The Infinite Dial

As the Radio industry continues its inexorable march towards the payment of a performance royalty, I've observed emotions running the gamut from acceptance, to denial, and (in many cases) outright fury. However, as the ways in which the record labels can make money from recorded music dwindle, and as original, local content for radio stations continues to be engulfed by furniture-burning, there may truly be no more symbiotic relationship than radio and records. Radio needs music to make money; the labels need radio in order to make money from their music. This, as my Ph.D. scientist wife might say, is an example of "obligate mutualism": a symbiotic relationship whereby the value exchange between two organisms isn't just beneficial, it's required for survival.

As I observe the negotiations, I can't help but wonder what all of this says about music as art. That's right: art, not commodity. Call me an idealist, but the well-crafted pop song still gives me a little thrill. So does the final verse of Radiohead's "Videotape," the ethereal acoustics of Grizzly Bear's "Southern Point," the cascading voices of School of Seven Bells' "Sempiternal/Amaranth," and Neil Finn's mastery of form on "Don't Dream It's Over." I love music, and seeing the commoditization of recorded music makes me wince, even as I recognize it as inevitable.

Here's one thing I think we can all agree on: music, like any art form, has an intrinsic value, and an extrinsic value. The intrinsic value is a constant, but the extrinsic value ebbs and flows over time. Look what time has done to the extrinsic value of two contemporaries: The Dave Clark Five, and The Beatles. Look what happened to the back catalog of Michael Jackson after his passing. Consider other forms of art - take paintings, for example. When an artist is brand new and struggling, a sale of their work (no matter how gifted) might fetch "X" at their first gallery opening. Upon their second, they might be able to command "2X." After a 10-year body of work they might be worth "20X", and so on. After the artist dies, of course, artwork of great intrinsic value suddenly can take on extraordinary extrinsic value, as the buying public begins to value scarcity over other considerations. The same, of course, is true of sculpture, novels, and pretty much any art form you can name.

So, if we accept my basic proposition (recorded music is an art form), then the genesis of my wacky idea becomes a little clearer. The current speculation is that radio will agree to a blanket 1% performance royalty, but a "flat rate" that equates "Playground Of My Mind" with "Pride (In The Name Of Love)" seems derived from some pretty torturous economics. Instead, my modest proposal: let's let the labels set sliding "tiers" of value for their artists. New, unproven artists that the label believes in could be offered free of performance rights, while the next Lady Gaga might command the equivalent of 2%. Maroon 5 might be in a higher tier, while Yeasayer sits in a lower tier. Tiers would be based upon the artists' clear, demonstrated value to the labels (easily demonstrated by sales) with the potential for "discount rates" to promote back catalog releases (you know, like the movie industry does?)

Critics of this approach might point out the following flaws, which I freely admit:

1. Budget-crazy radio stations might choose to only play lower-tier artists in order to save money.

True. Luckily, there is this thing called "The Invisible Hand." It states, roughly paraphrased, that if you "supply" your listeners with too much music they don't want, they will "demand" to listen to your competitors.

2. The labels might "overvalue" artists for emotional or other non-rational reasons.

That's the beauty of a symbiotic relationship. If the fungus chokes the moss, the lichen dies - and vice versa. See #1 above.

3. Unproven artists won't make any money.

I submit that the opposite is true. If a .5% tier convinces a radio station to play more new, unproven artists, then those artists will a) sell more (that's kinda how radio/records work, remember?) and thus b) ascend quickly to higher tiers.

4. Record keeping would be insane.

Dude, it's 2010. Your music database software spits out numbers. Buy a computer and write a script.

Okay, there are other flaws, I know. Why don't you tell me how lame this idea is in the comments? I'm ready for you. :)

It's been a weighty week here on the Infinite Dial, but we haven't forgotten that Summer is also a time to re-create. So, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you a great weekend. A Double Rainbow weekend. And, if the original wasn't inspiring enough, I've given you the Auto-tune edition AND Jimmy Fallon's dead-on Neil Young cover.

You know, it's looking like it might even be a TRIPLE Rainbow.

If you read the news today, what else could you think but "Oh boy"? Facebook doubled in size in one year, from 250 million to half a billion users. Netflix reported 42% year over year subscriber growth, climbing to 15 million paying users, all in the US. And Pandora announced it has passed the 60 million registration mark, also all domestic, after passing the 40 million mark only at the end of 2009.

What these three have in common, beyond their incredible growth rates, is that they are all bringing media - content - to users in new ways. Facebook of course is simply a whole new form of entertainment-media for people. Pandora is, at its core, a complete re-think of radio; personalized and now increasingly mobile. And Netflix started out as a better version of the 'video store' and is rapidly morphing into the ultimate on-demand video/movie supplier.

The growth of these new-media powers makes me think of Lowry Mays' famous 2003 quote about Clear Channel: "If anyone said we were in the radio business, it wouldn't be someone from our company," said Mays. "We're not in the business of providing news and information. We're not in the business of providing well-researched music. We're simply in the business of selling our customers' products."

And while I have to mention that Clear Channel has not always lived by this creed and the company has indeed paid attention to the content and at times shown some true innovation, this answer to the 'what business are you really in' question comes to mind all too often when one looks at what passes for innovation in American commercial radio today.

A few months ago my colleague Tom Webster and I sat through a series of presentations at a meeting tagged to "The Future of Radio." What Tom saw faster than I did was that the presentations were almost entirely about sales innovations. Radio companies were setting up new 'verticals' (e.g. www.chattanoogachow.com); or helping local retailers to set up their own Web sites (rather astonishing in 2010, but hey, good for these radio companies); or of course trying to find new versions of the ubiquitous "half-off" deals like the restaurant bargains that are now so common that they're practically an FCC mandate.

Tom correctly pointed out to me that no matter how clever some of these approaches are, they miss the point. They play into the Lowry Mays model of business - we are merely in the business of trying to find new ways to take advertisers' money away from them.

What's missing from discussions of the 'future of radio', especially from American commercial radio companies, is audio innovation. These approaches are almost entirely disconnected from what the real core business is - audio information, entertainment, and service.

Per usual, we have to look at other entities to find content-based innovation, not sales-based innovation. And in most of these cases, content is leading sales. This is the way we always been taught it was supposed to work - create a great media product that people want to consume and then sell advertising around it.

Take for instance, the ever-inventive blokes at Absolute Radio in the UK, a station I have already called "The Most Innovative Radio Station in the World." They are always up to something. To capitalize on the World Cup this summer, they sent a popular comedy duo down to South Africa to create great radio. This would be the equivalent of sending perhaps Mike Myers and Dana Carvey and asking them to send entertaining reports back. Absolute promoted the podcasts with call-ins to their 'breakfast show' and the podcasts were good enough to be played on the air.

How did they do? Well, the somewhat phenomenal results can be found on Absolute's public 'behind the curtain' site. (And by the way - who in American commercial radio allows such public viewing of their business as this blog does?) The campaign essentially dominated the iTunes podcasting charts, and I know from Absolute's management that the project netted an extremely large amount of profits from an extremely satisfied client.

The biggest driver of content-based innovation in America is certainly coming from the public-radio complex. To their credit, NPR has its own blog where they publish research data and one can see the explosive growth of usage from non-broadcast sources (what is it with innovators and their openness? Hmmm.) Public radio has created wildly successful programs that increasingly seem to have disconnected from their broadcasts - to most people "This American Life" (from PRI) and "Wait Wait, Don't Tell Me" (from NPR) are really just podcasts, not broadcast shows. And note the advertiser 'support' their online and mobile efforts are getting from mainstream advertisers.

And while some commercial broadcasters in the US are indeed involved in excellent Web-based efforts (see, for instance, www.weei.com), most radio station Web sites are still brochure sites that are entirely caked over with ads, few stations are streaming anything but their over-the-air signal, and podcasting, the most natural line extension for every radio entity on the planet, remains entirely under-developed.

Instead, it just takes any kind of tour of the Web sites of American commercial stations to see that these often seldom-updated sites are not exploring hardly any kind of audio-content innovation.  As an example, every commercial broadcaster in Utah and Idaho has always known there is a significant niche for LDS music (and the stations that play it on Sundays get huge numbers, typically), and yet somehow a small start-up called "Your LDS Radio ( www.yldsr.com)" comes up highest on Google and appears to be the leader in the category, not something from a commercial broadcaster, who one would think could easily take the crown and monetize it.

And there are dozens and dozens of potential content-based solutions - involving the kind of audio magic that everyone got involved in radio for in the first place - that are literally sitting out there unproduced because instead American radio stations are barely able to fully program their over-the-air services.

So, again let me remind the industry that we are in the business of creating great radio, and hope never to be forced out of it. . The advertising tail cannot entirely wag the commercial radio dog. Instead, somehow we need to allow a thousand seeds of content-based radio to blossom. If we go back to creating compelling audio entertainment and information first, we won't need all the sales-based innovation that is currently the focus of the American commercial radio industry.

As I have reported in the past, the exchange of ideas and innovation between American and European radio has long since switched course, and we Americans now have more to learn from our counterparts across the sea than they from us (alas).

Over the next several days I'll mention a variety of things. Today -- I'll go with a fascinating little tidbit I learned during a recent visit.

One radio station had hired a very high profile television comedian as their morning man. He got off to a very poor start, and there were calls to fire him, as he just couldn't adapt to the new medium. But the management at this station had a better idea -- they pre-tape almost everything. Instead of him attempting to run the show live, they create a 'faux live' experience, cut out anything that doesn't work, and re-wrap the show in a clean tight package. Since making this change, the station has risen extensively in mornings and this show is now usually number one.

This seems so blazingly obvious and yet is so counter to typical radio wisdom. Go to any panel about radio morning shows and everyone will say; "Live! Always Live! That's what makes it exciting!"

And yet we do somehow manage to consume taped content in other media.

If this is not the answer, it is an answer for your morning show. Could they create more great material in advance, edit it and make it sound great, and thus take the pressure off for when they actually are live?

Is there a connection between songs that endure with radio listeners and the years that they're released?

I've been thinking about this because the syndicator of "American Top 40" has been working up to its 40th anniversary (on July 4) by sending out daily e-mails, one for each year, featuring Billboard's top 10 songs of the year.

So here's 1983, an incredible comeback year for CHR.

1 - Police, "Every Breath You Take" -- Perhaps the most-enduring record of its time at AC, Greatest Hits, and Classic Rock formats. Would still test at Hot AC, if most weren't finally moving away from the '80s.
2 - Irene Cara, "Flashdance (What A Feeling)" -- Still tests at AC, Greatest Hits;
3 - Michael Jackson, "Billie Jean" -- Never fell off the grid completely during his years of exile from radio, but it's bigger than ever posthumously. You'll hear it at least three times this Friday on the anniversary of his death.
4 - Men At Work, "Down Under" -- Endures at AC, now starting to get played at Greatest Hits.
5 - Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" -- Still playable at AC.
6 - Hall & Oates, "Maneater" -- 1982 really, but Billboard was on a December-November schedule. Still played at AC, Greatest Hits.
7 - Lionel Richie, "All Night Long (All Night)" -- Playable sometimes for AC. Might get a little help from being part of the new Enrique Iglesias song, "I Like It."
8 - Michael Jackson, "Beat It" -- Hadn't endured like "Billie Jean," but back now.
9 - Laura Branigan, "Gloria" - Spotty. Tests in at AC or Greatest Hits occasionally.
10 - Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton, "Islands In The Stream" -- The first truly lost song in the top 10. Not even an automatic for Classic Country.

That's a pretty good batting average, and that top 10 doesn't even include the Eurythmics' "Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of This)," which matches the Police for durability, or Cyndi Lauper's "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

Now consider the not so golden year of 1988, when Top 40 was increasingly challenged by Urban and Rhythmic Top 40:

1 - George Michael, "Faith" -- No "Every Breath You Take," but still does OK at AC, Greatest Hits
2 - INXS, "Need You Tonight" -- OK at those formats and the one playable INXS at Classic Rock. Has evaporated at Hot AC as the '80s are phased out there.
3 - George Harrison, "Got My Mind Set On You" -- A seeming gimme for Greatest Hits stations trying to move into the '80s, but rarely a hit.
4 - Rick Astley, "Never Gonna Give You Up" -- Like "Together Forever," still gets some AC airplay.
5 - Guns 'N' Roses, "Sweet Child O' Mine" -- Still a smash at Classic Rock, a signature for Bob- and Jack-FMs and would still test for any Adult Top 40 that was comfortable including it.
6 - Whitney Houston, "So Emotional" -- Exciting at the time, lost now.
7 - Belinda Carlisle, "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" -- A sentimental fave for a lot of Greatest Hits PDs, but not a reliable tester.
8 - Tiffany, "Could've Been" -- Never returned to the radio after recurrent, particularly after the follow-up project faded.
9 - Breathe, "Hands To Heaven" -- Another song that has mostly disappeared.
10 - Steve Winwood, "Roll With It"--Even "Higher Love," one of the great common denominator records of that era doesn't test that well these days.

It's worth noting that if you tried this exercise for 1987, the two most enduring records would be "Livin' On A Prayer" and "Here I Go Again." In other words, the three best records from those years were the three that most challenged the boundaries of the Top 40 format. And when Top 40 found more than three hair band records to play, it wasn't necessarily a good thing.

I'll take a more empirical look at this some other time. But it makes sense at first blush that there would be so many enduring songs from the class of 1983. Rock radio was faltering. Urban Cowboy had finally passed. Adults were returning to Top 40 (as, for that matter, were teens). And there was, of course, the newly influential MTV to help reinforce all these songs.(Even though "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Brown Eyed Girl" do just fine without having had a video, it would be interesting now to look at the most played '80s gold and see how many were thought of as hit videos at the time.)

All of those things add up to a lot of traffic for the format. Songs can overcome a weak year for their home format or not being heard at the time at all -- e.g., "What I Like About You." But since so much of an oldie's endurance is based on the shared experience, it makes sense that an experience that more people shared would linger more.

First of all, don't get too excited about the press reports that Apple has applied for a patent to include HD radio technology in future iPods and iPhones. As iN3 Partners' Robert Unmacht points out, "This in no way means they will do it. Tech companies file for many things to protect themselves and never use it. There are power issues (the chip is a bit of a hog), space issues, and always cost issues."

But do ask yourself, what would broadcasters do if HD radio were available on the iPhone (or iPod or iPad)?

Many broadcasters think that being on the iPhone (or any smart phone) will automatically bring them greater engagement from younger listeners, simply by being on their platform of choice. But are broadcasters willing or prepared to engage with younger listeners? Are they going to offer them a second format choice for current music? Or will they continue to hope that 12-24s make do with two Top 40s and other formats (particularly Rock and Country) that play youth-oriented music sparingly?

Are broadcasters' HD multicast channels going to be ready for their close-up? It makes sense that we've moved from throwaway locally programmed channels to national ones. But many of those national stations are repurposed content and very few truly take advantage of the "WLS/CKLW national radio station for our times" potential of having a national radio station. So far, the only way to get a broadcaster to show a lot of interest in their multicast channel is to give them a translator (and thus a new FM frequency in the market) to relay it to.

Can multicast channels be rethought to provide the sort of services that smart phone users are looking for? Some have long thought that HD radio's ultimate function would be as a data provider. Can multicast channels, if available on a smart phone, be used to protect radio's current traffic and weather franchises?

Finally, are broadcasters going to take any more advantage of being on an iPhone (or any other phone) than they do of being available on the iPod Nano? Radio was very excited about being allowed a place on an iPod of any sort. But it was hard, at least at the outset, to find broadcasters who had engaged with radio on the Nano in any way (including using it much themselves). And have you heard anything about the Nano or song tagging in the last six months?

Derm Carnduff, PD of Corus' CING (Vinyl 95.3) Toronto and CJXY (Y95) Hamilton passed this along. It's a five minute KABC-TV report on AOR KMET from late '81/early '82. It's remarkable, from today's POV, for a number of reasons:

1. A TV newscast is devoting five minutes to a radio station;

2. A TV newscast is devoting five minutes to anything;

3. A TV newcast is giving five minutes to the direct competitor of their sister station (KLOS). And mentioning them by name, instead of as "a local radio station," even though they've had a station event at which nothing has gone wrong.

4. Even though KMET had definitely become the Journey/J. Geils/Styx/corporate rock radio station by then, its political sensitivities are a holdover from the Rock radio of more than a decade earlier. Hard to imagine the Godsmack/Breaking Benjamin station expounding this way today and getting away with it.

5. You could age normally, not look like a movie star, and still be a TV reporter in a top 3 market -- at least if you were a guy. (Christine Craft's lawsuit, proving just how different things were for women, was taking place right about now.)

Okay, we've had four months' worth of headlines about the least exciting "American Idol" season ever: ratings off sharply, voting down dramatically, and those viewers who do participate now seem to be voting more for the contestant they'd most like to have a soda with. Lee DeWyze is no more guaranteed a hit record than any of the other affable-enough winners of recent seasons, and you can at least reasonably wonder if this will be the first year that making it to the finale won't even guarantee you a hearing from radio.

Top 40 owes a lot of its comeback of recent years to "Idol." In Kelly Clarkson, the show gave Top 40 its biggest homegrown core artist in many years. Moreover, it also revived the notion of all-ages entertainment so that the mother/daughter coalition seemed possible again. Clarkson's brand of pure pop never became the sound of Mainstream Top 40. Rhythmic pop continues to dominate, but in the last five years, rhythmic pop has become, well, poppier, while the notion of Hip-Hop as the only music for self-respecting teens is long forgotten.

So you have to wonder a little about what Top 40 will be like if "Idol" continues to lose momentum (and "X-Factor" doesn't pick up the slack). The good news is that Kelly Clarkson hasn't turned out to be the only person who could make a mainstream pop record. Pink quickly returned to form. Katy Perry took advantage of Clarkson's hiatus from the charts. Top 40 enjoyed having mainstream pop so much that they didn't stop at one style, but kept going to Jason Mraz, Train, and Taylor Swift, who, in certain ways, gives Top 40 both Clarkson and Carrie Underwood.

Beyond that, what Lee DeWyze and Crystal Bowersox have the ability to do--in the best case scenario--is to turbo charge what has already happened at pop radio with Train, Mraz, Owl City, et al. Putting a ukelele over Hip-Hop beats has already given us about three more hits than we can reasonably expect. Nothing is guaranteed for either DeWyze or Bowersox at radio, but what still excites me most about them is their potential to bring to Top 40 some singer-songwriters who would otherwise be exiled to non-comm Triple-A.

At the same time, programmers in other formats have to ask themselves: what happens if "Idol" doesn't remain a force? There have been other pockets of musical activity in the last five years--younger Country, indie rock--but none of them have had the same ability to galvanize a format that "Idol" has at Top 40. Or, as likely with both younger Country and indie rock, nobody at radio has had any idea whatsoever how to build a format around them. It's strange enough that we sometimes seem to have gone back to 1966--one dominant current music format that sells records, except, of course, for those records that sell without airplay. And now it's not impossible to imagine a landscape with no current music epicenter.

If I was an Urban or Rock programmer, I would at least be considering now whether there's the possibility to create more musical excitement than Top 40. And is there some sort of musical movement afoot anywhere? Top 40 only needs a varied collection of great hit records--some of them homegrown; more narrowly defined formats seem to need a movement, whether it's Country in 1990, Hip-Hop in 1995 or female singer-songwriters in 1997. And then programmers have to ask themselves whether they'd be willing to acknowledge a movement, if it meant targeting younger demos or, in the case of Alternative, stepping out of the '90s Gold war that is currently taking place.

Over the past few months I've seen many novel ventures by radio stations to grow their "non-traditional revenue" (or, as I like to call it, "revenue.") Most of these efforts have centered around the creation of local web portals for a variety of verticals (auto dealers, restaurants, lawyers, etc.) The fundamental premise behind these efforts is that the radio station will build/host some kind of web property either for a client or for their own vertical local advertising model, and use their airwaves to drive people to those web properties. This, apparently, is the future of radio, or so I'm told.

The thing is, all of the innovation behind these new revenue-generating models is centered around the web - banners, online video, online promotions, etc. That's all well and good, if we stipulate that radio's skills in these areas are at least on par with what various pure-play ventures are bringing to local markets (and for the purposes of this argument, let's say they are).

All of these efforts to build sites for car dealers and doctors and local restaurants are all predicated around the assumption that radio will use the "power of the tower" as a force multiplier to drive traffic to those web properties. No matter what grand designs your station may have upon local search and local advertising dollars, it's audio that forms the base of this model, and it's audio that will differentiate radio from a hundred other local web plays. Yes, that audio will increasingly be delivered via the web, but distribution alone cannot be the focus of our innovation. Distribution will be table stakes to the game (as Jennifer Lane recently put it, if a station’s listener wants to listen online, and that station is not offering its programming online, they will find another station online to listen to.)

As I've noted several times in this space, the value we assign to those towers is based upon scarcity. When ubiquitous distribution of audio content renders those towers valueless, it will be the audio content itself that elevates your radio station and maintains its local audience. With all of the innovation radio is pouring into videos for local businesses and websites for car dealers, we must never forget that radio's strongest competitors online have done none of these things. Some of them are built so that you never have to go to a website at all. The focus of their innovation was audio. Though the business model has changed, and listener expectations of "spotload" have calibrated our expectations of revenue, audio and advertising around audio still work just fine, as long as the audio content is compelling.

I'm truly excited about the future of audio on the web, and radio's potential ability to assume the role of local media powerhouse with an innovative blend of live programming, on-demand programming and podcasts. On-demand audio opens up enormous opportunities to serve multiple niche audiences by addressing local news, issues, tastes and even local music styles and bands in ways that didn't make sense with a singular tower. All of this, however, requires us to continue to innovate around radio's core strength - the creation of compelling audio entertainment.

Even though I'd already paid for Shazam and the similarly intended MusicID, I've just downloaded SoundHound, another "name that tune" app, which differs from Shazam in the ability (it says) to identify a hummed song as well as by offering a chart of songs that are "underplayed" in proportion to their IDs.

The "underplayed" chart isn't perfect--the top two are Usher's "O.M.G." abd Taio Cruz's "Break Your Heart," both of which are receiving heavy airplay now. But there are a few potential secret weapons like the Heavy's "How You Like Me Now" and Melanie Fiona's "Monday Morning" further down.

What was ultimately more interesting was the list of recently requested song IDs. In between all the exotica, and there was plenty, were such obscurities as "Smells Like Teen Spirit," "You Shook Me All Night Long," "Since U Been Gone," and "In the Air Tonight." There were also a lot of recent requests for Country radio staples, such as Kenny Chesney's "Living In Fast Forward," Montgomery Gentry's "Gone," Sugarland's "It Happens," and Reba McEntire's recent No. 1, "Consider Me Gone."

Then there's the most-searched chart which, of course, is topped by recurrents and today's powers: Rihanna's "Rude Boy," B.O.B.'s "Nothing On You," Lady Antebellum's "Need You Now," Train's "Hey Soul Sister," Lady Gaga's "Telephone," etc.

Even if you just think "Smells Like Teen Spirit" must have been somebody testing their humming skills, taken together, it's all a reminder that song ID is still an issue for listeners. And that as much as we'd like them to go to the Website to see every artist and title, they don't really need to. There's an app for that. And people are shelling out at least a few bucks for apps like these because they don't think radio will tell 'em for free.

For many AC stations, pre-recorded song tags have addressed listeners' issues with back-selling. My only issue, if any, is that it's one more piece of business that ought to be handled by the announcers instead of being turned over to the imaging director. Also, if a relatively familiar Mainstream AC station profits by song tags, then imagine what it says for other, more current-driven formats.

One also wonders if Country, in particular, would benefit from song tags--it's always attracting new listeners, particularly young ones, and, of course, they don't all know who sings "Gone," it's six years old. For that matter, given the number of current artists who remain relatively anonymous after a half-dozen airplay hits, song tags might also help build some artist equity. Recent Country launch KJKE (Jake FM) Oklahoma City uses song tags and they have been helpful--even for currents I'd already heard a few times.

Finally, I heard a radio station run a 30-second promo for its Website song ID feature this morning. And you can just imagine the conversation that must have taken place: "If you're going to run a 30-second promo, why not just ID the songs on the air?" "Because that will wreck the flow."

It was once a cliché, but it's rare to hear stations asking listeners to set a button for their station anymore. Perhaps some broadcasters (wrongly) consider it irrelevant in PPM world. Perhaps the constant crossplugs for their Web content, or encouragement to connect via Facebook and Twitter, is taking up all that on-air real estate.

But it can never be wrong to ask listeners for the order. (Or, for that matter, to thank them for their existing business.) Or to try and set or reinforce in-car radio listening as its challengers gear up against it. And one also can't help noting that one of the much-cited revelations of PPM is that people who were thought to listen to an average of three stations instead consume an average of six. In other words, about as many stations as they have on their top suite of punch buttons. So why not make sure you're one of those buttons?

