproportionately hard hit.

So I'm glad that working in the Classic Soul format in the mid-'90s gave me the chance to meet Lou Rawls, Tyrone Davis and Phyllis Hyman. And I'm particularly thankful to Conclave for bringing in Hayes and Porter and showing how much their work still held sway with a roomful of broadcasters in their 20s. It also seems like the right time to ask who's protecting the legacy of Isaac, Barry, Luther, Lou and an incredibly robust body of music that rarely finds a full-time place on terrestrial radio. Where Urban Oldies stations exist, their PDs are often eager to evolve them into Urban AC stations. And Urban AC stations are now catering to a new generation of listeners that hears Hayes refracted through the neo-soul of the '90s and today, but didn't necessarily have "Walk On By" and "I Stand Accused" handed down to them by their parents. So fewer of the classic "slow jams" endure on the radio.

Hayes' legacy demands attention in today's R&B world for another reason. It was during the '70s with their emphasis on artists and robust albums that R&B music became, for many years, recession proof. And while the decline of the album as a unit of artistic currency has happened for many reasons and been felt everywhere, it is particularly noticeable in R&B where few artists now sell albums without pop airplay (Keyshia Cole comes to mind as a recent example) and where a move to multiple producers has robbed many projects of the cohesiveness that would compel the purchase of an album, not just a single song. Albums are now A&R'ed to have 14 singles (even if only two will be released) and the notion of "this song will sell the album" is long-forgotten.

One of the better Hayes' appreciations can be read here. And you can see Hayes and Porter at Conclave here.

The usual out-of-office message, constructed as it is at 5:15 p.m. on the Friday before vacation, is usually pretty basic -- a list of department heads to contact in your absence; a good-faith effort on your family's behalf to limit the Blackberry messages to emergencies, etc. But radio people being radio people, not everybody can keep it straightforward.

These are a few of the more entertaining or intriguing out-of-office messages that bounced back to me this summer. Some have been rewritten slightly to protect the sender's identity. If nothing else, it shows how radio spent its summer vacation.

* "Keep your shiny side up and your muddy side down."

* "Hi. I am on vacation and out 'til Tuesday. On and off e-mail. Be an awesome person and catch up with me Tuesday."

* "I'm currently out of the office supervising a trip with a dozen crazy drama students on a white water rafting trip . . . if I survive, I should be back in the office Monday. Wish me luck."

* "Hello. I am unable to respond to your email because I am in Canada, participating in [my] 20th Annual Canada Blood Drive -- where I will be eaten alive by 5-pound mosquitos. I will respond to your e-mail Monday, when I return to civilization, running water and electricity. Yours in mosquito prevention . . . "

* "[I am] on vacation and will retrun Monday after the Tour De France is over." (The message is signed "kind regards" by the PD's "imaginary assistant".)

* "Our justice system once again shows how fair and balanced they are by selecting someone like me for jury duty. Whoooo, justice system, keep up the good work!"

* "Vacation time! I will be back in the office on Monday. If I didn't get a chance to add your record before I left, it's probably not very good."

* "This is Dr. Klahn. I'm not home right now. Leave a message when you hear the beep. You have our gratitude." (This one was clearly meant to create a bond with any other fans of "Kentucky Fried Movie."I wrote back, "Let's give Dr. Klahn a great big hand!" but didn't get a response.)

* "[I am] out of the office . . . as it is now time for Baby #6 to arrive."

* "I'm out of the office having a baby - painful ;-) Not sure when I'll be back." (From a guy, BTW.)

There are also those "out-of-office" messages from U.S. recipients that come back marked, "Respuesta automática de Fuera de la oficina," perhaps meant as an indicator of where the PD has gone on vacation.

Then there was this variation on the usual list of contacts:

"I am out of town for a few days on a family vacation! Go, me! I will be checking emails from time to time but if you need immediate help please contact [this list of six department heads]. That's a team baby!"

It's been more than a week since Wrigleys revealed that Chris Brown's "Forever," with its reference to "double your pleasure/double your fun" was always intended as their new Doublemint jingle. And the response from radio? So far, "Forever" is hanging in there at a bulleted No. 3 on the Mainstream Top 40 chart, up 571 spins from a week ago; that's less than its +663 of a week ago, but it's still more-than-respectable and still poised for No. 1 in a few weeks.

As for the jingle itself, as heard on WHTZ (Z100) New York last week, only the lack of an intro immediately gives it away as not-the-single, otherwise, it's very much like hearing a :60 edit of the song, despite the expansion of the "double your pleasure" lyrics. (The TV version posted here is shorter and goes right to the sales pitch.) If you were a PD, you wouldn't want the radio version to play three songs away from the full-length song. And since we all know how cognizant most radio station traffic departments are of programming concerns, that should be no problem, right?

This week's Ross On Radio column, saluting the 10th anniversary of KPLX Dallas' rebranding as the Wolf, has spurred a lot of discussion. If you haven't seen the comments yet, click here and scroll down.

At this writing, Salem is stunting with an all-Sinatra format on New York's WWDJ on the way to an expected Conservative Talk format, and while it's a decent enough opening gambit, it's the second time in the last year that I've found myself thinking that the stunt format would be pretty viable on its own. The first was last year's KTRB Modesto-to-San Francisco move-in which involved several days of '60s San Francisco rock as "The Heavy 860" at a time when there was no Oldies station in the market. Now, a decade after New York lost Adult Standards WQEW, it's hard not to feel a little taunted again.

It also makes one ask: How has not one AM station that covers Manhattan been even momentarily intrigued by the durability of Long Island's WHLI, Toronto's CFZM (AM740), or WJAS Pittsburgh? Or the weekend following of Jonathan Schwartz on WNYC? Actually, I guess we can't answer that one until we figure out why nobody has gone Country yet! (In the meantime, there's always WNYH, the eccentric Long Island Oldies/MOR/Standards hybrid that can be heard in Northern New Jersey.)

Long before Doublemint snuck its new jingle on to the radio in the guise of Chris Brown's "Forever," there has been a long history of jingles making it to the radio as hit songs (and vice versa), including the late 1971 cover battle over Coca Cola's "I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing." That song would have been just as well left off the radio (with or without disclosure). But two decades later, a Coke jingle was actually the best song on the radio.

I'm thinking specifically of "Always Coca Cola," the early '90s TV and radio ad campaign that came along at a time when pop music