When the Infinite Dial does come to every car radio, of course, how stations are found is going to be crucial. I've said for several years that unless broadcasters show some interest in helping design the directory, radio's future is in the hands of a relatively small number of aggregators whose personal taste in station recommendation clearly runs to pureplays, foreign stations, and exotica. Mobile listeners' current choices for streaming existing over-the-air brands are relatively involved directories or single-station apps. And one reason for Pandora's success must be that it offers both the multiple-station choice of the former and the ease-of-use of the latter.

So it's worth checking out Livio Radio's effort to bring the six-button model to mobile streaming with its new Car Internet Radio app. Much of it will look familiar if you've been using a stream aggregator app such as WonderRadio (my radio dial of choice for the last six months), but Livio's app is built to replicate the six button ergonomics of a car radio, as well as containing the rough equivalent of a scan button that gets you similar stations to what you're listening to.

You can see my full review of the Car Internet Radio app here. There were still a lot of early bugs, and I'm not ready to abandon my other apps until I have at least the two or three suites of buttons that I have on an existing car radio. But as an attempt to give radio the mobile ease of use of Pandora, it moves things in the right direction.

And, of course, it makes asking for the order that much more important, particularly for any listeners who are choosing not 18 stations from a market's available 40 or so, but six stations from an Infinite Dial. And it once again forces stations to offer something that will set them apart from scores of other jockless Bob- and Jack-FMs or from hundreds of Kiss FMs.

I have always been amazed when we'll show data to American commercial radio stations and up on the screen will pop the call letters of the local NPR affiliate and the local manager will say: "Who is that?"

Well, take a look at the graph on NPR's Research Department's blog "Go Figure" here. For the public radio stations that run "Morning Edition" and "All Things Considered", the trend is endlessly up.

I have commented before how NPR has essentially stolen the college graduates from commercial radio. While commercial radio is doing phony phone calls, these stations are providing literate, informative, and yes - entertaining radio that everyone in commercial radio should be looking at.

At least, we should know their call letters.

It was only 18 months ago that we wrote about how and why music from the '90s was still, by and large, missing from the radio (at least in every format but Alternative). Now, of course, Entercom, Clear Channel, and Citadel are all doing their versions of the format.
The all-'90s stations are coming along at a pretty good clip--to the point where the current 10 days or so since the last one feels like a long time.

If the '90s-based formats are starting to flow now, it's probably helped by the better environment overall for format changes; 18 months ago, in the scariest moments of the downturn, owners were almost fatalistic about the prospect for even better ratings to help them make more money. Also, CHR has continued to show surprising strength with adults, making that upper end a tempting target for a flanker. And, of course, somebody finally went first.

So we went back to our advice of 18 months ago to see how it stacked up next to how the format has since shaken out. We had three key suggestions:

1) "Pick and choose the '90s" -- In other words, have a stronger aesthetic than the existing anything-and-everything version of the format outside terrestrial radio with its weak records and whiplash potential. So far, most of the attempts at the format are still variety-driven enough for the format's critics to judge them as too broad. Although stations like Clear Channel's original Gen-X Radio, WLGX Louisville, Ky., have tried to make the grunge/rap/hair-bands variety into a positive. And, if only because of the available proven hits, most stations are still favoring the rock product -- even if there's Johnny Gill's "Rub You The Right Way" in between.

2) "Give yourself a few extra years" -- We suggested that a '90s-based station would benefit from having the Bon Jovi/Guns 'N' Roses hits of the late '80s available as well; (music really changed more around 1987 than 1990, anyway). The original '90s station, KBZC Sacramento, Calif., came on with strict '90s. WLGX gave itself a few years in either direction, which has since become the paradigm for all three major groups. (And KBZC has broadened its era slightly, too.)

3) "It doesn't have to be called all '90s (or '90s and more)" -- After all, Oldies stations weren't "'60s and more" at the outset. Again, as the "Gen X Radio" positioner takes hold, the industry now seems to be in agreement on this one.

4) "Grow the oh-wows" -- Every Oldies format eventually ends up with a number of important records that would not have tested at the outset. The hard part is always triage. Again, we've shaken out so that most stations are trying to balance strong songs and nuggets. Most stations now have some sort of "oh wow" stager, although it's often very subjective as to what gets a stager and what doesn't. It almost says more about what songs the PD likes and what songs they're ashamed of than anything else.

Some more recent thoughts on the '90s format here.

If I listen to the John Gorman-consulted Triple-A WNWV (V107.3) Cleveland every few weeks, I can pretty much count on hearing at least one song I want to buy in an hour's time. Today, I heard two, and one of them was the five-year-old song that I would cover as Crystal Bowersox' first single. And it's by an artist who's already been covered once on Idol this season.

For the last year, Top 40 has been sporting its widest variety in years. Somebody who doesn't listen to the format these days will tell me they pine for the variety of the '60s and '70s and I'll tell them about Taylor Swift, Taio Cruz, and Train on the same radio stations.

But broad doesn't necessarily translate to balanced. I was listening to a very well-programmed station this morning and the pattern, for a while anyway, was Hip-Hop record, modern AC record, Hip-Hop record, modern AC record.

Thanks to Train, the Script, and others, the poppier records that cross to Top 40 are poppier and more modern AC'ish than they have been in more than a decade -- since the days of Shawn Colvin and Paula Cole on Top 40 radio. They're real hits. But what's missing is the uptempo pop/rock music with bite in the middle. Right now, there's no Finger Eleven/"Paralyzer" or, taking it back to the Lilith era, no "Semi-Charmed Life."

Usually Top 40 radio gets its uptempo pop/rock records from the teen punk sector, but there's not one of those in the top 10 right now. There are a few things on Alternative that it could play--but Top 40 isn't really checking Alternative much right now.

At a time when younger listeners have broader, less didactic tastes than ever, it's unlikely that those listening to Top 40 radio are sitting around wondering where the Linkin Park/"In The End"-type record is. But if anybody who schedules Top 40 on a regular basis is reading this, I'd be curious if they ever feel like they're whipsawing? And in a good or bad way?

Okay, I don't think anybody really wants to go back to April, 2009 -- a time of abject panic, sparsely-attended conventions, and daily downsizing in our business. But I thought it might be interesting to look at the headlines from The Infinite Dial a year ago with an eye toward radio's issues at the time and what kind of progress we've made, or haven't. Among the topics of the day:

* The "Second CHR" Boom -- THEN: We took a "First Listen" to WVHT (Hot 100.5) Norfolk, Va., one of many even-more-rhythmic-than-usual Mainstream CHRs popping up around the country. We also wrote in Ross On Radio about whether a second Top 40 had the ability to reclaim teen listening. NOW: The KAMP-FM (Amp 97) Los Angeles miracle didn't repeat itself for everybody who tried it. And while there's still no shortage of the rhythmic pop that fuels that kind of station, we've had another year of CHR hits that didn't sound like anybody's idea of a CHR hit; ("Hey Soul Sister" is the latest). And while broadcasters are hardly tripping over themselves to repatriate teens with any kind of music, much less the all-Owl City format, we do think it's interesting what's happening at KBKS (Kiss 106.1) Seattle.

* The Idol/TV Effect - THEN: We suggested a first single for Adam Lambert, the already polarizing breakout star of "American Idol," who was clearly headed for a recording career whatever the outcome of the show. We're not sure we chose better than "Whatya Want From Me," the current Pink-penned single that stopped just outside the top 10. But we certainly did better than the ill-fated first single, "For Your Entertainment." We also talked about the lack of airplay for then-Internet-phenomenon Susan Boyle, something that AC radio only briefly rectified at holiday time. NOW: In this less galvanizing Idol season, there are still people who would be fascinating to do A&R for (Michael, Crystal, Siobhan). This season's winner will still get a hearing from radio, although being an Idol is less of a sure thing than ever. And whether it's Boyle or "Glee," radio still hasn't found a good way to acknowledge the format-breaking music sent to it by TV. We'll see how they handle the return of "Glee" this week.

* The Loss Of Radio Jobs - THEN: A year ago, we commented on how many people were trading employers' e-mail addresses for membership in "G-Mail Nation." NOW: We've changed a few of those addresses back to work e-mails, but not enough. And there are still downsizings in the trade press daily, if not three or four each day.

* Changing Usage - THEN: A year ago, Edison's Tom Webster wrote about the 47% of respondents to Edison/Arbitron's just released "Infinite Dial" survey who said their cellphone had a big impact on their life, vs. 23% who cited the iPhone and 21% who named AM/FM radio. NOW: The cellphone number is 54%. The iPhone number has nearly doubled to 45%. Radio nudges from 21% to 22% in the brand new 2010 study.

In the just released Arbitron/Edison Research Infinite Dial 2010 study, the Internet is rapidly closing the gap on radio as the place where people learn about new music, winnowing radio's lead to 39% to 31%. And among 12-to-34-year-olds, it's not even close, 52% to 32%.

Some will undoubtedly argue that anything radio can do now to recapture ground for music discovery will not be on its own airwaves, but on some last.fm-type play.Of course broadcasters need to engage on all platforms, but I'm not willing to concede the power of the over-the-airwaves shared discovery experience just yet. (And, oh yeah, if you oppose a performance royalty, conceding the music discovery function weakens radio's case for an exemption.)

So how could radio fight for the discovery franchise?

The most obvious one is that it could offer new music to more than one or two types of listeners. If you're a 16-year-old fan of the Rhythmic Pop that dominates Top 40, chances are that radio will still get to those songs in a relatively timely manner. If you're looking for the next "Say Hey (I Love You)" or "Hey Soul Sister," it might take its time to reach you. And if your tastes are toward the Alternative side, your new music is doled out a song or two an hour between "Lighting Crashes" and "Lithium." KBKS (Kiss 106.1) Seattle has built a new beachhead over the past two years playing more teen punk/emo than comparable CHRs and it seems to be working.

I'm also in favor of making the music director a star on the air. Every new song that goes on the station should sound like it was walked into the studio and set up by the MD (or PD, if that person is off-air and the MD isn't). Recommendations count these days and a person still counts more than a stager. And, hey, these days we're talking about that happening no more than once or twice a week anyway.

Or go a step further and have listeners introduce new music. The people who care enough to search out new music are the ones who want to evangelize for it with others. A 16-year-old make express indifference toward radio, but being able to reach tens of thousands of people with the song you thought you discovered is still pretty seductive. Deputize five listeners a week and play their picks off against each other (clips on the air, full song on the Web if you must).

We've also suggested making the whole music meeting process more transparent on your Website. Discuss every song you added and why. Discuss what you're still looking at. We've suggested this before and heard back from some programmers who say that they occasionally have a few listeners into the music meeting. It's not the same.

And this is probably a column unto itself, and does take us beyond the airwaves, but radio does need to have a strategy for dealing with YouTube as a new music destination. Radio Websites tease a new song (or album) or two at the time. Recently, I decided to use YouTube to listen to any new song that wasn't yet available to me on an industry Website or sampler; I was able to hear every song receiving 100 spins or more in every major format; (one or two of them had clearly been recorded off the air). Were radio to ever consider cutting a performance royalty deal with the labels, an ability to offer a more comprehensive new music library, including video, on station sites would have to be part of it.

Recently, a colleague was reflecting on WRXP New York morning man Matt Pinfield. "I was a huge '120 Minutes' fan," he told me. "I remember seeing 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' six months before it showed up anywhere else." Then he went on to tell me that he couldn't see somebody waxing nostalgic about discovering a song on-line. The shared experience was too much a part of it, he said. And a constantly evolving type of shared experience is one of the things radio can still offer for music discovery.

I'm enjoying CBS' Spanish Contemporary KLOL (Mega 101) Houston as I write this afternoon. Mega has been an established presence for a few years now, going between pop, reggaeton, bachata, and an occasional English-language record in a way that was still a struggle in the Spanish-radio world a decade ago.

Listening to KLOL put me in mind of two of its predecessors. KXYZ (Radio 13), owned by the nascent Infinity, which punctuated pure Spanish language pop (of the sort that rarely infiltrated the more AC-flavored stations) with an occasional English language title. (I still remember them backselling Loverboy's "Reina De Los Corazones Rotas"). In the late '80s, there was KQQK, playing only English-language Top 40 hits with Spanish jocks--a format that existed everywhere else in the Spanish-speaking world, but had trouble getting traction in the U.S. Listening to KQQK was a rush, not the least of which was because of the jocks--higher-energy than their American counterparts even in that hot hits era.

So it seemed like an interesting topic for group discussion: what are the greatest stations that most people have never heard? They could be a great small-market station that was never widely heard in pre-streaming days? They could be a short-lived major-market station that somehow anticipated something in today's radio. Short-lived bursts of weirdness (and there are a lot of those) are good, too. So what's the little-known station that somehow influenced you?

Last Friday, at the RAIN Summit North at Canadian Music Week, I was listening to a VP at Slacker talk about being sold out -- which means about four units an hour -- and thinking that he'd never be able to sell 12-14 minutes an hour. Then I realized that he'll never have to. I came away thinking that the notion of what constitutes an acceptable amount of commercials to sit through is going to change dramatically as FM music radio migrates its brands and products to other platforms -- just as it has changed a number of times in muisc radio's 55 year history. The Ross On Radio column I wrote about it may well be the most important thing I've ever written. Whether it will be the most influential, however, depends on whether broadcasters can stomach the enormity of what I'm suggesting.

Often, the columns that generate the most reader reaction--particularly from outside the radio business--are the appreciations we write of stations that change format (or even the "First Listen" columns we write on their successors). For one thing, we hear from readers who need to vent.

During its life as a soft Oldies station, Citadel's KPMZ (Platinum 96.7) Dallas generated, easily, the most comments we've ever received, with listeners chiming in several times a day in praise of Dallas radio legend Ron Chapman, even though he was only a consultant to the station, and to attack rival KLUV (K-Love 98.7).

Platinum managed, during its 18 months on the air, to make life less comfortable for KLUV, particularly in a PPM environment that isn't kind to head-to-head combatants. Last week, it began stunting before becoming a simulcast of Talk sister WBAP.

And, not surprisingly, the comments have started again, although you'll have to scroll past more than a hundred written during the station's lifetime to read them.

Five weeks ago, Edison's Larry Rosin reasonably suggested that the real lesson of PPM might not be "heritage morning shows mean nothing, people would rather hear music," but instead "heritage morning shows might not fit on stations that are music utilities." Larry wrote, "Maybe the industry should be re-deploying its fired shows into stacks on one station, instead of the history of them being spread around on each, all competing with one another."

Since then, the number of heritage morning shows in play has only grown. Donnie Simpson leaves. Dick Purtan retires, and even doing so of his own volition can't help commenting on how PPM has made it more difficult to be a personality. So why hasn't somebody come up with the FM Talk superstation with a brand-name morning show in every daypart?

Because broadcasters have already decided that only certain types of FM talk work. In a PPM world, many are deciding the preferred FM choice for spoken-word programming is Sports Talk. The second choice is the Rush Limbaugh-driven conservative talk format that already prospers on AM and might benefit from a second signal. The younger skewed, entertainment-driven Talk station has usually stymied the industry, even in the diary era. But one reason was that all the logical talent was tied up elsewhere in the market, usually playing three songs an hour under duress in mornings on a music station.

Most markets finally have five heritage air talent that could power an FM talk station--San Diego being the best recent example of a market where it would be easy to have a "morning show" in every daypart. But even if owners could get past the belief that "FM talk doesn't work," they would still have to pay for them all. And in many cases, it's being unable or unwilling to pay for one talk show--much less a whole day's worth--that is really driving the personality exodus.

Over the last few weeks, I've been discussing the radio stations that have, thus far, gotten a "button" on the iPhone that I've been using over the past month or two as the world's most sophisticated transistor radio. This week, in time for Country Radio Seminar, it's Country radio's turn.

The same caveats apply here as to my Top 40 and Urban buttons. The choices reflect the ease with which I found stations through various streaming apps. If you're here, it doesn't mean I've had a chance to listen yet. If you're not here, it doesn't mean I don't like your station. It's more of a reflection on how easy your station is to set as a "favorite" in some cases. At least one station that would be on the list, KKGO (Go Country 105) Los Angeles doesn't have a working link in my stream aggregator app of preference; (the app's issue, not the station's fault).

Here are my Mainstream and Classic Country bookmarks, so far:

CFQX (QX104) Winnipeg
CHNK (Hank FM) Winnipeg
CISN Edmonton, Alb.
CIWM (NCI-FM) Winnipeg--the native Canadian/Country hybrid
CJJR (JR93.7) Vancouver, B.C.
CJXL (XL96) Moncton, N.B.
CKNX Wingham, Ont., (one of the few terrestrial Country outlets included in the Tun3R app, but oddly enough also a station that can occasionally be heard in Northern N.J.)
CKRY (Country 105) Calgary, Alb.
GotRadio.com Classic Country
KBEQ (Q104) Kansas City
KBWF (the Wolf) San Francisco
KEEY (K102) Minneapolis
KKNG Oklahoma City
KKUS (104.1 The Ranch) Tyler, Texas
KKWF (the Wolf) Seattle
KMPS Seattle
KMPS-HD-2 Seattle (Classic Country)
KNCI Sacramento, Calif.
KOLZ Cheyenne, Wyo.
KPLX (The Wolf) Dallas
KSCS Dallas
KSOP-FM Salt Lake City (but disappointed that the Classic Country AM doesn't stream)
KSUX Sioux City, Iowa
KTST (Twister Country) Oklahoma City
KUPL Portland, Ore.
KVET Austin, Texas
KWYY Casper, Wyo.
KXXY Oklahoma City
Pandora Contemporary Country (their own channel, as well as Mainstream and Attitude Country channels of my own creation)
RadioIO Classic Country
WBCT (B93) Grand Rapids, Mich.
WDRM Huntsville, Ala.
WIHY (I64) Milton, W Va.--syndicated Classic Country
WIRK West Palm Beach, Fla.
WKHX Atlanta
WKIS Miami
WLHK (Hank FM) Indianapolis
WOGI (Froggy 94.9) Pittsburgh
WOKO Burlington, Vt.
WQIK Jacksonville, Fla.
WQYK Tampa, Fla.
WUSN (US99) Chicago
WUUQ (Q97.3) Chattanooga, Tenn.
WWLG (the Legend) Atlanta
WWQM (Q106) Madison, Wis.
WXTU Philadelphia
WYNK Baton Rouge, La.

Even if the New Orleans Saints were upset winners on Super Bowl Sunday, there was never any question about which city was going to win the battle of the local sports novelties.

New Orleans is probably the market with the most robust history of local hits -- those songs that endure on the radio despite not having become hits elsewhere. It's a history less changed by MTV, syndicated programming, or the population shifts that have tamped down local hits elsewhere. And not only did the unique flavor of the market survive Hurricane Katrina, but one of the biggest local hits that you've never heard of is actually about being displaced by Katrina.

So it just followed that having the Saints in the Super Bowl would bring out the sports-related novelties. Indianapolis, which has had a few occasional local songs of its own over the years, did have a Colts-related song: the Mudkids' "Do It Again (Go Colts '10)," which got airplay on Top 40s WNOU and WZPL and Rock WRZX.

But New Orleans' WEZB (B97) alone had at least six different football-related novelties (or songs repurposed as football novelties) in rotation last week:

* Baby Boy Da Prince's "Saints Song 2009" (which also got other airplay in the region)
* U2 & Green Day's "The Saints Are Coming," which was pressed into action as a football song
* K. Gates' "Black & Gold"
* X-Man, Big Shot, Big Rec, and Kuniqua's "Heart Of The City (Who Dat)"
* Ying-Yang Twins' "Halftime"
* Will Smith's "Miami"--which got far more airplay on B97 and Hot AC rival WDVW than it did in Miami last week.

B97 has also given Queen's "We Are The Champions" at least four spins this week. And it has a whole page of Saints songs posted.

And there are other Saints records on other stations, such as Kellen Smith's "My Town (Saints Anthem) on Urban WQUE (Q93) and Williams Riley's "The Who Dat Roll," on WNOE and other Country stations around the state.

In other markets, sports-related novelties are one of the few times that programmers give themselves permission to go off the menu. It's one of the few times a group PD can look at the playlist and understand what exactly those "different" records are doing there. But listeners don't make that distinction. Those with continuing ties to the radio expect it to reflect their lives all year long.

I'm sharing the stations that I've bookmarked now that I'm finally streaming mobile audio. Here's the R&B/Hip-Hop list. Ground rules are the same as Friday's Top 40 list -- no New York stations (they're on my car presets), and who I've chosen isn't necessarily a reflection of my favorites as much as the stations that were easiest to grab from the various aggregators, and stations that filled a need that wasn't necessarily satisfied by a local.

KBFM (Wild 104) McAllen/Brownsville, Texas
KFZX (Z105.9) Lafayette, La.
KHHT (Hot 92.3) Los Angeles
KHYL (V101.5) Sacramento, Calif.
KKDA-FM (K104) Dallas (and wish that KKDA-AM was available)
KMEL San Francisco
KRJO (OI' Skool 1680) Monroe, La.
Radio IO Classic R&B
Skyrock 96.0 Paris
WBHJ (95.7 Jamz) Birmingham, Ala.
WBTP (95.7 The Beat) Tampa, Fla.
WDAS-FM Philadelphia
WDIA Memphis
WDKX Rochester, N.Y.
WERQ (92Q) Baltimore
WGCI Chicago
WGVN (Groovin' 1580) Lexington, Ky.
WHHL (Hot 104.1) St. Louis
WIKS (Kiss 102) Greenville, N.C.
WJBT (93.3 The Beat) Jacksonville, Fla.
WJLB Detroit
WJHM (102 Jamz) Orlando, Fla.
WJMH (102 Jamz) Greensboro, N.C.
WKKV (V100) Milwaukee
WPEG (Power 98) Charlotte, N.C.
WPGC Washington, D.C.
WPWX (Power 92) Chicago
WQUE (Q93) New Orleans
WRBO (Soul Classics 103.5) Memphis
WUSL (Power 99) Philadelphia
WVEE (V103) Atlanta
WWHT (Hot 107.9) Syracuse, N.Y., (Top 40 but effectively the market's R&B/Hip-Hop station)
WZMX (Hot 93.7) Hartford, Conn.

As long as there's been The Infinite Dial, I've resisted the temptation to choose the stations that would comprise my ultimate radio dial. There were just too many potential landmines and sins of omission. Too many choices between what I would listen to and what I thought, in the abstract, I should listen to. In other words, it would be hard to choose between the perceived "best in category" and a station that filled a hole on my local dial.

But now that I have an iPhone (just in time, I realize, for the rest of the world to start talking about the iPad or at least the Nexus One), the stations that I chose as my "presets" are less of an abstraction. There are, of course, a boatload of them, far more than I've actually listened to in my month of iPhone ownership. And enough that even just listing them one format at a time, I risk making many of you glaze over. But the list is shared here to show you both the plethora of choices that your own listeners face and some of the biases that go in to choosing them.

Because so much of Top 40 here is owned by a handful of groups, it was easy to load up on Clear Channel stations in iHeart Radio or Entercom stations in Flycast or CBS Radio stations. There was definitely a lot of "oh, yeah, I should listen to them" at play here. The smaller guys can take some comfort in knowing they were really top of mind for me to search them out in my WunderRadio app. You'll also see a ton of Canadian stations here (again, I was looking for what I couldn't get from stations between New York and Philly).

But here's the Mainstream CHR list -- spread out across five aggregators (which is another reason why I certainly haven't listened to all of these equally) since last month. If your station isn't here, it doesn't mean I don't like it. (It also doesn't mean that I might not have listened on my desktop. And there are stations bookmarked on my desktop that I somehow never got around to here.) It just means that a station wasn't yanked off the shelf during my initial shopping spree of going through all my new apps for stations to bookmark. And not every inclusion consttutes an endorsement -- some are there because I needed to keep up with a market. But, for today, here's the list:

.977TheHits -- Figured it was time to check them out and they were, of course, easy to find/bookmark because of how most aggregators list them.
BBC Radio 1
Capital FM London
CFBT (the Beat) Vancouver
CFUL (Amp 90.3) Calgary
CHBN (the Bounce) Edmonton
CHUM-FM Toronto
CIHT (Hot 89.9) Ottawa
CJCH (the Bounce) Halifax, N.S.
CKMM (Hot 103) Winnipeg
CKOI Montreal
Clear Channel's "Hit Nation" (essentially the Premium Choice Top 40 feed)
Fun Radio Paris
Goom Radio Just Hits
HKGFM.com's Top 40 format
KBFM (Wild 104) McAllen/Brownsville, Texas
KDWB Minneapolis
KHKS (Kiss 106.1) Dallas
KIIS Los Angeles
KJLT (The Breeze) Tyler, Texas
KLSX (97.1 Amp Radio) Los Angeles
KLUC Las Vegas
KMVQ (Movin' 99.7) San Francisco
KPTT (95.7 The Party) Denver
KRBE Houston
Krone Hit Radio Austria
KZHT Salt Lake City
Mix Megapol Malmo, Sweden
NRJ Paris
Nova 96.9 Sydney, Australia
Pandora -- my Top 40 channel which was created 18 months ago and thus will forever be known as "I Kissed A Girl" radio!
Radio DIsney
WAKS (Kiss FM) Cleveland
WBZW (B94) Pittsburgh -- they hadn't yet announced a pending format change
WDCG (G105) Raleigh, N.C.
WDJQ (Q92) Canton, Ohio
WEZB (B97) New Orleans
WFBC-FM (B93.7) Greenville, S.C.
WIFC Wausau, Wis
WKFS (Kiss 107) Cincinnati
WKQI (Channel 95-5) Detroit
WKSE (Kiss 98.5) Buffalo, N.Y.
WMEG San Juan, P.R.
WSPK (K104.7) Poughkeepsee, N.Y.
WXKS-FM (Kiss 108) Boston
WVMV (98.7 Amp Radio) Detroit
WWHT (Hot 107.9) Syracuse, N.Y.

The other day I was chatting with a group of commercial radio managers. During the discussion I mentioned "the best show on the radio, 'Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me!'"

Of course, I experienced disappointment when several had never heard of the show. (For the record however, several had and backed my assertion).

So discussion of why the show is so great ensued. And I heard myself utter the following words: "You need to understand, it is like old-fashioned radio. A group of talented people work all week on creating one awesome hour of radio".

I was taken aback as I realized something so blazingly obvious: No wonder most morning radio sucks. We are asking the impossible. We are asking way too few people to produce way too much radio and attempt to make it entertaining. We are asking ever-smaller staffs to create TWENTY HOURS of magic every week.

Through this perspective, it is amazing that morning radio is as good as it is. But it also speaks to how good radio could be if somehow the model could change and allow for a greater number of talented people to work on creating less radio, not more.

Okay, you may not seek out non-commercial radio pledge drives. But if you were willing to listen to one, Triple-A WFUV New York has structured theirs as "Five Decades In Five Days." It kicks off today (Monday) with the '60s and a few of the nuggets heard in the last hour or so include Blood Sweat & Tears' "Without Her," the Byrds' "Goin' Back," Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers," and Lovin' Spoonful's "Rain on The Roof." Listen here.

That said, I do think it is telling us a lot about radio brands. We have long seen, even in diary days, that complex branding is challenging. Ask any station that was "Howard Stern all morning, [fill in format name] all day." They could seldom get the second half of the story to attach itself.

One of the real surprises of PPM has been stations with 'no morning show' turning out to be highly competitive in morning drive. What are they doing instead? Basically, what they normally do. Whether it is Soft AC's playing familiar favorites, or all-news-all-the-time stations delivering 'Traffic and Weather Together Every Ten Minutes', stations that stay in format all 24 hours seem to be strengthened by their consistency.

Of course there are morning shows doing remarkably well in PPM. But by the same token a lot of stations that weren't getting much action in mornings with the diaries (especially Soft AC) are doing way better with passive measurement.

Sadly, these findings have put a lot of talented morning performers 'on the beach.'

But isn't this maybe what we are being told: Maybe when you are the Classic Rock station people really want Classic Rock no matter when they tune in. And if you are the Big Morning Show station...maybe you should be the Big Midday Show station and the Big PM Drive Show station too. Maybe the industry should be re-deploying its fired shows into stacks on one station, instead of the history of them being spread around on each, all competing with one another.

If studying radio for 22 years has taught me anything, it is that brands matter. Maybe PPM is telling us this. Whatever that thing you are famous for might be -- maybe you should be "All that, All the time."

Clear Channel recently introduced a capability to insert radio spots after certain types of content or programming on a context-dependent basis. The ability to offer even vaguely contextual ads on radio is certainly a step forward for the medium, and Clear Channel should be applauded for doing something to raise the game. It should be noted, however, that these ads aren't targeted to listeners, per se, merely to content tags, a la Google AdWords. So there is no guarantee that a listener will find the advertising more relevant to them, but Clear Channel's early results seem positive.

Still, the example given by Ad Age somehow fails to inspire. The Wal-Mart campaign they cited involved playing spots for AC/DC's new Wal-Mart-exclusive album, "Black Ice," immediately after AC/DC songs were played. Relevant, yes, but perhaps too literal to ignite the imagination. Your intrepid Infinite Dial staff believes it can do better. Ahem:

C'mon, folks, I'm a researcher--not a comedy writer. Help me out here in the comments.

When Bob- and Jack-mania took hold five years ago, our friends at Entercom did a version of Adult/Variety Hits that often enforced the "we play everything" mantra more zealously than a lot of their counterparts. Some Adult Hits stations were grounded in the late '70s and '80s with just a little bit of everything else for plausible deniability. Stations like WSMW (98.7 Simon) Greensboro, N.C., and WMKK (93.7 Mike FM) Boston seemed to cover a wider span of years with a deeper center.

Now there's WNTR Indianapolis, formerly the Track, returning to its one time My 107.9 handle, but adding the positioner "We Play Everything You Want" and making more of a virtue than ever out of being aggressively broad. Unlike the format's first-gen stations, there's more of a '90s Rhythmic Pop component here. But there's also more '70s Soft AC than you might hear on comparable stations. It's (Dallas' "Platinum 96.7" + "Movin'") x "Bob-FM." And then some.

And although crosstown WJJK (Jack FM) has long abandoned both the "playing what we want" format and Jack's initial eclecticism for a more mainstream Classic Hits approach, WNTR is heavily emphasizing the listener-driven/request angle with drops like "call now and pick out the next song" or others to the effect of "don't blame us, it was a request." There's also a list of three "core values" on the Website and on the air: "We play the widest variety in Indianapolis"; "We listen to you"; "We play everything you want."

And while wacky attitude drops are part and parcel of this format, the liner about taking off your shoes at airport security and having holes in your socks actually preceded "Double Dutch Bus," which does have a line about having holes in your socks.

Here's the station today, just before 10 a.m. It's actually less provocative than some of the stretches I was hearing a few days ago -- to the extent that you can say that about an hour that includes "Blame It On The Rain" (which did ignite the expected discussion among inhabitants of Edison's third floor), "Mmmbop," and "Double Dutch Bus." But you can tell that this is going to be a personal favorite of a lot of industry people for a while -- particularly those who grew up in the late '80s/early '90s and are waiting to hear their songs again.

If you haven't yet signed up for Sean Ross's "Ross on Radio" from Radio-Info.com, be sure to click here!

Hanson, "MMMbop"
Keith Sweat, "I Want Her"
Verve, "Bittersweet Symphony"
Bobby Brown, "Don't Be Cruel"
Police, "Don't Stand So Close To Me"
Cher, "I Found Someone"
Milli Vanilli, "Blame It On The Rain"
Cars, "You Might Think"
Dire Straits, "Sultans of Swing"
Montell Jordan, "This Is How We Do It"
Kenny Loggins, "This Is It"
Earth Wind & Fire & Emotions, "Boogie Wonderland"
Blind Melon, "No Rain"
Frankie Smith, "Double Dutch Bus"
Lisa Stansfield, "All Around The World"

...Belongs to Tim McGraw, whose hit "Something Like That" received 487,343 spins in the naught-ies, according to the New York Times. Tim handily beat Usher, Ludacris, Train and even Flo Rida (featuring T-Pain) in radio's cage match of the decade.

Note to the labels: a Tim McGraw cover of "Low" featuring an auto-tuned T-Pain would be golden.

I've fielded a number of consumer press calls this holiday season about how hard it is to come up with a "new" holiday radio standard. It's not hard to figure out why so few new songs take hold each year. For starters, Mainstream AC has become the agenda setter, and one that is now clearly going to default in most cases to a new version of "O Holy Night" or "I'll Be Home For Christmas" than to an unfamiliar song. It's also hard for any song to get traction with no more than eight weeks of national airplay--more like five at most stations. Even Britney Spears' "3," as obvious in concept as any record, had just taken hold at Mainstream CHR after five weeks. And it is hard, of course, for a new song to quickly develop the emotional attachments of the songs associated with childhood holidays.

So what. then, is special about the songs that have made it through to become enduring Christmas hits in recent years?

Going back 30 years, which is recent in Christmas music terms, consider some of the original songs that still play on holiday formats today:

* Paul McCartney, "Wonderful Christmastime" (1979)
* Dan Fogelberg, "Same Old Lang Syne" (1980)
* Band Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas" (1983)
* Wham, "Last Christmas" (1984)
* Mariah Carey, "All I Want For Christmas Is You" (1994)
* 'N Sync, "Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays" (1998--less of a standard, but hangs in at CHR)

Now consider a few remakes that became standards:

* Bruce Springsteen, "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" (came to radio on a wide-scale around 1980 with help from "The River.")
* Hall & Oates, "Jingle Bell Rock" (1984)
* Madonna, "Santa Baby" (1987) -- not a new song, but probably one that would have faded without this remake.

The pattern here is that a lot of enduring holiday records are contributed by the artists who are CHR core acts or at least prolific hitmakers at the time, and manage to sustain that status for at least a few years. And, yes, that still included McCartney & Wings in 1979 and even Dan Fogelberg in 1980. Band Aid, of course, had the advantage of having multiple CHR acts and being an early event record of that sort. Making a Christmas record has become the way a veteran act extends their longevity at radio, but those aren't the acts who can offer us more than just another version of a standard and get our attention.

So now consider Lady Gaga's "Christmas Tree." It came out last Christmas as her star was ascending. Five hits in to her career, it's back for a second holiday. Even if she's taking a hiatus from new product, it's probably guaranteed some airplay next Christmas. And then, its durability will be a function of what kind of career she pulls off.

Today, it's hard to imagine a song with the couplet "everybody knows/we will take off our clothes" on an AC holiday format, next to Johnny Mathis and Bing Crosby. But even "Let's Dance" and "Paparazzi" got a little airplay this year, and it seems inevitable that being "this generation's Madonna," will also include following her audience to AC radio over the years. The Top 40-to-holiday-standard route has also been compromised a little by AC's greater presence in the Christmas space, and its tendency to use new recordings (usually of standards) as a way of acknowledging the format-breaker acts like Josh Groban, Susan Boyle, and the Glee Cast that it would be reluctant to play in regular rotation.

But reinvigorating the "new song by ascending superstar" formula is worth considering for anybody lucky enough to be A&R'ing a successful CHR act in, say, August 2010. (Imagine if the Black Eyed Peas had a new holiday song this year.) If there aren't more new songs added to the Christmas canon (besides "Christmas Canon"), it may be because the acts who could get a holiday song considered haven't wanted to do so.

When Carson Daly's career took him from Alternative KROQ Los Angeles to MTV's "Total Request Live," he was the guy who was supposed to become "The Next Dick Clark." Daly is now the host of the NBC talk show "Last Call With Carson Daly," but it was Ryan Seacrest who went on to the kind of ubiquity Clark was known for. So, Daly is now reuniting with KROQ PD Kevin Weatherly to do mornings on Top 40 sister station KAMP (Amp 97.1) starting early next year. And what's at stake is more than just ratings -- it's Daly's chance to get his own back!

It's been a common theme in state-of-the-industry discussions this year: it can't be too long before the big groups start handing stations over at bargain prices to the entrepeneurs. The problem is that it's often been the little guys selling their stations at too-good-to-be-true prices. So you can take some encouragement from this owner.

When it debuted nearly two years ago, WOCL (Sunny 105.9) Orlando, Fla., was the edgiest possible iteration of the Oldies/Greatest Hits format -- about as far as you could go with it before moving into Bob- and Jack-FM territory. It was also a station that edged into rap with songs like "Bust A Move."

Since then, most of Sunny's CBS-owned counterparts have made their move into the '80s and flagship WCBS-FM New York has gone further than many. It's no longer remarkable to hear CBS-FM playing "Cars" by Gary Numan--chronologically the early '80s, but still seemingly edgier than "Tainted Love" or "Don't You Want Me." So how edgy, then, is WOCL by comparison?

Well, listening this afternoon, the '80s we heard weren't so provocative. But there was a promo that promised "from Kenny Loggins to Def Leppard, all of Orlando's Greatest Hits play here." And there's still a clear premium on tempo. Here's Sunny at 2 p.m. today:

Eddie Money, "Baby Hold On"
Lou Rawls, "You'll Never Find Another Love Like Mine"
Elvis Presley vs. JXL, "A Little Less Conversation"
Pretenders, "Brass In Pocket (I'm Special)"
Trammps, "Disco Inferno"
Beatles, "Hello Goodbye"
Brownsville Station, "Smokin' In The Boys' Room"
John Fogerty, "Centerfield"
Stories, "Brother Louie"
Tommy James & Shondells, "Crystal Blue Persuasion"
Eagles, "Life In The Fast Lane"
Jackson Browne, "Runnin' On Empty"
Marvin Gaye, "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby"
Doobie Brothers, "Takin' It To The Streets"
Katrina & the Waves, "Walking On Sunshine"
Bob Marley & Wailers, "Jammin'"
Five Man Electrical Band, "Signs"

Perhaps the most exciting thing about Country radio in the early '90s was that the debut of a successful new hipper-sounding Country station didn't necessarily take a lot of shares from the successful incumbent. The new station won by taking a few people from the incumbent and turning other new listeners on to Country music, often former Top 40 listeners. At the same time, the second Top 40 station in the market would often go away and the remaining Top 40 would get a negligible bump, at best -- a sign of just how bad things were in Top 40 at the time.

A few years later, Top 40 rebounded and by the late '90s/early '00s, there was a building boom. But a second Top 40 rarely grew the audience by 3-4 shares in the way a second Country had. The new, younger leaning, more rhythmic Clear Channel Top 40s of that era usually cut the incumbent neatly in half, leaving them to tough it out with a 3.5 share or, just as often, get out. The new KAMP (Amp 97.1) Los Angeles is the first sign-on in recent memory that might have conceivably added a few shares to the Top 40 pool.

For a while, it looked like new Hip-Hop/R&B stations were creating new listening. Often, a new Hip-Hop outlet would raid the other Top 40 and leave the Urban relatively untouched. But in recent years, Hip-Hop stations have often shown the effects of fragmentation, even before PPM. Now we've seen Clear Channel's KATZ (the Beat) St. Louis decide that half the Hip-Hop franchise is no longer worth arguing over.

So turn your attention now to Boston, where CBS' new All-Sports station WBZ-FM (the Sports Hub) went 0.6 - 2.5 - 3.6 in the October PPM. Entercom's WEEI, meanwhile, is up 4.5 - 5.2 - 5.3 in that same time. Yes, it was Boston in October. Yes, there was a round of Red Sox playoff games involved. Yes, WEEI might have had an even bigger October without competition. And WBZ-FM began life with Patriots broadcasts. But if any of that growth sustains through the fall, that's a big deal.

And if you're wondering where those shares came from: neither of the Rock stations that might have expected a bump from the departure of the former WBCN have seen one . . . yet. If that sustains through the fall, there are definite shades of Top 40 in 1993 and the only good news is that Top 40 did not fall off the face of the Earth as many then predicted. If both Rock and Sports radio were to go up at some point, we would have a format that not only creates new listening for itself but brings people back to the radio, but for now, creating a few extra shares of listening for one's own format is formidable.

It's a familiar fact for radio people that format changes are sprung not just on listeners, but on staffers as well, and that jocks rarely get a chance to say goodbye. As the St. Louis Post Dispatch points out in an intriguing bit of enterprise this week, Facebook has changed that, allowing the personalities of Urban KATZ (the Beat) St. Louis to post their goodbyes as status updates.

And what did the Beat jocks write? "Just want to thank you for all your years of love and support over my radio career!" "I want to THANK everybody for all the kind words and support." "I have no hard feelings and I thank God for the opportunity." Only one former staffer went as far as bemoaning the state of the format: "We were puppets [to] a system. Years and years of non-support (bootlegging, etc.), has finally caught up. Urban radio is suffering all over."

Facebook could, I suppose, make personalities more diplomatic overall; a potential employer is able to see those comments. But it's worth noting that, in any event, these are not exactly the kind of comments that managers worry about when they decide to keep outgoing personalities far away from the mic.

Last night I was listening to WRXP New York's nightly new-music feature, "10 O'Clock News."

I heard a song that I loved instantly because it makes innovative use of a semi-obscure '70s R&B sample, which is always a good attention-getter in my particular case.

Fortunately, they backsold it and I was devastated to find out that . . .

It's a song that has been sitting at arm's length on my desk for at least the last two months.

The song, incidentally, is One eskimO's "Kandi." The sample is Candi Staton's "She Called Me Baby." If I had actually picked up the advance CD and looked at the bio on the back, I would have also known that two months ago.

But the song itself might not have prompted an article. At that moment, I both had greater sympathy for and greater alarm about those program directors who oversee four stations and no longer have the time (or encouragement) to go digging for new music.

So unless you are outrageously happy with the quality of product in your format right now, it's worth asking: Is your next favorite record within arms' reach?

When we take our year-end look at which records changed the tenor of various formats, Katy Perry's "Hot N Cold" will easily be on the list, even though it's a 2008 record.

That's because "Hot N Cold" is a top 10 hit at Mainstream AC now, peaking at No. 6 at that format in October, eleven months after it reached No. 1 at Top 40.

Texturally, "Hot N Cold" is envelope-pushing for Mainstream AC -- keyboard-driven female power-pop a few notches hotter than the hits that finally made Pink a regular visitor to the format.

In terms of timing, however, "Hot N Cold" went from Top 40 to AC on a more typical timetable. It took Mainstream AC programmers nearly a year to feel comfortable with it. The AC gatekeepers were a handful of stations that are aggressive on currents, plus any stations that may have thought to put "Hot N Cold" in a library test over the course of the last year.

That's the history of AC, of course: songs take a long time for their familiarity to overcome their edginess and many have taken a decade or two to make the trip. "Hot N Cold" made it a lot faster than "Lights" by Journey or "Jack and Diane." And as a look at Mediabase's AC Top 10 shows below, the lag time between CHR and AC isn't usually quite as extreme.

But at a time when Top 40 is more successful above age 25 than it has been in years in many markets, it's hard to believe that "Hot N Cold" really took a year for adult women to decide they liked it. Just as likely, it was on their radar long before most AC programmers gave it serious consideration.

At this point, some AC PDs are going to glaze over at one more apparent attack on their conservatism. But we're in favor of playing the hits. The only question is what the hits are and where to find them. Are the hits the songs that have finally made it to a handful of AC outlets in other markets? Or are they songs that are being warmed up in your market by stations that you share listening with?

And, of greater concern, without callout and with less regular library testing, how is an AC PD to read the strength of any current?

Here's the AC Top 10 and how long it took each single to travel to the format:

1) Taylor Swift, "You Belong With Me" - Still the current single (for a little longer) at Top 40. Peaked in Country in August and in Top 40 in September. In its 14th week on the chart. Practically simultaneous.

2) Miley Cyrus, "The Climb" - One single ago at Top 40, where it peaked in June. In chart week No. 33.

3) Rob Thomas, "Her Diamonds" - Behind Top 40 and Hot AC by one single. Peaked at Top 40 in August. Chart week 24.

4) The Fray, "You Found Me" - One single behind Top 40 and Hot AC. Peaked at Top 40 in March. 37 weeks on the AC chart.

5) Matt Nathansome, "Come On Get Higher" - The follow-up is out at Hot AC, but hasn't gone to Top 40 yet. Peaked at Top 40 in March and at Hot AC in November '08. 35 AC chart weeks.

6) Colbie Caillat, "Falling For You" -- Still a current at all formats. 12 weeks on AC chart.

7) Pink, "Please Don't Leave Me" -- One single behind Top 40, where it peaked in July. 19 weeks on the chart.

8) Michael Bublé, "Haven't Met You Yet" -- "Home" was a rare AC-bred hit of obvious legitimacy and this one is top 10 after seven weeks on the AC chart and ahead of Hot AC (No. 45) and Top 40 (not getting played yet).

9) Katy Perry, "Hot & Cold" -- Two singles behind Top 40 and Hot AC. This peaked at Top 40 in November '08. In fact, "Waking Up In Vegas," the last Top 40 single, peaked in August. "Hot & Cold" is in its 38th week on the AC chart.

10) Daughtry, "No Surprise" -- Still the current single for a few more weeks at Hot AC and Top 40, where it peaked in September. Now at 20 weeks on the AC chart.

With the decline of newspapers and the paucity of local content on broadcast radio stations, "local news" offline has become something of a scarce commodity. That's why I'm watching the Chicago News Cooperative very closely, and have high hopes that this sort of "low-profit" community journalism effort could bear fruit for local radio as well. I wrote about something very similar several months ago in "A Local Content Model For The Future," and these sorts of community cooperatives could be a compelling model to keep local journalism alive and well, and provide local radio stations with a low cost way to offer quality local news to listeners.

There is a conventional wisdom in music radio that news breaks are an "interruption," and few, if any, music stations offer news updates outside of morning drive. When local newspapers disappear as a source for offline community news, however, who's to say that local news wouldn't be welcome--and even expected-as radio redefines its role in the community in the coming years?

Last week I was given the distinct honor of presenting a webinar for The Conclave entitled A Small, Good Thing. Lately, I've been sensing your frustrations and reading them online on blogs, message boards and on Twitter. It's easy to feel that you are powerless to reverse the current direction of the Radio industry, which is plagued by debt, poor management and, frankly, vision problems. This sense of powerlessness can weigh heavily on your psyche and grind on your soul at exactly the point in time where you need to be at your most creative.

I write a lot here about the future of radio, but sometimes that future can be oppressive--so I challenged myself to write a presentation that would help you in the present, no matter where you are, and give you some of the everyday tools I use to positively affect my company, my career, and ultimately my mindset. I lose my voice a bit at the end, but that's really because I am very passionate about this stuff, and I hope that shows. If you weren't able to make the Conclave webinar you missed the chance to join in on the dialogue. However, I've posted the entire presentation here, and I hope you'll take the time to watch it and share your thoughts here with me in the comments section.

BIG thank yous again to the folks at The Conclave and especially Jay Philpott, who handled all the details, and Dave Martin, who graciously offered me the soapbox.

And thank YOU for reading The Infinite Dial. We thrive on your feedback (good, bad and hideous) so keep it coming.

Let me take you back to the 1970s. The often goofy theme songs from Laverne & Shirley, Welcome Back Kotter, Happy Days, SWAT, and Rockford Files all chart, and a few go number one. TV themes were among the secret weapons that Top 40 programmers pulled out, when they weren't digging up novelty records or album cuts. Were they all good or enduring records? It doesn't matter now. For kids of the '70s, they were all "pop culture," long before that phrase took hold. And radio didn't have to work to reflect pop culture, it was still in the business of helping to create it.

Fast forward to today. I have made a consistent theme of modern Top 40 radio's failure to jump on things that are selling music or everyone is watching on TV or whatever. Basically, I have learned that if radio does not get songs promoted to it, it simply will not play them. In other words, in this time when we need to be more creative and daring than ever, instead we are the most conservative we have ever been.

The latest example is the buzz-alicioius show Wednesday nights on Fox: "Glee". Every week there are a number of songs on the show, and pretty much every single song they've released so far is in the iTunes top 200 for sales right now (including songs that are on upcoming shows). The show is huge with teens and doing well with 18-49s. Hunt down some of these songs online (including last week's mash-ups) and listen for yourself.

Radio's response? Of course, it has hardly played any of these songs.

Meanwhile, there is a new song from Michael Jackson. Heard of him? I think he'd gotten some attention this summer for something. Take a look at Mediabase. Outside of Urban AC, most of the stations that have acknowledged "This Is It" have given it 3-4 spins since Monday. Some gave it a single spin. So far, much of commercial radio just decided that a 'new' Michael Jackson song was not of interest to its listeners. Wow.

OK, write in the comments I'm nuts. That all these songs, including the Michael one, suck and that our job is to keep sucky music away from the masses. That PPM makes playing anything that isn't totally safe too risky to consider. But I think radio should be at the forefront of these things. Top 40 Radio should be on all these songs that are getting so much buzz. We go to seminars about how to create buzz for our radio stations: gee whiz, why don't we just play the buzzed-about songs?

Over the last year or so, I've noticed a few of the Classic Rock format's most reliable songs finally starting to look just a little golden -- warhorses where burn is starting to rival preference, or even drive it down after many years.

But not "Stairway To Heaven." It shows some burn, but not enough to push it out of its customary place in the top five.

And why is "Stairway To Heaven" avoiding the fate of some of its contemporaries? At least in part because it gets so much less airplay.

In today's Mediabase rolling chart, "Stairway" is only the No. 99 most-played Classic Rock song. Last week, it was No. 124. "Sweet Home Alabama," by contrast, is #3. "We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions," a song that has long sported massive burn (despite being well-liked) is #19.

There are lots of reasons that "Stairway" gets less airplay than might otherwise go to a song that tops the music test. It's long. It's slow. There are too many other Led Zeppelin songs in rotation, guaranteeing that no one Zep song is pounded. And it is perceived by PDs as ferociously played-out.

So because the audience never has a chance to get tired of "Stairway to Heaven," the audience never entirely gets tired of it. It's not unlike the late '90s/early '00s where a lot of the most potent Top 40 songs were records like Stereo MC's' "Connected" and Pras Michel's "Ghetto Supastar" that weren't massive currents, but received more recurrent airplay. So if programmers really wanted to be free of "Stairway To Heaven," all they would have do is power it.

In recent years, the approach of the Bob- and Jack-FMs has been to treat everything as if it's "Stairway To Heaven": "Sweet Home Alabama" gets four spins a week and so, in certain weeks, can "Tenderness" by General Public. But now, in the PPM era, a few Jack stations have upped their spins by at least a few each week, while WJMK Chicago is playing its hits 10 times a week or more.

So is there a way that Classic Rock radio could manage all its Mt. Rushmore records to keep them fresh and remain hit-driven enough? Some songs, "Old Time Rock & Roll" and "Hurts So Good" come to mind, receive less Classic Rock airplay than "Stairway To Heaven" and still show signs of perma-burn. But what will keep "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" and "Carry On Wayward Son" fresh and tasty for a while longer?

The SBR people have gotten a lot of attention lately for their on-site radio stations, most recently the dentist-office-targeted Smile.fm, but they're also station owners. And their KLNN (Luna 103.7) Taos, N.M., is the interesting take on Mainstream AC that you would expect from a team known for working with Triple-A stations. It's a throwback to some of those AC stations that evolved to the format from '70s soft rock (e.g., WMGK Philadelphia and sister WMGQ New Brunswick, N.J.).

Here's Luna last Friday (2) at 1:57 p.m.:

Bruce Hornsby, "Every Little Thing"
Sister Hazel, "All For You"
Jason Mraz & Colbie Caillat, "Lucky"
Michael McDonald, "Ain't No Mountain High Enough"
k.d. lang, "Constant Craving"
Eric Clapton, "My Father's Eyes"
Beatles, "The Long And Winding Road"
Bon Jovi, "Who Says You Can't Go Home"
Journey, "Don't Stop Believin'"

It's a recurring riff here among Edison Research staffers: We're almost done with the '00s and broadcasters still haven't decided how to verbally identify them on the air. What's going to happen in the not-at-all-distant-future when "'80s, '90s and today" or "'90s and now" can no longer be taken to cover everything? Hot AC stations, already unable to come up with something more creative to be famous for than the decades of music they play, are going to really be in trouble.

So we now have our first sign of how this will be handled at Sirius XM 26, "The Pulse," a favorite channel of some Edison staffers, which has repositioned its "'90s and now" Modern AC format as "2000s and today." The change is so new that it wasn't on the channel's own homepage as of this morning. There are still some '90s titles, but they're playing roughly once every other hour according to a Mediabase monitor from yesterday.

The decade name aside, it's a logical switch for a service that already offers the "'90s on 9." And while broadcasters are just now grappling with how to give the '90s their own format, we're likely to see a few Hot ACs ankling the '90s because they haven't yet provided that many viable titles, and because Top 40's adult success continues to highlight the surprising power of now.

As for "2000s and today," it's not quite the catchy name we were hoping somebody would come up with. But having batted this one around a little, we understand the challenge. Here's The Pulse around Noon today:

Nickelback, "If Everyone Cared"
Melissa Etheridge, "Come To My Window"
Timbaland & Onerepublic, "Apologize"
Daughtry, "No Surprise"
The Calling, "Wherever You Will Go"
Gavin DeGraw, "In Love With A Girl"
Collective Soul, "Staring Down"
Goo Goo Dolls, "Let Love In"
Dave Matthews Band, "You And Me"
Our Lady Peace, "Somewhere Out There," a 2002 song that got a flashback stager
Pink, "Sober"

There's an intriguing Salon.com article this week on Glenn Beck and his history as a Top 40 jock during the rock 'em/sock 'em Top 40 radio wars of the 1980s, (the second part of a three-part series from a forthcoming book). You may or may not agree with drawing a straight line between the Beck of the Phoenix parking lot wars and today's Beck; (there are a lot of radio people who, fortunately, are not who they were in that era). But having Beck as a hook means that there are far obscure tales from '80s CHR radio than you could have possibly expected to see in any publication not targeted to radio junkies.

Interesting article in the Los Angeles Times on non-comm KCRW and its fortunes in the PPM-era, which weren't that hard to predict in a world where hip brands don't always achieve PPM success and block programming has its issues as well. But the article also allows some interesting questions to be raised: Does KCRW's success as an international brand transcend petty ratings concerns in one market? Does its donor base? And if it's consistent 24/7 music you want, KCRW is now offering that, too.

Okay, after a day or so of hearing stations react to Kanye West's bad behavior at the VMAs, a few random thoughts:

* Maybe some stations have genuinely tapped into how bad most of the audience feels for Taylor Swift. Maybe some callers have something fresh to add to this discussion. I didn't encounter any of that in my (admittedly random) listening yesterday. I did hear a lot of name-calling and pandering, more anti-Kanye than pro-Taylor.

* "Banning" an artist who is between current releases (at least as far as those where he is a lead artist) is not such a meaningful gesture.

* There is something particularly disconcerting in hearing young-sounding callers refer to an artist as "a bitch." And pandering is still pandering, even if you find a listener to do it for you.

That said, Edison's Tom Webster came across better stuff than I did. "Scott Sands at WZPL in Indy was tweeting this yesterday, brilliant promotion: Listen for Kanye West to interrupt Z99.5 all day. Be the 9th caller to win @taylorswift13 latest CD: 317-228-1099. #Indy"

Meanwhile, Mediabase shows that Jay-Z's "Run This Town," the biggest record on which West appears, still posted a gain of 43 spins yesterday at Rhythmic Top 40. At Mainstream Top 40, it was off 14 spins from Sunday to Monday, (as were some other songs in that region of the chart). Swift's "You Belong With Me," however, was up 177 spins for the same period.

In the September 18th issue of Entertainment Weekly Magazine (but apparently not available online as of this writing), Stephen King has an article about the future of media. Among his entries is this:

What's going to replace rock & roll radio?

I can personally testify that it's on life support, because I own a rock station (WKIT in Bangor, Maine) and I see the balance sheets. If I may wax vulgar, ad revenues are in the pooper. And this is true whatever the rock format: pop, oldies, heavy metal, middle-of-the-road (which I think of as Doobie Brothers Radio). Right now the only real radio rent-payers are right-wing ratchet-jaws like El Rushbo. If there's no rock & roll radio, who's going to find the great new artists to make the little girls scream? Where are the DJs like COusin Brucie...or Carroll James of WWDC, who is credited with playing "I Want to Hold Your Hand" first in America? How culturally important are the gabbling "personalities" who make prank calls and own morning drive-time? Let's put it this way: As far as I'm concerned, you can take Opie and Anthony and shove 'em where the sun doesn't shine.

I sometimes get frustrated with rose-colored memories about how great radio once was, and the idea proffered by critics that 'corporate' radio is nothing compared to the 'good old days.'

But I will grant this: One way that radio was more fun when I was a kid, listening to WLS in Chicago, was the extensive play of 'novelty songs'. From Disco Duck, to the Super Bowl Shuffle, to Dickie Goodman's crazy song-bite reports, to King Tut, to any number of others, WLS always had something silly, funny and goofy threaded through the playlist.

While the definition of a novelty song is slippery (is "Stacy's Mom" a novelty song? Is "My Humps"?), I'm talking about true throw away songs. Songs that a station can play the crud out of for maybe a week, but maybe only a few days, and then move on. What ever happened to them? Is it that radio stations simply won't play anything that they can keep on until it researches, or doesn't? Did a memo go out, or heaven forfend, did research say that these 'don't work'?

Every time I hear a funny song, I ask Sean (Ross, here at Edison), "Are any stations playing 'White and Nerdy'"? "Is anyone playing Susan Boyle's version of 'I Dreamed a Dream'"? "Anyone playing 'Gimme Stuff' by Rappy Mcrapperson?" "Anyone playing 'Lazy Sunday' or 'D*&k in a Box"? etc., the answer is always no. I'm not sure if this was a novelty or not, but every 11 year old girl in America was dancing to Miley Cyrus's "Hoedown Throwdown" this summer (I have one, so I know). I can't believe that no radio station put that on the air (save Radio Disney). But when I asked Sean, he said: "The label probably didn't promote it."

I know we live in a world where risks are not encouraged. But what risk is there in giving listeners a smile for a couple of days with a silly song?

A while ago the NFL banned what they call "excessive celebrations" in their football games. If a player seemed too excited or jubilant, the team was penalized. Media wags decided that the name NFL must stand for "No Fun League." While radio in general does a great job, and some stations provide lots of brilliant entertainment, when it comes to song choices, this is the No Fun Medium.

What do you think, Dialers? Am I right that Top 40 today could use an injection of novelties? Just periodically? And what are some of your favorite novelties that had you asking 'where's radio on this?"

In recent years, it's been easy to tell which jocks are voice-tracking a station from outside the market. They're the ones who are working in a ton of local place names, events, etc., in an attempt to overcompensate.

Here's another way, according to this discussion board thread: The out-of-town jocks are sometimes the ones who are pronouncing the name of a market correctly. (There are, however, a lot of amusing exceptions.)

There once was a time when music strongly defined demographic boundaries and represented distinct lines between young and old--but in recent years those boundaries have become increasingly vague. In the 60s, rock was considered the music of those who wanted to rebel, for angry teenagers and those who fell outside the circle of safe and sweet pop. Once the most unpopular music, rock is now common ground for parents and their kids and has a foothold as the most listened to format, according to Pew Research Center's Social & Demographic Trends Project.

This study, which surveyed adults 16 years and older, identified 65% of respondents as listening to rock "often" or "sometimes." Compare that to a 1966 Harris Survey of adults 21+ that reported just 4% to be rock partisans and a whopping 44% saying they disliked the format!

Even examining individual artists, there is still plenty of similarity among those who are 16-29 and 30-49. The Beatles, Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix--all icons associated with the tumultuous 60s--did well in the younger age cell, with 45% responding that they like the Beatles "a lot" compared to 42% of those 30-49. Going one step higher to the 50-64 age break, the Beatles jump to 63%.

So why is there so much closure in that musical gap, and how has rock evolved into something for all to enjoy? Certainly, one practical observation is that many of the people who opposed rock in the early days - the conservative grandparents and parents of our parents - are no longer around.

Secondly, what is now "pop" is a mix of all formats including rock, hip-hop, country and rhythmic. In the 60s, formats were more readily defined with not much crossover. Now what used to be rebellious (rock) or strictly urban (hip hop) is considered mainstream--it is the Top 40.

Perhaps the most compelling reason is the surge of rock music into the family living room. From video games like Guitar Hero and the Nintendo Wii to TV shows like American Idol, music is finding its way more and more into family activities. Marketing gurus are capitalizing on the dynamic that is built around family time, which means more exposure to new music for both parents and kids.

A good example would be the recently released The Beatles: Rock Band video game, which is sure to bring in true Beatles music fans as well as their kids, who are a new generation of music video gamers. Together they will enjoy the music and the gaming experience.

American Idol also plays a huge role in this sharing of musical tastes. Watching the show is a family affair in many households. Often, the first listen that a teen gets of "an oldie" is when a contestant covers it on the show. What is nostalgia for mom and dad becomes something new and fresh for the kids (and this is currently also happening with the resurgence of Michael Jackson records on the radio as well.)

Disney also seems to have the formula down pat for attracting the younger without turning off the older, though their inclination is more towards pop music than rock. With their pop starlet Miley Cyrus and teen-dream Jonas Brothers each cranking out music and TV shows, Disney has a lock on the tween set, but more importantly, they can still infuse just enough "catchiness" to not only keep it tolerable but make it enjoyable for the grownups as well.

One cannot overstate the effect of this exposure of tween/teen music on adults. We've seen many AC music tests come back with Idol contestants and Miley Cyrus all on the front page. Now, the Pew study shows us that the same can be said in the other direction--younger demos are embracing the music from an earlier time. Forty years from now, which of today's crop of artists will become icons for the generations to come? Do we already have another Beatles or Michael Jackson who can stand the test of time?

For many content-heavy web sites, the home page is not necessarily the main landing page--the page a visitor first sees when they get to your site. As an example, for our web properties our landing pages are more likely to be a page of content from a research study, or a blog post we've written, than our actual "home page." This is because people are vastly more likely to get to our web site by clicking through from a search engine or from a link on someone else's site than they are to get to us by typing edisonresearch.com into their browser. When you reconceive your web site in this fashion--that the home page may not be the first page a visitor comes to--you can open yourself up to loads of possibilities and also free yourself of limiting beliefs regarding what has to be on your home page.

I've spoken before at numerous conferences about flipping the funnel--how a well-constructed radio station web site should have hundreds, if not thousands of pages of content all focused on single content topics, each one serving as a line in the water--more lines, more chances to catch a fish. If you don't think you have the resources to do that, you're right--you can't do it tomorrow. But over time you will get there--our web properties have over 7,000 individual pages of content, and it's not like we have an "Interactive Division!" Having lots of single-topic, content-rich pages helps in two ways. First, it's the key to search engine optimization: Google needs to know what a page is about, and if it seems to be about many things at once, a search engine correctly parses the page as "not very useful" to people searching for a given key word or phrase. Secondly, it helps you--the radio station--know a little bit about the visitor. After all, if a listener comes to your home page, you know nothing about them--and normal web users are unlikely to volunteer much beyond an email (if that) to a radio station. But if a vistor comes to your web site as a result of typing in a specific search query ("great places to see live music in Austin") and they come to a page on your site that is about live music in Austin, you know a fair amount about them--you know they like live music, they are looking to go out, and they either live in or are coming to Austin. This kind of listener/user information is gold, and is the key to really unlocking the value of your web site.

Currently, most radio station web traffic is driven by on-air mentions--"visit our home page and..." But what exactly do you want them to do when they get there? Do you want them to sign up for your VIP club? Click on a promotion? Click on an advertiser's ad? Most the time, the answer is "all of the above," which generally leads to the user not taking any action, and not exploring the site. Because most stations don't know exactly why the visitor has come to their site, most stations try to throw everything at once at the page, hoping something sticks. Hope is not a strategy, however. So many radio station home pages are gunked up with myriad offers, ads and promotions that it's almost like they are trying to "score" on the first date. But online relationships are like offline relationships. You gotta take me out to dinner first!

Better to think of your home page as a welcome page, not as the transactional hub. Actions that you want listeners to take are better off on discrete pages devoted to that specific action. If your home page is relieved of the burden of having to be all things to all people (i.e., a broadcast solution) it is free to be re-imagined and repurposed as an invitation--an entry point to explore further. I generally focus on positive examples, not negative ones, but in this particular instance a comparison is helpful, so I'll leave you with this, a tale of two landing pages.

Page 1 -- What does this page want you to do? When you do it, what does the station know about you?

Page 2 -- What does this page want you to do?

Less clear, and it gets worse as you scroll down (if you ever would).

To my mind, there is only one website in the world that can truly get away with being all things to all people on the home page, and that's my old friend Crazy Arngren (make sure you click the image to bask in its true, epic scope.) Hovercraft, anyone?

It's a sure-fire crowd pleaser of a topic, the worst songs of all time, and this month Spinner offers up its candidates. There was a time when any worst songs list would have reliably been made up of '70s bubblegum and novelties. But a lot of the usual suspects have lost their power to provoke, Few among us have been confronted with "Gimme Dat Ding" or "Heartbeat, It's A Lovebeat" lately; other once-reviled songs from that era, like "Baby Come Back" and "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)" are reliable testers at radio now and not such easy targets.

A few '70s songs do make the list, and there's not much defending "Convoy" and "I Am Woman." A few songs that still generally test well (if a little crispy) are in there too: Creed's "With Arms Wide Open" and Gwen Stefani's "Hollaback Girl." But a lot of Spinner's wrath is saved for the rhythmic novelties and reaction songs of the '90s: "Gettin' Jiggy With It," "Thong Song," "Macarena," "U Can't Touch This," "Wannabe," "Who Let The Dogs Out," and "Rico Suave."

Now, some of those songs aren't going to get any closer to any radio format than somebody's flashback weekend or retro mix. But "Jiggy" and "Can't Touch" usually make that list of big hits that nobody plays whenever kids-of-the-'90s start talking about the inevitability of a '90s-based format. That says something about why the '90s have been such a minefield thus far. To at least a few people, "U Can't Touch This" is the new "The Night Chicago Died."

Then again, programmers figured out the '70s format eventually, and they did it without "Seasons In The Sun," "The Night Chicago Died," or "Gimme Dat Ding." And as we've seen this year at KBZC (the Buzz) Sacramento, Calif., and now KHTE (K-Hit 96.5) Little Rock, Ark., some stations are moving ahead undeterred into that era. And if you check out the Buzz now, you can hear the "Songs Your Parents Hated" weekend.

Every now and then, I stumble on a station that will obviously strike a chord with people in our businesses. Such a station is Las Vegas AM outlet KMZQ (the Q), (also simulcast on KMZQ-FM Payson, Ariz.) I knew I would have to bring KMZQ to your attention after hearing OMD's "So In Love," the Sundays' "Here's Where The Story Ends," and INXS' "Suicide Blonde" in sequence. And that was before Martika's "Toy Soldiers" and Robert Plant's "Heaven Knows." And as I write this, they have just gone from Hall & Oates' "Private Eyes" into the Pixies' "Here Comes Your Man." If you are in any way intrigued by this, (which is to say if you're somewhere between your late 20s and early 40s), click here.

Recently the radio consultant Alan Burns has gotten quite a lot of attention for his content analysis of Top 40 and Adult Contemporary stations. His basic conclusion is that radio stations are so cluttered with messaging about sales promotions, contests, and other efforts, that all else (and anything that is truly important to the listener) is crowded out.

This was a very valuable piece of analysis for radio programmers in that it inspired a lot of debate about how we are to interpret the results. And wouldn't it be great if someone could go into the way-back machine and see how this analysis would have looked ten, twenty and thirty years ago?

Mark Ramsey wrote on his blog:

This conclusion assumes a premise: Namely, that an audience will be passionate about a station's music if the station is passionate about its own music. Further, this argument assumes that the station will be more popular if it's more enthusiastic about its own music.

Unfortunately, there's no proof provided that either of these premises is correct. Both are only assumptions. (emphasis his)

Well, fair enough. I don't have the proof whether talking more about the music and less about the Web site and remotes will improve a station's ratings either.

But both Alan's study and Mark's critique got me to thinking about what radio really means in this broad world of millions of options to distract oneself, and so many new options just over the horizon.

When you look at AM/FM Radio's advantages and disadvantages, how can we not assume that the existence of DJs (at least on an overwhelming-but-shrinking majority of stations) is maybe number two to distribution in the list of advantages? The number of options for DJ-free radio continue to explode, but most research says that listeners like DJs. (Of course, the same research will show that people don't like bad DJs or random chatter, but I think that still proves the point.)

So what DO we want those DJs who are not providing morning-style entertainment to do? Well, deep down, don't we want them to go back to what they once did, or what at least our rosy-colored memories think they once did: setting up the songs, explaining why they are good or special, telling us who wrote them (if that's interesting) or whatever would connect the audience to the songs they are hearing?

I recall a long-ago focus group for an AC radio station where a woman mentioned that the then-current hit "Tears in Heaven" moved her so when she thought about the meaning of the lyrics. All the other women said: "What is it about?" At which point it dawned on me that the station had likely never allowed its liner-reading jocks to say anything about the song. Even twenty years ago AC stations had already reined their DJs in to saying nothing.

And yet, an enormous percentage of the listeners to FM music radio still believe in the romantic notion that the DJs are picking the songs. Despite everything they have in front of them to make them believe otherwise, they still hold on. Huge percentages of the audience still turn to radio to learn about new music.

Yesterday Tom wrote on this blog about playlists being a unique way for a radio station to distinguish itself, as it is the kind of thing one would expect a radio-station DJ to be really good at. But, of course "playlists" has sadly become an epithet, usually paired with the word "Corporate." But again, don't we want -- at least on some level -- to believe that our DJs are choosing the songs and thinking about how they fit together?

So will more connection between a station and the music it plays help the ratings? I don't know. But is it one of the few real advantages that radio has? Indeed. Pandora links the songs together through a computer. Radio has, or it least it once had, real people guiding its listeners through the music. Being "passionate about the music" has to be good for radio, whether it will make an individual station's ratings better or not.

The entertainment-industry-based All-News format at KFWB Los Angeles lasted all of four months before the station announced a pending switch to a more talk-driven lineup, hastened apparently by the availability of Dr. Laura. Even before the change was announced, however, Variety's Brian Lowry slagged the station's entertainment coverage as skin deep, at best, in a story called "Why Exactly Would Hollywood Listen To KFWB?"

Lowry's not exactly an impartial observer, of course. KFWB was, in theory, a direct competitor to Variety, which has the same issues as all print publications these days. Variety's once-massive Cannes issue is only about as thick with advertising as a regular issue used to be, while a regular issue is a lot thinner these days. Like other print publications, it has moved from reporting news to recap and analysis. Only about a week ago did it devote a front cover to radio's performance royalty issues, with content that would be mostly familiar to anybody who was already following that story. KFWB, if potent, would have been a threat.

That said, it was also our early take on the format that it wasn't yet rich in scoop, particularly in a world where entertainment news (if not industry news) is everywhere. Like the equally short-lived Blink 102.7 incarnation of WNEW New York, it was a more than valid idea that required too much heavy lifting, particularly when there's established talk content available elsewhere. And any station that doesn't already have an all-News infrastructure, as KFWB did, is really going to have a hard time doing this format.

But this format certainly seems like something that should exist on-line. If the smartphone is going to be the new car radio, it will certainly happen in the entertainment industry sooner -- assuming the heavies aren't too busy making deals on that phone. So is it time for Variety's own entertainment "radio" format?

A year ago, we wrote about Opus' KEZP (Red 104.3) Alexandria, La., which had made an unusual (in this day and age) flip from Classic Rock to current-based Alternative under consultant Harve Alan. With Alternative stations biting the dust this month from Boston to State College, Pa., it's nice to report that Red 104.3 is up 2.6 - 4.1 - 4.6 12-plus with numbers that aren't obviously coming from any other station. You can see what Alan has to say about here.

And don't be too alarmed about the fortunes of Alternative in those other two markets. As "Spinal Tap" points out, they're not big college towns.

Okay, after six years of taking a "First Listen" to new radio stations, this was inevitable.

It's from "All The Excess," the often very funny parody of trade journalism sites from veteran programmer Blake Lawrence, most recently of WRXP/WQCD New York. Also check out the "Thrifty Radio Station Spots of the Week" feature.

And while Lawrence's parody of "First Listen" is affectionate, he can be a little more pointed sometimes.

From our friends at Absolute Radio in the UK comes this video showing how the world over, talented radio hosts get the guard down of all manner of people. In this case, Absolute morning host Christian O’Connell gets the presumptive next Prime Minister of the UK, Tory leader David Cameron, into saying a ‘swear word’ that leads to a small media tizzy. Be sure to stay to the end, where a competitor to Absolute does their own parody of the situation (and funny at that). Also note how the oh-so-serious British television press has their cake and eat it too, as they tsk tsk Mr. Cameron’s use of words, all the while playing the clip, or bleeping it in such a minimalistic way that they get the offending comment on the air anyhow.

Congrats Absolute!

Nik Goodman tips us to a wildly creative use for your signal: mosquito repellent! Nik's Austrian client (and our client as well!) Kronehit recently embedded an inaudible tone at 14,850 hertz in their signal, which is meant to replicate the frequency of a buzzing female mosquito. Theoretically, this repels other female mosquitos, and they won't come near the sound. Now, I'm no entomologist, and who knows if this actually works or not, but there is no better way to be the station heard at outdoor festivals and other public venues than to bill yourself as the station that keeps you from getting bit! PPM markets especially should take note--this is a far more creative idea than less talk, more music.

Congrats to our friends at Kronehit for finding a novel way to create (or, in this case, deter) a real buzz.

NPR recently relaunched their web site as a more complete destination for news and information--it looks more like the New York Times than a radio site, and you'd have to look closely to figure out that the "R" in NPR stands for radio. This change, along with a number of new mobile and web-based tools for downloading and listening to NPR programs, firmly places NPR's focus on the mothership, and blurs the lines between NPR and its member stations--all of whom pay NPR for the privilege. With so little local content on a typical NPR affiliate, and so much NPR content available on-demand and online from NPR itself, this move would seem to further marginalize the "local" aspect of public radio. My own local NPR affiliate, WUNC, is one of the strongest NPR-affiliated public radio stations in the country, but the number of regular programs devoted to local content (which is different from locally-produced shows) can be counted on one hand with fingers left over.

With print journalism in decline, NPR is smartly moving to fill a void, and with their not-for-profit status and tax advantages, may be able to succeed where profit-crunched newspapers have failed. Where does this leave the local NPR affiliate? In many ways, squarely in the same camp as local commercial stations and local newspapers--struggling to be relevant and serve the public under increasing financial constraints.

The last bit is the real sticking point--with the tsunami of the Internet disaggregating and disintermediating media, finding ways to keep local journalism alive and profitable remains elusive. One answer might be further consolidation--not simply amongst radio stations, but amongst media properties in general. Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins, over at siliconANGLE, notes that FCC regulations hamstring local media properties even as "New Mediaists beat the crap out of them." He suggests allowing newspapers and radio stations to merge, creating stronger local news organizations and supporting journalism. Certainly, since the FCC revised their cross-media ownership guidelines in 2007, it does seem like more and more potential partnerships would meet the FCC's criteria for such mergers being in the public interest (mainly, that the properties are failing and that the merger actually would create a new source of local news and content.)

Still, with so much financial distress in the newspaper business, and so little credit available in either business, it's hard to see this sort of thing happening in 2009. So how can local radio and print entities capitalize on the "local" opportunity? The answer for public and commercial radio both is the creation of local content, local news and local features online. This means, as I have noted before in this space, creating text and video in addition to audio. With so much of the on-air product on an NPR affiliate coming right off the bird, the web is where the local station can make a difference, stay relevant and provide a real service for its listeners. Commercial radio, too, could make a difference by stepping up to fill the local news void, but most stations lack the skills, personnel and resources to really do this effectively. Merging with a newspaper would provide these capabilities, but again--given the credit instruments available and the financial condition of both industries, those deals would be difficult.

The answer might be to do something a little more radical--and a little more in the spirit of the "New Mediaists" that are able to beat the crap out of commercial media outlets with little more than a Flip camera and a Wordpress site. Instead of merging media properties, why not simply merge newsrooms and create a communal, hyper-local version of Reuters? If most of the commercial and non-commercial radio stations and print outlets in a market kicked a little money into a pot, a truly local news organization could be created that would benefit the community, provide text, video and audio content for its member media outlets, and even provide a way to employ bloggers and citizen journalists and provide them with the resources they need to cover stories properly and possibly quit their day jobs. Heck, why not have the local government kick in a little money, too--it's good business.

Radio stations and newspapers would not necessarily all have the same stories--they could pick and choose the features that suit them--and nothing is stopping the stations themselves from generating their own supplemental content. But local news would survive, and flourish, under this scenario. Representatives from all the member media outlets could serve as a steering committee for such an organization, with a separate editorial board overseeing content. The news organization could focus on content creation without worrying about distribution or even turning a profit (there would be no need for a sales department) and radio/print organizations would no longer need to fund internal local news/information services and could instead focus on distribution, sales and whatever content is unique to their format.

Really, this sort of thing already exists for things like traffic and weather--I'm just carrying it to its natural conclusion. In effect, what I am suggesting is a back-door to doing what probably should have been done a while ago--converting news organizations to non-profit entities--but doing it less by fiat and more through the free market.

What do you think? Is this an "unholy alliance?" A flight of fancy? Leave your thoughts below!

Now that analog TV transmitters are turned off, digital sub-channels are available, and Journal Broadcast Group is taking advantage with a unique marketing idea - directly tying its radio stations to a TV operation.

"The CoolTV," which recently launched in Milwaukee, boasts a format of music videos and promises 24/7 entertainment based on its sister radio station WLWK, 94.5 FM. Available on Channel 4.3 in Milwaukee (for those who have a converter box or a digital television,) it promises about 30 to 40% music that is targeted to the local population and is being touted as a TV version of its radio counterpart "The Lake," playing videos from the 60s through today.

Besides its Milwaukee debut, "The CoolTV" is also on air in Las Vegas, Dallas, Houston and Philadelphia. These markets share 60-70% common programming, and according to the website, a national program block is in the works.

Will this media collaboration catch on with other radio stations? The concept is an interesting one, and the availability of the digital sub-channels could open up some new opportunities for radio to broadcast local concerts and other events. Since "The CoolTV" bills itself as "a music channel that plays music, period," it seems well suited for music-driven FM stations, and could even develop into what MTV and VH1 were back in the good old days (when they actually played videos) with the additional twist of a local focus.

It will be interesting to see if these hybrids pop up more regularly. Maybe video didn't kill the radio star after all!

It's not quite as much of a bug-a-boo of mine as bad PSAs, but I've often found stations' on-line experiences to be diminished by those stations that have not yet found a way to keep their internal jock notes from showing up in the "now playing" area of their streaming media player. While I personally enjoy knowing that I'm hearing "slow to fast jingle 7" between the songs, it's a little like spotting the boom hanging down at the top of a movie frame. It gives the impression of a station not entirely in control of its content. And I just know that one day I'm going to see some jock note like, "Only take female contest winners" make it to the Web.

So I have to commend Hot AC/Classic Hits-hybrid KRXY (Roxy 94.5) Olympia, Wash., a favorite station of mine which is streaming again after the best part of a decade. Roxy did something so simple that I'm surprised that I haven't seen it anywhere else. When they played their lunchtime "speedy CD" song, the "now playing" display both showed the correct answer and gave the winner's name and town.

So if a station has somebody (likely the jock) making sure the correct winner name gets posted on the Web, what else could stations do in real time with the media player? We're already training our jocks to provide a steady stream of Tweets and Facebook postings through their shift. And we know that listeners appreciate the "now playing" window. And we're trying to teach listeners to watch the player during our streaming stopsets to click through to advertisers.

So why not provide extra real-time content? Song and contest teasers? More facts about the music? An apology for the lame PSA now playing on the Webstream? (Sorry.) Plugs for other cool things on the Website. Many listeners have something better to do with their time than watch the media player at work. Then again, many clearly don't. And like those Tweets or Facebook postings, it's a place for the kind of humor that some (but not all) of us miss hearing on the air.

Clive Dickens tipped me to a report today that the creators of 'Rock Band' will let rockers upload their own tracks. This is a trippy idea, and one that adds a refreshing burst of creativity to a genre that has already surpassed fighting games and first person shooters in popularity amongst teens. The ability to upload and sell user-submitted creations for the Rock Band system will no doubt engage teens, tweens and pretty much anyone that can play an instrument.

Of course, actual real-live bands are pretty good candidates to submit their tunes to Rock Band, and chances are your local market has its fair share. Which brings me to my $100 idea of the week: creating a social network that makes sense for your station. With at least one widget provider reporting that sharing on Facebook is more popular than sharing by email, the importance of becoming involved with the social web should be obvious for radio stations--sharing begets discovery begets trial. Radio, however, can't replicate Facebook; it shouldn't even try. There are social networking plays that do make sense for radio, however, and tapping into local passion for local music is surely one of them. Creating a web property that allows fans and bands alike to share tracks, playlists and gig reports seems like a natural move for a station looking to bolster local engagement, music credibility and also produce a hub site that is a natural for focused, niche advertising of clubs, restaurants and music merchandise. Engaging the bands themselves will naturally raise the visibility and credibility of the site for fans of local music, so any station interested in the concept would do well to court the local music scene by finding a way to contribute and add value.

Which leads me back to Rock Band Creator. I was intrigued by the idea of uploading user-generated tracks to Rock Band, so I naturally looked up exactly how it is done. Turns out, it isn't easy--check out the instructions! At a minimum, it requires proficiency with multi-track mixing and editing with a digital audio workstation. Guess who has that--your production team! It would be trivial to build a social component to a local music website that allows listeners to vote on bands and tracks, with winners getting their track prepared and uploaded to Rock Band for them by your station. Since the tracks will be available and promoted for sale on XBOX Live, part of the deal could be a mention for your station or site in the track notes for the song, and you'd certainly want to plug the local market/origin of the band there as well. Actually getting a local track accepted to XBOX Live that your station helped to prepare and promote gives you something wonderful to talk about on the air, by email and online, and over time could enable you to create a credible, authoritative destination site for local music--without having to play it on the air (though, would it kill you?)

So, there you go--not fully baked, but what do you expect for Free? Good luck!

I have made this point for years, and no one ever has taken it seriously. Now, with radio struggling, and the record industry struggling just the same, I'm going to try it again.

If we want to help music radio -- stations should shorten the songs. If we want to help the music industry -- music companies will help radio stations by sending them shorter versions of songs.

I'm sure many reading this are saying "Huh"? And I know of course that this alone can't solve all our problems. But think about it.

Over the last forty years, the average length of pop songs (or country songs, or most rock songs etc.) has grown from a tight two minutes to an ungainly four. This has effectively cut in half the number of songs played per hour. Actually, it's worse than that of course, because spot loads have grown over the years too.

So what is the net effect? Vastly fewer songs are played. Radio stations get killed for not having enough variety. Music companies can successfully promote fewer songs, and the pool of what can become a hit is shallower. Way fewer novelty songs are played, because there is simply no room for them, thus radio is less fun.

Four minute songs have created a vicious cycle where fewer, safer songs are played more and more because they are the only ones that can rise to the top. Having risen, they just keep playing as recurrents and gold.

Music companies should think of what they send radio stations as 'trailers' for the full song that appears on CDs or as downloads. "Want to hear the whole, long version? Go to..." Radio stations should be thrilled. Shorter songs means they can play more songs, have more variety, please everyone. Stations should cut their older songs down in length at the same time.

I am aware that there was some kind of effort to market a Top 40 with shorter songs last year -- I'm honestly unaware of what happened with that. But regardless...we need this to happen. And frankly, how many times do we need to hear John Meyer sing "Say What You Need To Say" in one song? The version played by radio has this lyric FORTY times. Could we live with twenty?

So Radio and Record industries...what do you think? Anyone with me for this radical approach?

Radio stations that announce format changes usually haven't been their best selves for a while. But until Tuesday's announcement that WBCN Boston was giving up its frequency to sister Hot AC WBMX, which would in turn become Boston's new "Sports Hub," there was always the possibility of a comeback.

WBCN reinvented itself repeatedly throughout its 41-year-history as a Rock station. It wobbled for a while in 1979 following the twin blows of a strike by its airstaff and an attack by John Sebastian's WCOZ. WBCN tightened up -- a little -- but it never became formula early '80s AOR. WBCN went through several more phases. It veered towrads Classic Rock in the late '80s/early '90s, before rival WZLX became its sister station. It reinvented itself as Alternative in the mid '90s. And both formats fit with WBCN's heritage.

Boston won't want for Rock radio. WAAF will finally be the heritage rocker -- something it would have been in any other market long ago. WBOS, for so long just one of the other rock stations in the market has gotten traction playing WBCN's greatest hits of a decade ago. Its sister station, WROR, is channeling a PPM-friendly version of WBCN's original legacy, which is to say a Classic Hits station that also includes KC & the Sunshine Band, a band which WBCN played in 1975. And "true alternative" WFNX will have more of an open lane. (And we haven't even mentioned Classic Rock WZLX, Triple-A WXRV, or Classic Hits/Hot AC WMKK.)

Meanwhile, yesterday's announcement that CBS will launch Sports Talk on FM in Boston and (less surprisingly) Washington, D.C., is yet another signal that the land rush is on. (The success of Sports on FM in Detroit may have been the tipping point for CBS, but the "hey, look at this" moment for the industry was even earlier, when WEEI Boston led the market on AM.) And now the question becomes whether having both WEEI and Boston's new "Sports Hub" grows the audience, in the same way that two Country stations did in the early '90s.

Amidst the many Michael Jackson-related conversations of recent weeks, it was suggested to me that Jackson's '80s superstardom was as much a reflection on Michael as a phenomenal performer and media personality as the records themselves, some of which just seemed ordinary now. And I'll give you that for a few of them. If "Human Nature" had been by, say, James Ingram, it would be as long gone from the radio as, well, "Baby Come To Me" or most of the other MOR R&B ballads of that era. Similarly, if "She's Trouble" had made the cut for "Thriller," as hoped, it might still be on Jammin' Oldies stations today. Instead, it's an obscure MJ sound-alike, the kickoff single from the second album by Musical Youth ("Pass The Dutchie"), a band that you probably never knew had a second album.

But in many other instances, the magic was in the music. The Jackson 5 are widely acknowledged as the last triumph of the Motown studio machine and Jackson's later production mentors are Quincy Jones and Kenny Gamble & Leon Huff. These are guys who had many serendipitous moments, but never did anything by accident. But what exactly is special about the songs? For that, we turned to our musicologist friends at Pandora. Here's how they characterize the songs that played on our Michael Jackson Radio station. And certain formulas definitely emerge.

* "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough": "Disco influences, flat out funky grooves, subtle use of vocal harmony, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping."

* "The Way You Make Me Feel": "Heavy melodic ornamentation, call and answer vocal harmony (antiphony), repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, busy horn section."

*"Rock With You," a song that we were told "exemplifies the style of Michael Jackson": "Disco grooves, subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, call and answer vocal harmonies, mixed acoustic and electric instrumentation."

* "Dirty Diana": "Pop-rock qualities, mild rhythmic syncopation, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, demanding instrumental part wrting."

* "ABC" by the Jackson 5: "Classic soul qualities, flat out funky grooves, call and answer vocal harmony, acoustic rhyth piano, intricate melodic phrasing."

* "Wanna Be Starting Something": Pop-rock qualities, electronica influences, R&B influences, gospel influences, disco influences."

* "Torture" by the Jacksons, which got heavy airplay during the Jacksonmania of 1984, but wasn't an enduring hit: "Repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, intricate melodic phrasing, clear focus on recording studio production, synthetic sonority."

*"Thriller": "Disco influences, flat out funky grooves, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, demanding instrumental part writing."

* "Bad": "Heavy melodic ornamentation, call and answer vocal harmony, repetitive melodic phrasing, extensive vamping, clear focus on recording studio production."

You would think, by the way, that as a thinly veiled rewrite of "Thriller" that the "Bad" description would be almost the same, but it only shares two elements (repetitive melodic phrasing and that darn vamping) that also characterize a lot of the songs.

What you see here is a mix of studio precision ("demanding instrumental part writing," "clear focus on recording studio production"), songwriter calculation ("repetitive melodic phrasing") and holdover elements from the classic soul era that was fading as the J5's star rose. That "vamping" that the musicologists find in so many MJ/J5 hits was one of Michael's many tributes to James Brown, who so effectively and repeatedly riffed on certain elements that it's no surprise that one of his biggest records is called "Doin' It To Death." But Jackson codified that sound for the pop audience that knew only a few of Brown's many R&B hits.

One can in no way say that Jackson's success was all about the music, any more than the end of his hit streak was just because he wasn't doing his best work anymore. But the music was certainly the calling card. It was the phenomenal radio success of "Billie Jean" that forced MTV to show that video where the sidewalk lights up. The moonwalking of the Motown 25th anniversary special was just rocket fuel at that point.

We’ve all been there. You hear a song and long after it is finished, it is still replaying in your head…again, again and again. Believe it or not, there is an actual term for this madness: an "earworm." According to Wikipedia, “earworm is a term for a portion of a song or other musical material that repeats compulsively within one's mind, known colloquially as music being stuck in one's head.“

There have been studies done on earworms by James Kellaris which show that some people are more susceptible than others to earworms, but that just about everyone will experience this phenomenon at some point. So now that we know we are normal, why does this happen?

While the true cause for earworms is still unknown, we do know that some are stickier than others, even if the song itself isn’t one of your favorites. This stickiness is often what makes a song a hit and what gives it life for use in commercials and movie trailers and in our overall pop culture. Think “All Star” by Smash Mouth, “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba and even “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega. Each of these has the ability to haunt you for days at a time.

Although earworms, described by Kellaris as a “cognitive itch,” can trigger a pop culture craze like “Mambo No. 5,” they can also send it crashing down after overexposure. After a certain point, the "burn" factor takes over and the song becomes so negative that it can’t be tolerated. There can be a fine line between stickiness and crispiness--songs can disappear from the airwaves for weeks, months or even years in some cases until the dust has settled and it is thought to be safe again. But more than likely, you’ll remember the hook long after that song has vanished.

What earworms have plagued you over the years? Let us know in the comments!

While most radio stations eventually snapped to attention and acknowledged the death of Michael Jackson for the major event it was last night, some got it faster than others. (And a few were voice-tracking and never got it.) You definitely get the impression that some stations were thinking about the eccentric and embattled Michael of the last 15 years with only a handful of songs that still tested. They weren't thinking of the Michael Jackson who, in 1983-84 left as indeliable an impression as any artist for those of us between 35-and-50. The comparisons were to the death of Elvis Presley, but in his peak years, Michael was like the Beatles in his ubiquity -- particularly in his ability to make a hit out of any song to which he contributed even a backing vocal.

In New York, I heard WBLS do a great job. Within an hour of the announcement of Jackson's death, there was an interview from 1979 (identifiable as such because "Shake Your Body [Down To The Ground]" is still a current.) Former WBLS jocks, including Ken "Spider" Webb, returned to the air to comment. And all of this with a fill-in afternoon host, April Woodard of "Inside Edition," sitting in for Wendy Williams. Meanwhile, crosstown WKTU will be going all Michael this weekend.

I was discussing the merits and demerits of Nielsen's entry to the American radio ratings market the other day, and I mentioned that one obvious negative is the once-per-year ratings plan for the 51 smaller markets that Nielsen is launching.

And while the "if I get a bad book I have to wait a year for a new one" is clearly a negative, it got me to thinking about the 'old days' of shorter ratings 'sweeps' months.

Back in the days before continuous measurement was launched in America's bigger markets, radio stations went, well, crazy during the rated periods. Big contests, big guests, the morning and other shows were of course never on vacation. Tons of television advertising attempted to hype that month or quarter, along with billboards, direct mail, telemarketing....the works.

Now, with no individual month or quarter being the 'crucial' period, it allows radio operators to treat each month the same. And in this case, it allows for a sort of 'mutual non-proliferation pact' among the stations these days...no one advertises because no one else does.

I confidently predict that in those 51 Nielsen markets, stations will go back to doing SOMETHING during the one, annual, short ratings sweep. And, at least THAT will be good.

Judging an industry award is, at best, a labor of love -- emphasis on the word labor. You find yourself slogging through a lot of mediocre material. You deal with an overwhelming amount of politics for something that was supposed to be a fun add-on to your real job. And, without intending to diminish the actual winners here, you certainly never feel that you have such an embarassment of riches that you could fill each category several times over.

I was a judge in the radio station category of the RAB's Radio Mercury Awards for several years in the early '00s when I was editor of Billboard's Airplay Monitor. Typically, the judging was a morning's work. Over the course of that morning, I would hear a lot of very cliched work -- nobody should ever be allowed to do a game show parody again, although Netflix can be grandfathered. I would encounter at least a spot or two that was so offensively stereotypical I was surprised it hadn't been protested off the air. Then there were those spots that were agency quality work in terms of polish, but not otherwise remarkable.

That said, I never felt the pickings were so slim that nothing should win -- the decision made by the Radio Mercury Awards judges this year. I do, however, agree with Eric Rhoads that the best local spots are not necessarily being submitted; even seven or eight years ago that was the case. A lot of radio's production directors are too busy grinding out work for four stations these days to solicit national attention, for one thing.

At a time when nothing in radio feels like it's getting better, production at the local level has held its own. For one thing, the national spots have gotten worse, just because so much of the business is now for patent medicines and other sponsors of dubious repute. And, for better or worse, the screaming car dealership spots are in shorter supply. Admittedly, I hear New York and Philly radio. But I also hear Allentown, Pa., Monmouth/Ocean, N.J., and Trenton, N.J. And I hear a lot less of this type of spot these days:

First Wooden Sounding DJ: Gee, I wonder why Sally won't go out with me?

Second Wooden Sounding DJ: Maybe it's because you use the wrong caulking supplies?

First Wooden Sounding DJ: Really? Caulking?

Second Wooden Sounding DJ: You'd be surprised how much difference it makes. The folks at Robinson's U-Caulk, 2155 Industrial Highway, can help with caulking, weather-stripping and so much more. Sally will definitely go out with you once your windows look better and are more energy efficient.

Wooden Sounding Traffic Manager: Hey, Steve! Nice windows!

First Wooden Sounding DJ: Thanks, Sally! Say, would you ...?

Wooden Sounding Traffic Manager: You bet!

First Wooden Sounding DJ, (doing his own tag because there's obviously nobody else left to drag into the production room): Robinson's U-Caulk, 2155 Industrial Highway, or call 278-253-CAULK ... that's 278-253-CAULK.

I am a huge fan of the NPR show "Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me", their weekly comedic news quiz. Over the years, the show has become a consistently funny show, and often goes well past funny to riotous.

After having the rare time to listen to an entire show on the radio (as opposed to the podcast), and then catching some of "Prairie Home Companion" on the same station this past weekend, it dawned on me how unusual these shows are. They are recorded in front of 'live' studio audiences!

There are almost no examples of audience-response in all of radio these days. No wonder morning show jokes often sound...limited. They are usually greeted either by silence or the over-aggressive chuckles of the rest of the morning team.

And, despite the connotations to "olde-tyme" radio, there is nothing about hearing radio with a live audience that makes it sound dated...if anything it sounds more modern because it is so refreshingly different.

In today's world of stripped down "commercial" radio, it must make the opportunity even greater for examples of "live" radio on the Infinite Dial. Heard any good radio plays performed in front of a studio audience lately? Or other examples of how special radio can sound with audience response? Let us know in the comments section.

So how much attention does a non-commercial dance station usually get from the music industry? Having programmed the sort of college top 40 that had to buy its own records, I'm guessing that high-school dance station WMPH (Super 91.7) Wilmington, Del., does a little better by dint of its unique format and the relatively small number of full-time dance outlets. But does the industry quiver in its boots when they don't play a song? We reported on WMPH's month-long boycott of artists affiliated with the musicFirst lobbying effort for a performance royalty two years ago. Now it's alluded to in a record industry filing charging retaliation against musicFirst artists.

There's been a lot here about the death of Smooth Jazz on KKSF San Francisco, now Classic Rock as "The Band." Here's a good consumer press take on the format change from the Contra Costa Times. And check out some pointed comments from my former Bilboard colleague, the usually very low-key Gordon Murray.

My education in the radio business was, in large part, a function of reading Radio & Records. My first full-time job in the radio business was at Radio & Records. And after the outpouring of comments on this week's Ross On Radio column, "The End Of R&R: Some Personal Thoughts," it's clear that having worked at R&R was not a prerequisite to deep sorrow over its demise. I am immensely touched by all the positive feedback of the column and encourage you to check out the comments, even if you've already seen the story.

While many readers of The Infinite Dial are in the business of "playing the hits," you will have noticed some postings here over the years for those of us who also enjoy hearing Oldies/Greatest Hits stations that play an occasional "oh wow" record. Recently, in the course of listening to a friend's Oldies show -- chock full of "oh wow" songs, even by the standards of his station -- I came up with the "Oldies Discovery Scale."

At one end are the immaculately researched stations that play only the format's research warhorses. Somewhere in the middle are those stations that play songs that most listeners would still perceive as hits, but which are less reliable testers and/or less available on the radio in recent years. At the extreme end are those stations that require a commitment to music discovery, and will definitely challenge anybody who just wandered in to hear "Do Wah Diddy Diddy."

Here's where a few stations and oldies shows, currently available and otherwise, would go on the Oldies Discovery Scale:

0 - KRTH Los Angeles in its 185 song, heavily cloned early '90s period. K-Earth was immaculately programmed, very influential, and a great station for the masses. But it played only a few exceedingly durable songs that I took any personal enjoyment from hearing..

1.5 - Today's average research-driven "Greatest Hits" station, particularly those that have moved their average era into the '70s. The surprises, if you hear them, are from of the '70s songs that wouldn't normally make the research cut, but are being used to give a station some depth in its new intended era.

3 - WCBS-FM New York today. The legacy of its brief encounter with Jack-FM was a longer list. It doesn't seem quite as freewheeling as a year ago, but you still hear some songs that aren't reliable testers everywhere. And today the website shows them playing "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh" by Allan Sherman.

4 - Scott Shannon's syndicated True Oldies Channel. It, too, has shifted newer in recent years, but it still has some pre-Beatles component and also plays a lot of the secondary late '60s titles (e.g., Paul Revere & the Raiders' "Kicks") that sound great on the radio, but have disappeared on most other large-market stations. Around here you'll also find WLVW (the Wave) Ocean City, Md; it doesn't have that mind-blowing pre-Beatles depth that it did when we last spotlighted them. But not typical by any means. And the new WAKY Louisville.

5 - WGVX (Love 105) Minneapolis -- All of those late '60s songs that TOC plays, plus some '70s pop that you don't hear everywhere. WHPI (Hippie Radio) Peoria, Ill., and KPMZ (Platinum 96.7) Dallas also clock in somewhere around here, as well with similar mixes. So does WDRC-FM Hartford, Conn., last heard playing Elton John's "Kiss The Bride" (it was an Elton weekend).

6 - CHUM-AM Toronto before its recent change to all-news. Deeper Canadian content than other comparable stations, but also a lot of British titles that became Canadian hits and were never heard on the radio in the U.S. They're gone, but also coming in at a six is CKWW (AM580) Detroit, CHUM's sister station, under PD Charlie O'Brien -- informed by both the CKLW Cancon legacy and the Motor City's R&B crossover history.

7 - WGHT (North Jersey 1500): You can hear stretches where this suburban AM sounds like the typical Greatest Hits FM. Or you can hit them at the right time, particularly middays or weekends, and hear "Listen to Me" by the Hollies or "I'll Hold Out My Hand" by the Clique or "Rockaway Beach" by the Ramones.

8 - WLNG Eastern Long Island. It's hard to separate their music from the stubbornly retro, jingle-heavy, full-service presentation. Not every song is a surprise, but when I clicked in today, the first one was "Hi-Heel Sneakers" by Jose Feliciano. And the second was "High School U.S.A." by Tommy Facenda (the national version, if you're wondering).

9 - Bob Radil's Friday night '60s and '70s show on WNHU New Haven, Conn. Will play anything that charted from the '60s and '70s plus a lot of early AOR titles. Until last week, Radil devoted a long segment to the songs that were No. 100 on this week in chart history. Radil proudly declares himself "the consultant's nightmare." But he's not the top of our scale.

10 - Michael Shelley's Saturday morning show on New York non-com WFMU. One collectors' classic after another, punctuated with compatible newer music (including Tinted Windows last week). Also includes a lot of '50s/'60s Country.

"Radio needs to start intelligently surveying consumers. We continue to spend money researching which songs are burned and which DJs are familiar. But what level of investment is being devoted to truly gaining an understanding of the consumer? Is it that important to find out whether Z93 is the concert station? Or is it more germane to comprehend where the audience is going to satisfy their music, talk, entertainment, and information needs -- and how radio can provide a unique, compelling product in this digital landscape."

Those are the words of Jacobs Media's Fred Jacobs on his Website this morning. And the only place where we disagree with him is the notion that a lot of stations are continuing to spend money researching old questions or new ones. Even before the Bears of September 2008 began their rampage, broadcasters stared down the biggest landscape change in 30 years and responded by shortening their stagers. They saw how much less time listeners were spending with their stations and kept playing the same records that they last researched two years ago. Having seen the burn double on "Sweet Home Alabama" and "Jack and Diane" over the last two years, I wouldn't be so quick to declare that question irrelevant just yet.

But Fred's right that a lot of questions need to be asked now and that includes a lot of new questions - both those that better ascertain listener needs and those that predict PPM behavior in the same way that most market surveys became pretty good at predicting diary behavior. Research is a major investment - particularly in this climate. Stations are right to demand innovation and if you haven't gotten that from your provider, we'd like to talk to you.

As for some of the backbone questions of survey research, we understand that anybody who has lived through more than a few surveys might think they've heard them a lot. "What one station is the concert station?" went out of our surveys a long time ago--unless a client wanted it. Others are absolutely there for a reason, even now. Perhaps the wording is standard; the creativity is in the analysis. We can also tell you that a lot of clients (and, ahem, consultants) will shave the more creative questions from a survey in favor of "boilerplate," just because the latter is in their comfort zone.

Five years ago, research, like marketing, was sufficiently widespread that the mere fact of doing it merely made you as competitive as the next guy. And, again, as with marketing, it once again separates those stations that are able to do it from those that are not. Before long, the changes in market rank that accompany a significant change in the "camera angle" at which we measure listening will become less pronounced. And it will then be up to you to make your station's position in the market more dynamic.

Many years ago, veteran R&B programmer "The Mad Hatter" told me about a '70s promotion by WHYI (Y100) Miami that had particularly impressed him when he was across town at WRBD. He remembered Y100 telling listeners to come to the Fort Lauderdale airport right away for a chance to fly to New York with Elton John.

That actual promotion might have been apocryphal. The closest that veteran Miami programmer Bill Tanner remembers was Y100's "Party In The Sky," a live concert on an L-1011 with acts that weren't quite on the Elton level. (Probably the Andrea True Connection, he jokes.) But it was a great idea for a promotion anyway.

Which brings us to Cory Booker, mayor of a resurgent Newark, N.J. In recent months, Booker has become so active on Twitter that New Jersey's Star-Ledger has done a story on "The Mayor of Twitter." The topics of Mayor Booker's tweets range from cracking down on gang violence to needing coffee in the morning, but a few weeks ago, he used Twitter to notify local residents that they could come join him at a screening of "Star Trek" on the weekend it opened.

Two things stand out here. One is that Mayor Booker is effective with his tweeting in a way that many radio stations can only envy. And "spontaneously" joining your constituents at "Star Trek," while not quite flying to New York with Elton John, is still the kind of personal moment with a celebrity (and a few hundred other people) that radio ought to provide on a regular basis. But it also requires a level of promotional spontaneity -- and staffing -- that isn't available to many stations now.

Tom Taylor had a great piece in his daily Radio-Info newsletter lamenting the fact that guys like Richie Balsbaugh are disappearing from radio. I couldn't agree more. Richie--and the whole Pyramid team--believed in talent, in spending money to make money, and in continuous listener feedback. I didn't come from a radio background, so when I started doing research for Pyramid back in 1994 I just assumed that's how radio was done. You cannot cut your way to growth, and Pyramid made meaningful, strategic investments in big events (like the KISS Concert), big talent, and significant amounts of research. Most of all, however, what owners like Richie knew was that his stations were not in the 'content' business. Anyone who puts pen to blog is in the content business. Pyramid's stations were in show business. That distinction, above all others, made those stations larger than life and important to their local communities. Tom writes today that "you can't help thinking [Balsbaugh] might've found a way to keep from cutting the talent and marketing budgets at WNUA." I firmly believe that. I'm still too young to get all cranky about the 'good ole' days,' but I can tell you that, one cut at a time, we have come very, very far from 1994. Death by a thousand paper cuts generally comes one cut at a time, and you never notice how much blood you've lost until it's too late.

More than a year ago, we used the HD-2/Webradio launch of CBS' "new" WNEW-FM as an occasion to ask what other "throwback stations" our readers might enjoy. The more than 50 suggestions were mostly legendary major-market stations -- WLS and WCFL Chicago, WRKO and WBCN Boston, WFIL Philadelphia, KVIL Dallas, KDAY Los Angeles -- with a few cult faves like Long Island's WLIR thrown in. Only a few medium-market stations made it through, mostly big-signal AMs like WLAC Nashville, KAAY Little Rock, Ark., WTIX New Orleans, and WAPE Jacksonville, Fla.

But somebody has been carrying the torch for WKZQ Myrtle Beach, S.C., in its '70s and '80s incarnation. Thus the recent launch of QRockRadio.com, a broad-playlist '70s/'80s Classic Hits outlet meant to recall the station (now a Modern Rock outlet) in that era. Unlike a lot of the Internet radio stations of like intent, "Q-Rock Radio" has been hosted (on the two occasions we listened), has jingles, and is doing a more fully realized job than many of trying to sound like a real station that just happens to be on-line.

I've listened to Q-Rock twice now. (Market veteran The Freakin' Deacon is on the air as I speak and sending shout-outs to Newport News, Va., which had its own "Q-Rock" [WQRK] in the '70s.) At times, it sounds like one of those radio reunion weekends with everybody still getting their bearings again. Then again, so did WCBS-FM New York for its first few weeks back on the air. It's a project of definite merit. And for the many mourners of the seemingly unrelated KKSF San Francisco, it's proof that no heritage station's legacy need languish indefinitely on The Infinite Dial.

Here's Q-Rock at 11:40 this morning:

James Brown, "Living In America"
O'Jays, "I Love Music"
Abba, "Dancing Queen"
Michael Jackson, "Human Nature"
Badfinger, "Baby Blue"
Blues Image, "Ride Captain RIde"
Archie Bell & Drells, "Tighten Up"
Culture Club, "Karma Chameleon"
Grand Funk Railroad, "Bad Time"
Madonna, "Who's That Girl"
Bee Gees, "Jive Talkin'"
Olivia Newton-John, "Physical"
Molly Hatchet, "Dreams I'll Never See"
Joni Mitchell, "Help Me"
Barry Manilow, "It's A Miracle"

WMFS-FM in Memphis flipped today from Alternative to ESPN Radio. It points out the increasing "AM-itization" of the FM dial, and leads to the confident prediction that ESPN Radio will find a home on FM in every market of America before long.

So, if you are a locally produced AM sports talk station, you need to ask yourself how competitive you can remain when someone flips to ESPN Radio on the FM. Yes, you are likely talking a lot more about the home team -- but they are in the mall with all the foot traffic.

And if you are a struggling FM music station...do you want to grab this opportunity before anyone else does?

Interesting times we live in, indeed.

I assume that these will be taken off of the kksf.com website soon, so for the record, here are the 3,734 over 5,000 comments (so far!) on KKSF's site about their abrupt format shift to The Band: http://smoothjazzkksf.disqus.com/kksf_1037_smooth_jazz/.

Take your time--read as many as you can stomach. You won't find very many positive comments. I had some strong words about the way this flip was executed earlier, and the comments from these former listeners, rapidly nearing 4000 as I am writing this, back up those strong words. If you are in broadcasting in any capacity, this whole exercise should horrify you. Radio often trumpets the 'unique relationship' listeners have with stations and brands, but in reality this is rarely the case. KKSF was by far the exception, not the rule. KKSF did have a unique relationship with thousands and thousands of San Francisco residents--the proof is on the page. Now, however, those thousands of San Francisco residents hate the radio industry for doing this the way it was done--not giving anyone a chance to say goodbye, or even a chance to save it--and that relationship is never coming back. This should anger you, no matter who you work for, because the entire industry does this, and everyone is guilty by association in the minds of a listening public that is less engaged with radio than they have ever been.

The station's press release indicates that the switch was based upon "exhaustive market research," which is demonstrably not true. Exhaustive market research would have quantified the potential backlash from making this switch so abruptly, and would have dictated another approach at the very least, if not a different decision. Is this really the legacy of PPM? Scrapping stations that inspire targeted passion in favor of everyone's 2nd/3rd favorite rock station? Active for Passive? Engagement for Detachment? The endgame is not ratings, the endgame is moving listeners to advertisers and driving action--feet on the street, dollars in the till. Relationships like the ones that these former KKSF listeners had with their favorite station are far more likely to drive those actions than passionless jukeboxes ever will. Surely, there is a way to maintain those relationships even if the format change were inevitable. But as usual, no one thinks about the listeners in these train-wreck format flips the industry is so fond of. I'll never figure these 'surprise' flips out--if the only thing you have on your competition is the element of surprise, then you didn't have much to begin with.

Some of you may be surprised at the strong wording in this post, and this space proudly bills itself as constructive dialog on the future of the radio industry. It's hard to be constructive when actions like this are so ultimately destructive to the industry we love. I can only hope someday that the whole KKSF situation serves as an example of how not to change formats so the radio industry can truly cultivate its digital future and remain relevant for years to come. It's all up to you.

I was sad to see the demise of KKSF; I had the distinct privilege of working with Steve Feinstein back when KKSF was owned by Brown Broadcasting, and Steve had a singular vision for a unique soundtrack to a unique city. I don't have any more to say about Smooth Jazz than I've already said here, and your comments to that article are far more insightful than anything I could, or would, say.

I will say, however, as I have said in the past, that blowing up stations--and blowing off passionate communities of listeners--with no notice, no ceremony and little more than a letter on a web site is classless, idiotic and ultimately destructive for an entire industry that could use a little love.

For more on this topic, read my update here.

For many years, speeding up records (or refusing to) has been a litmus test for the sort of Top 40 radio that a programmer believes in -- it usually signifies a station that is younger, more aggressive, higher-energy, etc. There's a discussion taking place on Radio-Info.com this morning about WIOQ (Q102) Philadelphia's reported decision not to pitch records up, while one of WXRK (Now 92.3) New York's calling cards has been its sped-up music.

So a few random thoughts on speeding records up:

* In general, I've always liked it -- if only because it was usually a hallmark of stations that were exciting in other ways as well. And, indeed, other stations didn't sound quite right if they didn't speed songs up as well.

* That said, I'm in favor of doing it intelligently. I remember the Top 40 station that was still (unlike most) speeding songs up in early 1981. And boy did "With You I'm Born Again" sound bad.

* These days, the point of comparison isn't other radio stations, as much as one's own iPod. And it's hard to know whether a listener is likely to hear a sped-up song as more exciting than their own copy or somehow "wrong-sounding." (Hint: I heard an Oldies show on Friday night play two songs I've heard hundreds of times. Between their processing and the Internet signal, I actually wondered if those songs were different takes or even different artists because they sounded so different from what I hear at least once a week.)

* If you don't like sped-up records, and even if you do, most Top 40s put songs through a funhouse mirror with their extreme processing. And most songs already arrive at radio cranked to the max. "Waking Up In Vegas" by Katy Perry is my favorite Top 40 record right now, but on one prominent CHR, when the chorus rolls around, it becomes very hard to listen to. The combination of "extreme engineering" + "extreme processing" + "sped up records" is certainly not doing certain songs any favors.

When we published the Ross On Radio overview of the Bob- and Jack-FM format yesterday, we got a few e-mails from other programmers in the format.

Clear Channel/Columbia, S.C., OM/PD L.J. Smith wrote, "Hey, brother, don't forget about WLTY (Steve-FM). We've averaged a Top 3 25-54 ranking since we debuted. Huge."

And consultant Alex DeMers wrote, "Hope you have a chance to peek at [WMKK] Mike in Boston and [WAVF] Chuck in Charleston. we're really enjoying big success with both of those stations right now -- in both the Diary and PPM worlds.

So to close out Bob- and Jack-FM Week on the Infinite Dial, here's a listen to Entercom's Mike FM under PD Ron Valeri and DeMers. Mike is up in PPM -- which has been good to all the market's Classic Hits outlets. (WMKK is at a 4.6 to WZLX's 4.9, WROR's 5.9, and WODS' 6.4) It has some interesting touches, including a commercial free 9 a.m.-Noon bloc, as well as a sponsored legal ID and stagers that are in character with the station. One sweeper promotes a furniture store by telling listeners to take their feet off the desk and go back to work.

Here's Mike at 10:30 this morning:

Loverboy, "Working For The Weekend"
Commodores, "Brick House"
O.A.R., "Shattered (Turn The Car Around)"
Madonna, "Like A Prayer"
Blue Oyster Cult, "(Don't Fear) The Reaper"
Squeeze, "Tempted"
Hootie & the Blowfish, "I Go Blind'
Phil Collins, "You Can't Hurry Love"
Steam, "Na Na, Hey Hey, Kiss Him Goodbye"
No Doubt, "Just A Girl"
Tubes, "She's A Beauty"
Wild Cherry, "Play That Funky Music"
Stray Cats, "Rock This Town"
Outkast, "Hey Ya"

KKXX (Pirate Radio) Bakersfield, Calif., was Steve Perun and Scott Shannon's foray into the Classic Hits/Hot AC hybrid format. It differed at the time, and still does, by playing a few actual Hot AC currents, as opposed to the handful of recurrents heard on most of its counterparts. In the winter book, KKXX was down 2.6 - 1.9, fragmented in part by the launch of a new Classic Hits outlet KVMX (Max FM). But it was one of the most interesting stations I heard this week -- more of the barnstorming feel and eclecticism of the format's early U.S. launches. Here's Pirate Radio at 6 a.m. this morning:

Van Halen, "When It's Love"
E.M.F., "Unbelievable"
Foreigner, "Feels Like The First Time"
Heart, "All I Wanna Do Is Make Love To You"
Taylor Swift, "Love Story"
Chic, "Le Freak"
Billy Idol, "Rebel Yell"
Player, "Baby Come Back"
Loverboy, "Loving Every Minute Of It"
Kenny Loggins, "I'm Alright"
Led Zeppelin, "Fool In The Rain"
Blue October, "Calling You"
Elvis Costello, "Every Day I Write The Book"
Poison, "Nothing But A Good Time"
Avril Lavigne, "My Happy Ending"
Rolling Stones, "Start Me Up"

WQSR (102.7 Jack FM) Baltimore has an unusual history. It was the most successful of CBS' heritage Oldies-to-Jack flips. Consultant Joel Folger was involved with the station, giving it essentially a Bob engine in a Jack body. And now a station swap has sent it from CBS to Clear Channel, which has done a smattering of Adult Hits stations but hadn't been in the "Jack-FM Business."

So far, Jack/Baltimore sounds a lot like it did when last heard before the changeover in December. It has a little more rhythm than the average station in the format. It can also be a little more '90s-based at times -- today's "Nine at Nine" year was 1994, allowing it to play "100% Pure Love" by Crystal Waters out of "Zombie" by the Cranberries. (The most provocative segue, however, was during the Web-only stopset: "Everybody Dance" by Ta Mara & the Seen into "Another Saturday Night" by Cat Stevens.)

Here's the station at 9:45 this morning:

Janet Jackson, "What Have You Done For Me Lately"
Foreigner, "Feels Like The First Time"
Stevie Nicks, "Talk To Me"
John Parr, "Naughty Naughty"
Paula Abdul, "Straight Up"
R.E.M., "The One I Love"
Blondie, "Rapture"
Duncan Sheik, "Barely Breathing"
Donna Summer, "Bad Girls"
Journey, "Don't Stop Believing"
Duran Duran, "The Reflex"

We briefly interrupt Bob & Jack week to reflect on Friday's news that 17 Clear Channel stations in five formats had been taken off the R&R reporting panel as a result of a switch to centralized music programming. (Mediabase, owned by Clear Channel, removed 11 stations a day earlier.)

Of particular interest here are the five medium-market CHRs (in Rochester and Albany, N.Y., Lexington and Louisville, Ky., and Dayton, Ohio) that are leaving the panel. Clear Channel's late '90s/early '00 Rust Belt CHR sign-ons, spurred by the success of WKFS (Kiss FM) Cincinnati, had a profound effect on the Top 40 landscape. Stations like WKFS were fast on Rhythmic product and ultra-conservative on everything else, playing only one or two rock titles (usually teen punk or Nickelballads). And where they didn't devastate their competition, they often created a war of attrition that a rival eventually chose not to participate in.

WKFS had a similarly profound impact on the charts. Rhythmic-leaning stations that played their powers 85 to 100 times a week were naturally going to change the composition of the Mainstream chart, particularly when the pop/rock-leaning stations were playing songs 60-70 times a week. Ultimately, many of the other CHRs became fast on rhythm and slow on rock, too, either because they didn't want to be vulnerable to a station like WKFS or because they were following the charts in the direction they were going.

Of the CHR stations dropped Friday, all but WLKT were developed from the WKFS model. Before modifying their music, those stations were spinning their powers somewhere in the neighborhood of 90-105 times per week. Will losing them change the timbre of the Mainstream CHR chart? That's unlikely as long as the panel change is only five stations. And while other group owners are starting to launch CHR stations again, most of their new stations are similarly "chythmic" (somewhere between CHR and Rhythmic) -- not the least of which is because most programmers were so heavily influenced by stations like Kiss when they were coming up in the business. And even the most pop/rock-friendly programmers have to either work with the available music geared toward a rhythmic-leaning panel or hatch their own hits, something that few are inclined to do these days.

And it's at this point that we should remember fondly Louisville's WZKF, one of the Kiss-FMs dropped from the chart this week. WZKF was one of those stations often cited as evidence that the entire CHR format was not moving in lockstep. In 2007, Kiss was early on both Country and R&B crossovers, the formula that made the market's legacy Top 40 rockers WKLO and WAKY famous 30 years earlier. It's too bad that WZKF isn't unique now. But even before its change, it had become less idiosyncratic. And I'd be hard pressed to name 10 reporting CHRs that show anywhere near that sort of musical creativity right now.

The message for those programmers whose stations aren't among the 17 dropped from their panels is carpe diem. More national programming is clearly on its way, regardless of owner. But for today, you have the opportunity to reflect your market or single-handedly champion the next "Just Dance" or "All Summer Long," two hits that were languishing for a few months before they really got rolling. For those stations that don't program for their market, the distinction between being individually and centrally programmed is a mere technicality anyway.

When Journal Broadcast Group's WKTI Milwaukee became WLWK (the Lake) last November, we felt Milwaukee's history as a pop/rock market and WKTI's own DNA boded well for the change. Since then, the Lake has gone 2.5 - 3.3 - 4.5 12-plus, adding shares even as most of its direct competition has also gone up 12-plus, suggesting that "The Lake" turned out to be a better version of WKTI for the existing audience than the one that was being offered.

The Lake is still very much the station we wrote about in November -- still tending to the AC side. In that spirit, there's still a lot of direct explanation of station benefits: "We, unlike others, play tons of music in the morning"; "Take the Lake to work to help the day fly by." There's also a lot of emphasis on the station's "surprising music variety."

Here's the Lake at 9 a.m. today:

Grand Funk, "The Loco-Motion"
Waitresses, "I Know What Boys Like"
Chicago, "Beginnings"
Dan Hartman, "I Can Dream About You"
Wings, "Band On The Run"
Kylie Minogue, "Can't Get You Out Of My Head"
Night Ranger, "When You Close Your Eyes"
Foreigner, "Double Vision"
Avril Lavigne, "I'm With You"
Kenny Loggins, "Footloose"
Janet Jackson, "What Have You Done For Me Lately"
Whitesnake, "Here I Go Again"
Erasure, "A Little Respect"

CBS' KCBS-FM (93.1 Jack-FM) Los Angeles was always a unique take on the Hot AC/Classic Hits hybrid, drawing on the legacy of sister KROQ to play some '80s Alternative titles that would have been too obscure in other markets. Combining '70s Classic Rock and '80s Alterative (in an almost 1;1 ratio) allowed them to follow the music of a Southern Californian's life (KLOS and KMET in the '70s, then KROQ when it hit). It also made them more competitve than most Classic Rockers with a Hispanic audience that never had a problem treating Human League or the Eurythmics as Classic Rock.

In the March PPM, Jack/Los Angeles is up 2.8 - 3.2 and No. 11 overall. That's off from its first PPM month (4.2), but within its trading range in the diary era, well ahead of its 2.2 in the final diary book, and ahead of Classic Rock KLOS (2.4 - 2.3).

Here's Jack at 10:50 a.m. this morning:

Kansas, "Dust In The Wind"
Haircut One Hundred, "Love Plus One"
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, "The Waiting"
Eve 6, "Inside Out"
Joe Walsh, "Life's Been Good"
Cure, "Pictures Of You"
Van Halen, "Right Now"
Bangles, "Hazy Shade of Winter"
Rolling Stones, "Sympathy for the Devil"
Billy Idol, "White Wedding"
Joan Jett & Blackhearts, "I Love Rock & Roll"
The Cult, "Fire Woman"
Matchbox Twenty, "Bent"

Emmis' KBPA (Bob FM) Austin, Texas, was off 5.1 - 4.0 in the winter Arbitron, but has been a consistent performer throughout the Adult Hits format's ups-and-downs since its launch under consultant Joel Folger. (Mainstream AC rival KKMJ was up 5.6 - 5.8.) Like WARH (the Arch) St. Louis, the station we reviewed yesterday for Bob & Jack week, there's a definite AC feel here (although that could be a function of the relatively soft year being saluted on the station's 9 At 9 feature). Also like the Arch, middays are hosted, although PD Krash Kelly was heard mostly during the 9 At 9. The stationality was somewhat wackier than The Arch -- consistent with what we've heard throughout the format's history (e.g., "Listen to us while you pretend to work").

Here's Bob FM's 9 a.m. hour today, starting with its "9 at 9" from 1980:

Kenny Loggins, "This Is It"
Devo, "Whip It"
Robbie Dupree, "Steal Away"
Jackson Browne, "Boulevard"
Pretenders, "Brass In Pocket (I'm Special)"
Prince, "I Wanna Be Your Lover"
Johnny Lee, "Looking For Love"
Cliff Richard, "Dreaming"
Blondie, "Call Me" (backsold as the No. 1 song on this day in 1980)
Chic, "Le Freak"
Fastball, "The Way"
Bangles, "Manic Monday"
Heart, "Magic Man"
Billy Joel, "You May Be Right"
U2, "Desire"
David Cook, "Time Of My Life"

In 2004, it was the "format that ate the radio." Today, you don't hear as much about our Bob- and Jack-FMs. The novelty (at least among radio people) has worn off. New music is compelling again to adults. The initial PPM results for most stations have been middling, particularly given what the industry expected for a cume-friendly, variety-based format. And even one of the relatively recent converts, Houston rimshotter KHJK (Jack FM),switched to Triple-A this week.

We've been big fans of the Hot AC/Classic Hits hybrid since its 2002 debut at CFWM (Bob FM) Winnipeg. And we don't want to be fair-weather friends now. A fuller analysis of the format and its recent fortunes will follow in the Ross On Radio column, but for the next seven days, we thought we'd listen to some Bobs, Jacks, Peaks, Arches, and others to get a sense of how the format sounds now, and what sounds good about the more enduring players.

Bonneville's WARH (the Arch) St. Louis seemed like a good place to start. It was one of the bigger, better launches. Its inevitable levelling off would have been more than acceptable as a peak for many stations. And in the winter, it was up 5.0 - 6.0 under new PD Kevin Robinson and second 12-plus in the market.

The Arch started life with the advantage of being in a market with the right pop/rock heritage, and on the frequency of a former station (KWK) associated with that music. Throughout it's life, it's always had research and marketing. It's always had jocks -- the middayer I heard today was on with relatable bits every second or third song, including one amusing line about not being able to explain the lyrics of Van Halen's "Finish What You Started" on an at-work radio station.

One of the things that impresses about the Arch today is its balance. There's obvious AC functionality, but there are enough songs that an AC couldn't play. The station voice is still John O'Hurley, but he's used in service of the more straightforward positioner, "It's all about the variety." The only downside to the station was the length of the stopsets; from the moment the jock cracked the mic at the end of a sweep, it was usually 7-8 minutes to music starting again.

Here's the Arch at 12:40 today:

Juice Newton, "Queen of Hearts" (acknowledged by the jock as an oh-wow song)
(stop)
Eddie Money, "Shakin'"
Vanessa Carlton, "A Thousand Miles"
Bill Withers, "Lean On Me"
R.E.M., "It's The End Of The World As We Know It"
Queen, "We Will Rock You/We Are The Champions"
Sarah McLachlan, "I Will Remember You"
(stop)
Great White, "Once Bitten, Twice Shy"
Elton John, "Crocodile Rock"
3 Doors Down, "It's Not My Time"
Thompson Twins, "Hold Me Now"
(stop)
Van Halen, "Finish What You Started"
Norah Jones, "Don't Know Why"
Beatles, "Revolution"
Whispers, "Rock Steady"
Gnarls Barkley, "Crazy"
Foreigner, "Hot Blooded"

They brought us the game show, "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire." They helped produce the Oscar-winning "Slumdog Millionaire." And the Celador people are in the radio business, too. The Scotsman reported this week that Celador Radio Group, having already launched a similar station in Southampton, England, is pursuing a license for a similar format in Edinburgh.

I started listening to the British station, Coast 106, earlier this week and I've been rivited for hours at a time. If you attempted to describe it in U.S. terms, it would be equal parts Soft Oldies KPMZ (Platinum 96.7) Dallas and Triple-A KSWD (Los Angeles). But it's more easily explained as a "more music, less talk" (or, in their parlance, "more tracks, less chat") version of BBC Radio 2's eclectic mix of AC oldies and new "quality rock," meaning that you can hear developing American indie label Triple-A artist Matt Duke and Eddie Rabbitt within minutes of each other. This morning, Coldplay's "Life In Technicolor" played next to Christopher Cross' "All Right."

That mix isn't for every reader of this column. But a certain strata of us will welcome Coast as been my latest source for songs that you haven't heard on U.S radio since Casey Kasem played them on "American Top 40" in the '70s and early '80s. After encountering Eric Carmen's "Sunrise," Stealers Wheel's "Star," and Stevie Nicks' "Rooms On Fire," I began e-mailing my other chart junkie friends. And that was before the six minute Bob Dylan 1978 LP cut, "Changing of the Guard."

The difference between Coast and BBC Radio 2 is in proportion here -- more of the '70s soft rock, less of the eclectic new stuff . . . but not none. And in the U.K., offering "less chat" means that the top-of-the-hour news package is only two minutes. It's also interesting that the people who brought us one of the most carefully constructed, elaborately packaged TV shows of all time have gone the other way on the radio. But imagine what a CHR with the "Millionaire" aesthetic would sound like.

Here's Coast around 10 p.m. on Wednesday:

Fleetwood Mac, "As Long As You Follow"
Zombies, "Time of the Season"
Sutherland Brothers & Quiver, "Arms of Mary"
Genesis, "Misunderstanding"
Joe Walsh, "Life's Been Good"
Bob Dylan, "Knockin' On Heaven's Door"
Adele, "Chasing Rainbows"
Mike & the Mechanics, "The Living Years"
Kenny Loggins, "This Is It"
Derek & the Dominos, "Layla"

If Washington, D.C., can have a station devoted to news of the Federal Government, it only makes sense that Los Angeles should have a radio station focusing on entertainment industry news. It got that this week when CBS steered KFWB away from its straight All-News path of the last 41 years, which will now be the exclusive franchise of KNX.

KFWB is still reporting the big non-entertainment stories and providing the typical All-News station services (traffic, weather, financial). Like a Mainstream CHR that evolves to Rhythmic, it's the secondaries, not the powers, which have changed. Positioning too: Stagers now include, "From the back lot to the boardroom, this is Hollywood's KFWB" and, "From the Show-Biz capital of the world." The station's trademark, "Give us 22 minutes and we'll give you the world," remains.

KFWB's move makes sense when Hollywood's longstanding Town Hall, the Los Angeles Times, is facing every newspaper's challenges and doing so even more publicly than most. KFWB's own hurdle will be competing with the TImes, Daily Variety, the Hollywood Reporter and the blogs for news. In the hour heard yesterday, the industry stories were the kind of stats-driven stories that you might hear as the "media" story in an All-News station's business segment. That's understandable in Week No. 1. But in a market where even Ryan Seacrest interviews movie producers on KIIS, KFWB is going to have to make listeners a fly on the wall in "Entourage" agent Ari Gold's office. And as WNEW (Blink 102.7) New York showed with its more consumer-driven entertainment news five years ago, it's hard to both generate scoop and get credit for scoop when entertainment news has become ubiquitous.

Here's a 40-minute segment of KFWB yesterday:

2:11 Traffic;
2:12 Author of a Marketwatch.com article is interviewed on the inroads of Politico.com and similar political Websites against the Washington Post;
2:15 Sports;
2:17 Stopset;
2:19 Tyra Banks stalker trial begins;
2:20 Headlines roundup -- mix of general and media stories, weather, etc.;
2:21 Traffic;
2:22 Swine flu: WHO alert goes to level five;
2:24 Stopset
2:25 General business headlines;
2:27 Stopset;
2:29 "Show biz capital" stager;
2:30 "Top 5 at 30" headlines roundup: Swine flu; Obama's first 100 days; Michelle Obama's charity work; California tour bus crash; actor Lane Garrison released from prison;
2:31 Traffic;
2:32 A cluster of entertainment stories: Screen Actors Guild votes on contract offer; Nielsen reports declines in network TV viewership; online video market up 32%; Google changes its formula for news searches;
2:36 Stopset
2:37 Report on the iPhone's "Tap Tap" application;
2:39 Stopset;
2:40 Headlines, mix of general and media stories;
2:41 Traffic;
2:43 General news stories: ballot budget propositions polling badly; Orange County schools facing budget cuts;
2:44 Stopset;
2:45 Sports;
2:48 Teaser for KCAL-TV news including its swine flu report
2:49 The Lane Garrison story repeats; People's list of the 100 most beautiful people;
2:50 Stopset;
2:51 Traffic;
2:52 Hollywood Notes: Jeffrey Katzenberg renews with Dreamworks; Ricky Gervais' "Flanimals" books to become 3D movie; Reporter Anthony Dias Blue's "Blue Lifestyle Minute" on L.A. architecture;
2:53 Stopset
2:54 Weather
2:55 Another cluster of stories that included a settlement between MGM and Dubai World

When the personalities showed up on new CHR outlet WXRK (Now 92.3) New York a few weeks ago, it took some in the industry by surprise. The jocks were going on the air sooner than their counterparts at KLSX (Amp 97.1) Los Angeles. They were also being rolled out while the introductory 10,000 songs in a row were still underway, meaning that the music was being stopped for some long bits (or so it felt, anyway), particularly when p.m. driver Tic Tak and night jock Chunky were on the air.

Now the 10,000 in a row is over. Spots are on the station. And Now 92.3 has developed an interesting other dimension that goes beyond its rhythmic-leaning music or the much vaunted "new platforms" aspect of CBS Radio's recent CHR launches. After 3 p.m., Now 92.3 becomes a lifestyle talk station for young women that also happens to play CHR music. In that regard, it's not unlike Rick Torcasso's "Young Country" stations of the early '90s that were built around the phones but happened to play Country music.

Judging from the callers, Now 92.3 is aiming at a certain group of hard-living women in North Jersey and Staten Island. Recent topics have included "youngest woman with the oldest boyfriend," "guys who should be on a 'No-Date List,'" and "I dropped out of school, now I have a menial job." (Remember our earlier findings about the amount of listening controlled by employed non-college-graduates?)

For what's being attempted here, it's very well executed. Rival WHTZ (Z100) has afternoon and night jocks who certainly know how to work the phones themselves. But the relatively edgy topics and the amount of real-estate devoted to them have a very different feel from what I've heard on CHR radio lately. It's a sharp contrast from the presentational austerity of many Clear Channel CHRs (and Z100 has done a better job of holding on to its personality aspects than many). And while a lot of the topics are relationship talk of some sort, there's still more variety than on many CHRs around the country when the average night phoner goes something like this:

Jock: "So where are you calling from?"

Caller answers the question.

Jock: "And what are you doing tonight in ________?"

Caller: "Nothing. Just hanging out."

Jock: "Just hanging out, huh?" Or something else slightly dirty based on the caller's wording.

Caller laughs nervously. Next phone bit sounds roughly the same.

So far, I've heard more trace elements of Amp showing up among our rapidly proliferating new CHR stations -- it was launched first and got some traction first. But if Now 92.3 makes a dent, it will be a vote for personality -- something that shouldn't go unnoticed by anybody watching this battle.

As CHR's building boom continues, I realize I haven't always held to my goal of same-day posting on new stations. I'm a day behind in acknowledging the new WVHT (Hot 100.5) Norfolk, the former rock outlet Max 100.5. But I figure if I don't get this written quickly, there'll be another new CHR to write before I get to it!

When I heard them late afternoon yesterday, the Alan Burns-consulted Hot 100.5 seemed to be in that same "chythmic" bag as KLSX (Amp 97.1) Los Angeles and WXRK (Now 92.3) New York, although looking at the logs over a longer period of time, I did see The Fray and a few of the other songs that separate Amp and Now from their already rhythmic-leaning incumbent rivals. Meanwhile, the homepage from the very amusing Kung Pao 100.5 launch stunt is still available here.

Here's what I heard at 3:50 yesterday:

Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"
Nelly Furtado, "Promiscuous"
Flo Rida, "Sugar"
Rihanna, "Disturbia"
T.I. & Justin Timberlake, "Dead and Gone" (the hour's No. 1 song)
Katy Perry, "I Kissed A Girl"
Pitbull, "I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)"
Britney Spears, "Circus"
Lady Gaga, "Poker Face"
Fergie, "Glamorous"
Kanye West, "Heartless"

Over the last few years, we've posited the likely development of "Triple-A That Really Rocks," a version of the format that keeps the progressive aesthetic of Triple-A, but has less of the singer-songwriter ethereality. WRXP New York has certainly intended to serve as a beachhead in that regard, So, to varying degrees, do the new Triple-A stations launched by Cumulus in the last week.

KDBN (Quality Rock 93.3) Dallas, which replaced Classic Rock "The Bone" yesterday is closer to the format center as it exists in many places -- more '90s and '00s than Classic Rock but still recognizable texturally as a Triple-A. WNNX (Rock 100) Atlanta (not to be confused with the HD-2 Alternative 99X that just found an FM home on an Atlanta translator) sounds more like a station that evolved from Active Rock. And by sharing the Atlanta-based Regular Guys morning show, both are a little closer to the traditional rock radio model. (Atlanta also has some likely holdovers from the old format such as streaming promos for "The Regular Guys' F.U. Line" (probably does not stand for Felix Unger) and ads for the Dollhouse Men's Club.)

Here's WNNX this moning at 10:30:

Counting Crows, "Rain King"
Santana, "Evil Ways"
U2, "Magnificent"
INXS, "What You Need"
Coldplay, "Clocks"
Goo Goo Dolls, "Here Is Gone"
Barenaked Ladies, "It's All Been Done"
Police, "Walking on the Moon"
My Morning Jacket, "I'm Amazed"
Led Zeppelin, "Kashmir"
Snow Patrol, "You're All I Have"
Green Day, "When I Come Around"

And here's KDBN at 10:35:

James, "Laid"
Barenaked Ladies, "If I Had $1,000,000"
Natalie Merchant, "Jealousy"
Paul Simon, "Late In The Evening"
Killers, "Spaceman"
DNA & Suzanne Vega, "Tom's Diner"
Donovon Frankenreiter, "Life, Love & Laughter"
Los Lonely Boys, "Heaven"
Joan Osborne, "One Of Us"
Bob Marley, "One Love - People Get Ready"
My Morning Jacket, "I'm Amazed"

I just got back from speaking at the RAIN Internet Radio Summit in Las Vegas, and have to say that Kurt, Paul and Jennifer really did a great job putting together an exciting, content-rich program on the future of online radio. Highlights for me included David Goodman's update on all of the digital irons CBS has in the fire right now (and the enormous amount of content they are serving) and Pandora CEO Joe Kennedy's inspirational talk on entrepreneurship and seeing opportunities.

I was there to open the day with my usual bucket o' numbers, in this case some very good news for webcasters in the form of significantly increased weekly usage numbers for online radio as well as some eye opening numbers on social networking (you can see for yourself--download the complete Edison/Arbitron Infinite Dial 2009 Report here.) For the most part, the day was a celebration of how far online radio has come, and a compelling glimpse of where it can (and must) go in the future, capped off by Kurt Hanson's rapid fire, Pecha Kucha take on the state of the industry.

As I reflected on the summit during my long flight back to Tarheel country, I was struck most by a question one attendee asked at the end of the day that received some remarkably inadequate responses from the panel that fielded it. The question sounds innocent enough: "What are your companies doing to create new content suitable for digital formats?" The answers, however, generally danced around web site features designed to allow listeners to interact with each other, learn more about artists/songs, and other applications that are really just metadata, not original content.

Radio, and especially music radio, have to take this question a lot more seriously in the near term if the industry is to have a digital future. It is not enough to simply package up metadata and call it online content--a lot of other non-radio websites already beat you to it. This is serious. There are a quadrillion sites that suck data from an API and spit it back out again--but there aren't that many sites creating the unique, original web content that this metadata wraps around. Radio has to be in the content creation business, not the "value-added metadata" business. Repurposing on-air content is a start, but is only step one out of a hundred. As Pandora's Joe Kennedy succinctly put it during the summit, online radio is a unicast, one-to-one format, not a broadcast medium. Repurposing broadcast content is table stakes, but to raise the ante radio needs to get serious about creating new, original web content that they own (and don't have to pay SoundExchange for). This means audio content, yes--but also video content and...my favorite...text content (which is the ONLY way radio can compete in the local search game).

Original content designed from the ground up for a unicast medium will be radio's strategic moat in the future. Metadata content can be mimicked and even radically improved by a guy in a garage. Radio has to think bigger about its online future--we should and must create tools that allow listeners the ability to share, comment on and remix content, but so can the rest of the world. The key is to make the original stuff first, then give those tools away to others. Only then will radio own its future.

I was the last person on my floor of the Edison offices to actually watch the YouTube clip of Susan Boyle singing "I Dreamed A Dream" on "Britain's Got Talent." Seconds after I started, the entire third floor staff was engulfed in discussion: all of my co-workers were able to discuss the clip in depth already. Even by then, the fact that it was a performance of a showtune that didn't intersect with their personal tastes in music was entirely beside the point.

On Saturday, veteran AC programmer and journalist Eric Norberg wrote an essay in his Adult Contemporary Music Research letter urging AC programmers to put the song into power rotation. Norberg, who was AC editor of the Gavin Report and for the last 20 years has published a newsletter whose "AC listener focus group" methodology anticipated Hit Predictor and Rate The Music. Norberg noted that the YouTube video was up to 26 million views as of Saturday; (it's now at 34 million).

"If radio is not about bringing a performance like this to its listeners -- already known to them from press reports, if not from viewing the video itself -- then what CAN it be about?" he asked. "This song and its story were made for radio, so it's high time radio now grabs it back from TV, newspapers, magazines, and the Internet!"

So has Norberg found any takers? Did any programmers come to that conclusion separately? Susan Boyle has certainly been a major discussion on morning shows, but has that translated to airplay? I checked Mediabase. So far, 38 spins, almost all of them in mornings. No more than three at any one station (WRVF Toledo). The most were in AC, but some were in formats as far afield as Classic Rock KLOS Los Angeles. And while that number conceivably may not have captured partial spins of the song or perhaps some of the earliest airplay, it's still a chilling reminder of what being a pop culture phenomenon gets at radio when it's not specifically put in front of them.

The intriguing headline on the press release from the Miami Spanish AC station is, "WRMA Romance 106.7 FM Announces New Morning Reality Show, 'Hola Miami.'" The subject line further promises "three controversial hosts with an explosive mixture of personalities come together in new show."

Programmers have been looking to ride the reality TV bandwagon for years (and since that bandwagon had more momentum than it does now). Beyond the pairing of "three passionate women from different generations," there's nothing that suggests that "Hola Miami" will be any more like a reality show than any other morning program. But it is an interesting bit of positioning. And one now wonders...

What if morning shows really were reality shows? Morning hosts and team members are instructed to share more of their real lives these days. But what if the carefully cast roles (the host is Seinfeld, the female co-host is Elaine, the stunt guy is Kramer) were cast aside and listeners got to hear what really goes on in the booth? Less about Britney and Octomom. More about who will show up on time, who doesn't like the other person's cologne, how much of a talent fee will be paid for the next appearance (even though it's a charity event). And with the way things are going for morning team members, there's certainly a strong chance of an elimination each week.

Even my co-workers who admire "American Idol" contestant Adam Lambert's stagecraft still will try to end any discussion by shooting back, "But what kind of radio career could he have?" This was, of course, the argument against Melinda Doolittle and, if you insist on pursuing it, Taylor Hicks is brought up, too.

Hicks was indeed a good example of the sort of artist that didn't lend himself to cheerfully executing whatever Today's Hot Songwriters put in front of him. And, yes, it's hard to imagine Adam Lambert singing "One Step At A Time" or "It's Not Over." And it's difficult, also, to imagine the type of record that would put David Bowie or Mick Jagger on Top 40 radio in 2009.

So I've decided to A&R Adam Lambert's first single myself -- not that I've worked it out with 19 Management or the label, or anything. But, hey, some of them will read this column.

I first heard Morton Valence's "Sailors" two years ago through the British Website/daily newsletter Record of the Day." At that time, I thought it could never be covered -- too quirky, and what other artist would say, "I can sing that"? But it's distinctive, sounds great, has an undeniable riff, and would play off Lambert's theatricality. Not everybody who hears this will like it, but you will undoubtedly be able to imagine Adam Lambert performing it.

If you haven't read out this week's Ross On Radio, it's "Ten Great Radio Battles of the '80s and Early '90s." Not surprisingly, readers had their own thoughts on what that list would include. We're up to 30 comments and counting; check it out and be sure to add your own favorite radio wars, as well.

Thanks to Ed Salamon and the crew at Country Radio Broadcasters, here is the complete presentation (with audio) of the findings I presented in Nashville on March 6th at Country Radio Seminar 40. This study was derived from the results of over 13,000 respondents, taken from the databases of select Country radio stations across America. Enjoy!

So with all the changes in Country, is it finally time for Country rap?

In some ways, you could argue that it's been here for a while. The Bellamy Brothers first floated a trial balloon with 1987's now-forgotten "Country Rap." Toby Keith faced a lot less resistance with "I Wanna Talk About Me" eight years ago. And recently, songs like Trace Adkins' "Honky Tonk Badonkadonk" and Justin Moore's "Back That Thing Up" have borrowed from Hip-Hop, if not its cadence. And former rapper Kid Rock has made two successful forays into Country now.

So it was with all this history that Keymarket VP of programming Frank Bell decided to test "Ride Through the Country" by Colt Ford on WOGI (Froggy) Pittsburgh's "make it or break it" (or, in this case "Hop or Drop") last night.

And the answer is ... not quite yet.

"Ride Through The Country," which, as one Froggy staffer noted, sounds sort of like Everlast's "What It's Like," generated more calls than any other song. The votes were 53% in favor, 47% against. Bell notes that most contemporary-sounding country songs come in around 65-75% positive. Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" came in at 92%. In other words, it's still too polarizing in a format that avoids the polarized.

You might think that Country's early '90s franchise as a place not to hear rap might have diminished a little over the years. And perhaps by 1993 standards, even a 53/47 split in favor is mind-blowing. The majority of adults have grown up with some Hip-Hop now and even most Country listeners have had exposure to something that sounds like it, such as the aforementioned. But research we've seen on the pop side suggests there's also a new generation of younger listeners who have no particular ties to hip-hop -- including a lot of the teens who are making Taylor Swift a star these days.

Clearly, music that picks you up and makes you feel good.

An interesting e-mail this afternoon from WBLI Long Island, N.Y.'s J.J. Rice:

"Music feels very 1989 right now, I remember being on air at WPXY Rochester, N.Y., and how good the music sounded -- tons of Pop Rhythmic music in 2009.

"1989: Bobby Brown, Paula Abdul, Milli Vanilli, Janet Jackson, Tone Loc, Young M.C., Madonna all dominate.

"2009: Flo Rida, Pink, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Kanye West, T.I., Britney -- same thing!"

It's a very incisive comment. And it's hard not to be in the New York metro where that latter handful of acts are being pounded by both WHTZ (Z100) and new rival WXRK (Now 92.3) and suddenly feel like it's a very rhythmic world.

But here's what's interesting about 1989 vs. 2009.

In 1989, Hip-Hop had barely scratched the surface at Top 40 radio, or Urban radio, for that matter. Hip-hop influenced R&B and novelty rap like "Bust A Move," "Funky Cold Medina," or "Parents Just Don't Understand" was the transition to the next, harder round of crossovers -- Naughty By Nature, Geto Boyz, etc. -- on the way to Dr. Dre, 2pac, and Notorious B.I.G.

In 2009, today's Pop/Rhythmic music is on a five-year trajectory back from harder Hip-Hop. T.I. raps about having mellowed. West would rather sing than rap. R&B in the late '80s was breaking away from Lionel Richie. Now it's typified by an artist like Ne-Yo who can comfortably write and produce for him. And in five years, the soft pop on Z100 has gone from being songs like Matchbox Twenty's "Bright Lights" -- very adult songs that found a spot only out of a grim determination to play some pop music -- to songs like the Fray's "You Found Me" with an ample teen base.

Top 40 went on a roller coaster ride through the late '80s and '90s. This one is more like the amusement park ride that arcs back-and-forth, up-and-down on the same track.

Could be coincidental, of course, but ....

Last week, in our opening day coverage of WXRK (Now 92.3) New York's attack on WHTZ (Z100), we went through Z100's potential vulnerabilities and suggested that one of them was some of their more adult gold, e.g., "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

Heard this morning on Now 92.3, the following promo that begins with "Mickey" playing in the background:

"Your grandmother enjoyed hearing this song on Z100 in the '80s."

Then the music switches to "Iris," and the announcer adds, "And your mom enjoyed hearing this song on Z100 yesterday!"

We didn't get paid for that one, but we are happy to help write and image your radio station, too! Call 908-707-4707.

(P.S. We know it's beside the point, but Z100 never actually played "Mickey" as a current. It was already 6-9 months old, depending on your market, when Z100 signed on.)

Okay, the WHTZ (Z100) vs. WXRK (Now 92.3) New York battle is less than five days old. And having been out of town on Thursday and Friday, I've only spent about four hours combined with the two stations. But with 1:15 rotations on Now and Z100 at 96 spins a week on powers, it is now impossible for me to sit through any of the following when they come on the radio:

Akon, "Beautiful"
Akon, "Right Now (Na Na Na)"
Beyonce, "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)"
Eminem, "Crack A Bottle"
Ne-Yo, "Mad"
Ne-Yo, "Miss Independent"
Katy Perry, "Hot 'N' Cold"
Pussycat Dolls, "I Hate This Part"
Britney Spears, "Womanizer"
T.I., "Dead & Gone"
T.I., "Live Your Life"
T.I., "Whatever You Like"

Still hanging in with the following songs on Now, for now:

All-American Rejects, "Gives You Hell"
Beyonce, "Halo"
Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"
Ciara, "Love Sex Magic"
Flo Rida, "Right Round"
Lady Gaga, "Just Dance"
Lady Gaga, "Poker Face"
Pink, "So What" -- had already disappeared from Z100
Pink, "Sober"
Soulja Boy, "Kiss Me Through The Phone"
Britney Spears, "Circus"
Britney Spears, "If You See(k) Amy"
Kanye West, "Heartless"
Kanye West, "Love Lockdown" -- helps that they're playing the original mix, which Z100 had ditched quickly for the remix.

One of the sobering things we learned from our recently completed Edison / CRB National Country Research Survey was this statistic: one in five respondents had someone in their household lose their job in the last six months. As many in the radio industry have also lost their jobs (and many more afraid of losing them in the future), the industry should have little trouble empathizing with the plight of our listeners. This year, we see ample evidence--not just in this survey--that people are concerned, and even scared, about what the coming months hold for the economy, their jobs, and their families.

We also learned in this study that Country is widely viewed as an important part of American life (84% agreed with this statement), and that Country was widely viewed as a "family-friendly" format. Facts like these point out the credibility Country has with listeners and the importance that the format really has with its most passionate fans. We also noted that these Country fans were going to spend less--a LOT less--on music, travel & leisure, and other discretionary expenditures. You don't have to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict that in the markets we surveyed and all across the US, people are going to be 'cocooning' close to home this summer. Yes, the "staycation" is likely back with us, and families will be scouring the papers--or your website--for things do around town and close to their communities.

Put all of this together, and it becomes clear that this year, Country has more than an opportunity; it has an imperative to leave deeper footprints in cities and towns all across America. Now is the time for Country programmers and marketers to put everything they do through one additional filter: does it help people? It is not enough this year for promotions to grow cume, or increase awareness. Sure, giving people a laugh in the morning or free Taylor Swift tickets are all part of this, and integral to your brands. But promotions have to genuinely help people this year, and if local stations run everything they do through that additional lens, the right choices this year will be refreshingly clear. Country has the credibility and image to really plant a flag in local communities as a steady companion, a reliable friend and as a touchstone for friends, families and neighbors.

For more, download the 2009 Edison / CRB National Country Research Survey.

When KLSX (97.1 Amp Radio) launched a few weeks ago, one of our observations was that it was surprisingly close to KIIS musically, (and in the casual intensity of its production). Its CBS sister station WXRK New York, which flipped to Top 40 at 5 p.m. today as 92.3 Now FM, isn't taking any chances in setting itself apart. Musically, it's somewhat more rhythmic than Z100 -- no Taylor Swift, no Fray, no Kelly Clarkson (but plenty of Pink and Britney) in its first few hours. Presentationally, it launched with a promo trying to reimage Z100 and morning man Elvis Duran as stuck in the station's (first) early '80s heyday -- the station and morning man of "Mickey" and "Eye of the Tiger." (Never mind that Duran wouldn't join the station for many years.) Soon thereafter, there was a similarly themed "Mac vs. PC" promo attacking Z100. Later, there was a stager suggesting that the Z100 team was listening helplessly as Now 92.3 played its 10,000 songs in a row, adding, "Damn, that's gotta blow."

I've tended not to like this kind of namecalling in the past. Setting aside the irony of Z100 being attacked with the playbook it used against WPLJ 26 years ago, there was also that early '90s era where "Power Pig" WFLZ Tampa's swagger was widely imitated in less capable hands with ultimately disastrous results for Top 40 radio. But it has made things interesting tonight., and some energy and enthusiasm has clearly gone into the writing. And if it resonates with anybody, it might be the older half of the Z100 mother/daughter coalition. They're the ones who actually remember the hot-rockin' flamethrowin' Scott Shannon Z100. And they're the ones who are counting on Z100 to at least keep them on speaking terms with their teenagers. In any event, as more Top 40 wars pop up, we can count on more of this.

So how vulnerable is Z100?

* They do play commercials. Not an unbearable amount of them. But not 10,000 songs in a row this month.

* They can play some very adult gold in middays, although for every "Iris," there's a "Let Me Clear My Throat" that Now would play also. And there's still enough T.I. that you'd never confuse Z100 for a Hot AC.

* Tom Poleman and Sharon Dastur have done a good job of keeping the presentational austerity of other Clear Channel stations from taking hold. But the kind of person who pays attention to such things will routinely notice a cold segue into a recurrent as the second song of the hour.

* They have sought to be new platform friendly, even before it became a chain-wide dictate. Interesting to note that one of Now's attack promos goes after Z100's iPhone app where, it points out, you'll still hear commercials instead of 10,000 songs in a row.

* They do play some mainstream pop music. Taylor Swift and the Fray aren't necessarily the vulnerable choices -- self-respecting 14-year-olds like them just fine and care enough to actually buy their records. But guess who won the button punch at 5:25 or so when Now was playing DMX's "Party Up" and Z100 was playing "Fall for You" by Secondhand Serenade?

And finally, no matter how well programmed a station is, it's hard for an attack like this to take place without leaving some scorched earth. If your new competitor plays three Britney Spears songs in its first 75 minutes, you will probably spend a little less time with the other station that plays Britney Spears.

A few other notes:

* Nicest touch: Promos counting down individual listeners' top three songs. (As that feature develops, it shouldn't necessarily be songs that are actually on the radio yet.)

* The 6:00 ID -- the first one in a regular programming hour -- was sponsored by McDonalds.

* When Now 92.3 played Britney Spears' (edited) "If You See(k) Amy" for the first time around 6:55, the signal suddenly went out.

Here was Now 92.3 at 9 p.m. tonight:

Britney Spears, "Circus"
Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, "Kiss Me Through The Phone"
Kevin Rudolph, "Let It Rock"
All-American Rejects, "Gives You Hell"
Ne-Yo, "Mad"
Pink, "So What"
Ludacris, "Stand Up"
Lady Gaga, "Just Dance"
Eminem, "Crack A Bottle"
Kanye West, "Love Lockdown"
T.I. & Justin Timberlake, "Dead and Gone"
Pink, "Sober"
Akon, "Right Now (Na Na Na)"
Britney Spears, "If You Seek Amy"

When news breaks, today's net-savvy consumers instantly turn to their own trusted sources--traditional news outlets, blogs, message boards--and become their own 'editors,' discarding what is not credible (or doesn't fit their synthesized model) and incorporating the rest into what they deem is 'true.' In all cases, they require grist for the mill, and that grist has to be immediate. This is why Matt Drudge has so many page views--not so much from the sheer numbers of unique users (though he has those) but from those users constantly hitting 'refresh' to find out what is happening right now.

They do this, because Drudge has successfully created the expectation that he won't miss anything, so neither will you. Radio used to have that expectation, and for many stations still does--on the air. But what does your website look like after a few (hundred) browser refreshes? When something big is happening in your town, when does it make it onto your website? That night? Tomorrow? Later in the week?

You don't need a 'news department' to fulfull the immediacy expectation, and you shouldn't have to wait for the 'webmaster' either. What you should have is a website with a modern, user-friendly content management system, and judicious integration with social bookmarking, tagging and 'immediacy' tools like Twitter. You can do this--a WHOLE lot cheaper than you think--and you must do this. The web has a whole different set of expectations, and while more may be asked, much more is given. I'm glad to help.

At 7:45 a.m. today, I was able to turn on the car radio and hear something that I haven't heard in more than 20 years on WXRK (K-Rock) New York: music in the mornings. You'll have one more opportunity tomorrow, then K-Rock will be Top 40 "92.3 Now FM."

Since returning to Rock radio roughly two years ago, K-Rock has been through at least three different permutations of the format -- more Alternative at its launch, then more Active, and, most recently, only a few currents away from being Classic Rock That Really Rocks, along the lines of sister WYSP Philadelphia. Last night, they were still running sweepers that announced, "We're back."

K-Rock's departure once again raises the question of why New York is not "where rock lives," but where rock struggles. What will K-Rock's departure mean for eclectic rival WRXP? And what will become of Chris Booker, who signed off his afternoon shift yesterday by saying that it had been good to be back on the station ... for two months, then launched into "Do You Remember Rock & Roll Radio?" by the Ramones.

Okay, globals first: Rock radio does okay in New York, if you're Classic Rock WAXQ (Q104.3). And with its many changes over the past five years -- even before that switch to Talk as Free FM -- K-Rock had commitment issues that go beyond the prospects for the format itself. Even in its Howard Stern heyday, it rarely had a music franchise after 10 a.m. locked down. And the switch to Talk and Stern's departure both helped scatter the rock audience to the winds; PPM might help Rock radio reclaim its credit for existing listening, but it won't get you a pre-set if you don't have it or have already relinquished it.

That said, the dilution of Rock radio as a shared experience happened earlier in New York than in other markets. For most of the country, the coalition began to crumble around 2000 as Alternative bounced from one thing to another in the manner of Top 40 radio a decade earlier - from Rap/ Rock to more mainstream guitar rock to indie/neo-garage, each of them peeling off a piece of the much larger '90s Alternative/Grunge coalition. It's why the top testing songs at most current based rock stations are still 15 years old - nothing except Nickelback has had quite the same reach since then.

But in New York, the coalition broke up a lot earlier. The New Rock Revolution was diffused over multiple stations between 1992 and 1997 - none of whom were the music's HQ for more than two years during that period: WLIR, WHTZ (Z100), WNEW, Modern AC WDBZ (the Buzz), and K-Rock. Z100's audience experienced the Smashing Pumpkins and Red Hot Chili Peppers interspersed with Coolio and Mariah Carey. WXRK's audience heard those records in between Hendrix and Ozzy. So with Q104.3 picking off the bigger Pearl Jam and Nirvana records, it's no surprise that there's not much left even from the '90s, for a newer station to hang its hat on.

K-Rock's departure isn't necessarily a gift from the gods for WRXP, which just announced a new "rock is alive" campaign to welcome any displaced K-Rock listeners. Rock radio's musical continuum in New York right now isn't a straight line, it's more like a horseshoe with K-Rock and WRXP at opposite ends and Q104.3 taking up most of that big center. WRXP launched with a lot of music for stray K-Rock cumers (Linkin Park, Nickelback, Finger Eleven), but has downplayed those in favor of the indie, alternative, and '80s alternative aspects of its mix. Today, it's not the perfect station for anybody who was enjoying Tool's "46 and 2" on K-Rock last night. But with K-Rock turning a larger audience loose than WRXP had garnered so far, it will be interesting to see whether present or potential constituents win the coin toss.

It also takes time these days for listeners to shake out after a format change. Sister station KMVN (Movin' 93.9) Los Angeles found that out when rival KBIG moved away from Rhythmic AC and it still took a year for any displaced audience to make its way over. That said, I do continue to meet people who are just discovering and enjoying WRXP now - more than a year after its launch and well after its outdoor campaign. K-Rock probably also had listeners sitting around who were just okay with Tool and those listeners will now have the incentive to find something else.

Finally, there's Booker, who is now rumored to be penciled in for mornings at the new Now FM. He never sounded entirely comfortable in mornings at WIOQ (Q102) Philadelphia - which doesn't mean that he wasn't still better than a lot of air talent. But he did sound incredible a few years ago filling in at WHTZ (Z100), a moment at which his amiably caustic personality and Z100's big boss sound came together to create something unique. If Booker does a poor Elvis Duran imitation, he does a pretty good job of channeling John Landecker at that WLS Chicago legend's late '70s/early '80s peak, and that's the act I hope we'll get to hear in mornings.

Here's K-Rock at 7:45 this morning:

Pink Floyd, "Time"
Def Leppard, "Armageddon It"
Tom Petty, "I Won't Back Down"
Led Zeppelin, "Rock And Roll"
Foo Fighters, "Everlong"
Kiss, "Lick It Up"
Alice In Chains, "Man in the Box"
Heart, "Magic Man"
Guns 'N' Roses, "Nightrain"
Weezer, "Say It Isn't So"
Van Halen, "(Oh) Pretty Woman."

It was already clear last fall that the Taylor Swift phenomenon was creating a wedge of younger Country fans whose tastes were different from longtime country listeners, (particularly the older guys who were less interested in hearing about who liked who in high school). The implications were clear -- time for a truly younger country format in any market where a second Country outlet needed to find its own niche. But you also had to wonder if such a station would have quite enough music to own -- Rascal Flatts, Lady Antebellum, Sugarland and ... then what?

But even in the last few months, the category has expanded: Gloriana, Love & Theft, Atlantic's forthcoming Jesse Lee, and a new Country-friendly Miley Cyrus single. Most significantly, though, CMT has essentially guaranteed that there will be another act in the category by helping to grow their own, the Carter Twins, whose "Heart Like Memphis" premiered on the channel six weeks ago and is now the No. 5 video. So far, only WQYK Tampa has responded on the radio side. But as the Disney Channel has shown through teen pop's ups-and-downs at Top 40, once there's TV involved, radio is compelled to respond eventually.

Richard Pegue, who died yesterday of heart failure at age 64, may be a new name to you. But he was a household name to any Chicagoan who grew up with or listened to the R&B of the '60s and '70s. He was also the hardest working man in R&B oldies. When I worked with Richard Pegue at WGCI-AM (Dustyradio 1390) Chicago in the early '90s, he was both my consultant and my Saturday night Oldies host. During the week, he had his own ad agency, then worked a nine hour show, "The Best Music of Your Life," on Saturday night/Sunday morning. When he suffered two strokes and a heart attack in the mid-'90s, he eventually cut that shift down to only five or six hours. Over the years, the show would move from WGCI-AM to WVON and most recently to WKKC.

Richard was also an asset to me as a first-time PD of a station that he had previously programmed; (he had also been OM of WGCI-FM). We worked together under inherently awkward circumstances; he was one of at least four WGCI staffers who had expressed interest in the PD job. He knew me only as a journalist who had interviewed him once. But he stayed on as consultant, and remarkably, even though the station I heard was different from what he would have done of his own volition, worked enthusiastically to help flesh out and execute my ideas -- something I've tried to keep in mind working with Edison clients. He is already missed.

After last week's look at "The Clichés Of PPM" (and in advance of next week's PPM panel at Canadian Music Week), it might be interesting to see how AC radio looks in Montreal, the first Canadian market where PPM became currency. Here's mainstream AC CFQR (Q92) and Hot AC CJFM (recently rebranded Virgin Radio after years as FM96) from the last few days. The two stations are tied for the music lead in Montreal's English-language book; (to be fair, there are only a handful of English-language FMs) with a 14.9 share. (And, yes, technically if I wanted to use this headline I should have analyzed the French ACs--perhaps in an upcoming post.)

A lot of the signposts of a PPM market are indeed in place now -- the short stagers, the cold segues -- although, as a mainstream AC, I don't remember Q92 sounding particularly cluttered before. There's still a little more breathing room for the jocks in Montreal than in Philadelphia. And it's interesting that CJFM's transition to Virgin Radio has still found room for some of the personality bits that define the format at sister CKFM Toronto.

Here's how the two stations broke down:

Q92
* Jock breaks per hour: Six
* Length of jock breaks: :09 (over intro) - 1:04 (at stopset)
* Stopsets: Three four-minute stops at :07, :36, :57
* Cold Segues: Two
* Shortest Sweeper: 06
* Longest Promo: :45, there was also one break where there appeared to be two :30s (one a hook promo for upcoming songs and one for the morning show) back to back, before the commercials.
* Appointment Listening: Several teasers for upcoming songs, the lunch-hour feature, etc., as well as an upcoming morning show remote. None of the "at 2:15 today...." type appointment setting that became epidemic here for a while.

Virgin Radio
* Jock breaks per hour: Seven, some of them built into jingles, produced weather beds, etc.
* Length of jock breaks: :04 (frontsell) - 1:41 (at stopset, a longer jock relatable about hair styling tips)
* Stopsets:Two four-minute stops at :33 and :52
* Cold segues: Three
* Shortest Sweeper: :07
* Longest Promo: No long-form station promos in the hour I heard. The longest produced bits were the combination live/stager weather reports followed by a back-to-music stager that took a total of :45.
* Appointment Listening: Lots of teasers -- the "10 ways to sexy hair" relatable did get part of the jock break that preceded it as a teaser. Crossplugs for Ryan Seacrest's guests that night and a new morning show host. No specific times.

Over the end credits of the Academy Awards Best Picture winner "Slumdog Millionaire" is "Jai Ho," which won for best song as well. It is a fascinating blend of musical styles, and a sure-fire 'stadium hit' along the lines of "Rock & Roll Pt. 2" whenever stadium DJs get to it. If Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic was the song of 1997, this could just be the song of the year.

Except.

In an attempt to make the song more palatable for American audiences, it has been re-created with the Pussycat Dolls replacing the original singers.

Let's take a look at the original lyrics translated from Hindi:

Jai Ho! (Victory to thee!)

Come, come my Life, under the canopy
Come under the blue brocade sky!

Iota by iota, I have lost my life, in faith
I've passed this night dancing on coals
I blew away the sleep that was in my eyes
I counted the stars till my finger burned

Come, come my Life, under the canopy
Come under the blue brocade sky!

And now, the Pussycat Dolls lyrics for American consumption:

I got (I got) shivers (shivers), When you touch my body, I'll make you hot, Get what you got, I'll make you wanna say (Jai Ho)

I got (I got) fever (fever),
Running like a fire,
For you I will go all the way,
I wanna take you higher (Jai Ho)

I keep it steady uh-steady,
That's how I do it.
This beat is heavy, so heavy,
You gonna feel it.

You are the reason that I breathe,
You are the reason that I still believe,
You are my destiny

With the exception of that very last line...could these lyrics be ANY more out of tune with the movie? Could they be any more wrong?

Radio programmers of America Unite! Shun this Pussy-footed version and play the 'real' song -- the one that people hear over the end credits and remember long after they've seen the film! Show the world that in the new Obama-America we can accept a song with Hindi lyrics (that also has a little interlude in Spanish!)

Jai Ho! Victory to thee!

Yesterday's ruling that the Canadian broadcast regulator was lifting the longstanding cap on the number of "hits" that an FM station can play was both national news and the end of one of the oddest eras in radio programming. (The exception is the bilingual markets of Montreal and Ottawa where regulations remain in place.)

Until the mid-to-late '90s, Canada required all FM stations to play less than 50% "hit" music -- defined as anything that made No. 40 or better on the Canadian or American charts. The objective of that and other rules on repetition and spoken word content was to keep FM "cultural" and protect the existing Top 40 stations on AM. Ultimately, Canada's Top 40 AMs died anyway in the mid-'90s and FMs in Vancouver, Edmonton and elsewhere figured out how to work within (or around) the regs.

When that happened, Top 40 was allowed to finish its move to FM and the definition of a hit was now any song before 1981 that peaked at No. 40 or above. This time, the goal was to protect the Oldies AMs that had, in many cases, replaced the Top 40 AMs. Again, many of those stations went away of their own volition. And once the '80s became a bigger part of the Oldies/Greatest Hits format, it was easier (although not easy) to program the format in Canada. The 1981/No. 40 rule meant that, say, "Listen People" by Herman's Hermits (No. 3 in 1966, but now completely disappeared from Oldies stations) was a "hit" and "Jack & Diane" by John Cougar Mellencamp was not.

Earlier this year, Newcap launched Greatest Hits stations on CFXL (XL103) Calgary and CKRA (Capital FM) Edmonton. Rogers followed at CKCL Vancouver. Corus now does the format at CKDK London. CHUMRadio just moved its Oldies format to FM at CKKW Kitchener, Ontario. With the regulation change, it seems likely that Toronto, Winnipeg, and others won't be far behind. (You could also see somebody in the Niagara Falls/Saint Catherines, Ontario area doing Oldies to fill the hole for the format in Buffalo.)

Despite the inevitability of Oldies on FM in more markets, there are a few Canadian Oldies AMs that you'd want to see continue to hang in there, particularly CHUM-AM Toronto, which will play "Listen People" and a deep list of Canadian oldies. It bodes well for CHUM that its sister station, CKWW Windsor/Detroit continues to take a similar approach there, despite FM compeition. But I'm still determined to appreciate CHUM-AM now and you should, too.

During bad times, it's not unusual for somebody to go after the "good news" franchise, as Classic Hits KJR-FM Seattle did yesterday, with its promise to eliminate bad news from .its morning newscasts. Good times, great Oldies, and a boost in morale are certainly among the things that radio can provide now -- particularly a Classic Hits station.

But there's more to it than that, as became apparent when I heard KJR-FM PD Jay Kelly end a station promo for the "good news"-cast by encouraging listeners to "start your day on a positive note with uplifting Classic Hits and only good news." The promo also solicited listener stories via its "good news line."

Hearing "positive," "uplifting," and "good news" together sounded a lot like the positioning of a Contemporary Christian station. So my next stop was the Website of Christian AC KCMS (Spirit 105.3), which, as it turned out, is already offering a "good news story of the day." (A sample story: a listener lost her voice, which caused her to stop lecturing her daughter and listen more. Now they're much closer.)

KCMS is one of Christian AC's best, most successful stations. They would naturally be on the radar of KJR-FM (or any station that cares about adult women). It's easy to imagine them becoming even more successful in times like these. And smart adult stations are already cognizant of Christian AC's inroads over the last five years. But it's still unusual and interesting when a secular station and a Christian AC end up going after the same images.

As for KJR's good news, I heard this morning's 8:36 report. (The station is jockless in mornings; service elements seem to start after 8 a.m.). The stories covered were:

* The economic stimulus package -- the good news was that it was making progress; Wall Street's vote of no confidence hadn't yet materialized;

* A report that you could save money on multivitamins (by improving your diet);

* A report that you could avoid the flu by keeping a teakettle running for moister air;

It will be interesting to revisit KJR's newscasts in a few weeks--or to hear how this speads.

This blog and many others have consistently made an issue of the fact that many radio station streams sound bad because of the need to cover up spots. (For anyone reading who doesn't know -- the ad agencies have forbidden radio stations to play their spots over the stream because AFTRA, the talent union, wants significantly higher fees for such use...so the response has been simply to not play them).

What concerns me is that I get the sense that 'Radio' here in the USA has decided to just forget about this issue. A check with a leading trade publication shows no stories in ages about efforts to resolve this issue.

Well...let me see if I can get this started again as an issue. Hey! Radio listening is evolving and changing. We should be platform neutral! We should not be setting up a system where some spots are on our over-the-air signal and entirely different spots run on the streams. Advertisers should be delivered ALL listeners to our stations, regardless of the platform.

Can we revisit this issue? Right now what we have seems to be bad for the advertisers (who aren't reaching radio's total audience), bad for the listeners (where even in the best cases the ad insertion is often clunky), and bad for the stations (who aren't achieving their full leverage against consumers.) On TOP of all that, I struggle to understand how this is good for AFTRA talent, who aren't seeing ANY of their expected gold-mine from Internet usage.

Does anyone agree? Isn't this still something we want resolved?

It used to be a big deal when an artist had two current, official singles growing simultaneously at Top 40 radio. Think back to Linda Ronstadt's "Blue Bayou" and "It's So Easy" in fall 1977 or Michael Jackson with "Billie Jean" and "Beat It" in spring 1983 and you have two superstar artists at the peak of their radio careers.

Now consider the Mainstream Top 40 charts in recent months where two current singles from an artist has become an increasingly regular part of the label strategy as evidenced by:

* T.I. with "Whatever You Like" and "Live Your Life"; and at Rhythmic last week, with three songs in the Top 10 including "Dead And Gone";

* Kanye West with "Love Lockdown" and "Heartless";

* Britney Spears with "Womanizer" and "Circus";

* Beyoncé with "If I Were A Boy" and "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)", with another possible double, "Halo" and "Diva" in the wings.

Doubling up had been an increasing part of the label strategy for a while at Rhythmic Top 40 and Urban (where PDs used to routinely find multiple songs off an album anyway), but it's a relatively recent development at Mainstream Top 40. The practice is picking up steam because:

1) As entire albums become an increasingly discretionary purchase in bad times, labels are (smartly) trying to create the perception that there's more than one good song. It doesn't quite get you to the much-discussed "magic three songs," but it's better than one. For a while, the strategy was to hit the second single simultaneously with the album release. But the second single has been getting earlier and earlier -- even when there's no sign of weakness in the first single.

2) It's been a pretty soft CHR chart for several years now. So it's easier to push a second superstar song into the top 10, and that's been helped by ...

3) The rhythmic-leaning, reaction-driven stations where T.I., Beyonce, and Britney are core artists are the ones with the fastest rotations;

4) CHR has pretty much given up on artist separation -- something made nearly impossible by the number of guest appearances these days. I recently had one programmer tell me his artist separation parameters were under 10 minutes when the artist in question was the guest on a song and 20 minutes when they were the main artist.

It's interesting that this has happened in an era when stations are less willing to go to the album and find their own hit from Britney or Beyoncé than ever. Besides the much hyped third single "If You Seek Amy," there's no CHR reporter playing anything else from Spears in significant rotation. Only two stations have gone to the second Taylor Swift country single, "White Horse." Nickelback's uptempo "Gotta Be Somebody" was not a CHR home run, but nobody has yet gone to the album to play one of the ballads.

To be fair, with labels moving faster on second singles, most stations don't have as long to go "off the menu." And at some point, you probably have to give some Mainstream PD credit for deciding that "Single Ladies" would not be only the Rhythmic and Urban single. (Same for those playing "Diva" now.) But it's almost as if the label willingness to work two singles means that programmers don't have to work as hard to own their core artists anymore.

Let me say right off that I really appreciate that Clear Channel's "iHeartRadio" tuner often includes lyric information along with artist and title of the song now playing. It's been nice to know what artists were saying -- sometimes after 30 years of suspense. But as anybody who remembers when lyrics were printed on radio station surveys can tell you, not all lyrics are meant to be printed, and no matter what format you listen to, the tuner usually ends up providing some extra added amusement.

Here now, a sample from this morning's listening to Rhythmic AC WISX (My 106.1) Philadelphia and the opening lyrics that displayed on the player, beginning with Johnny Kemp's "Just Get Paid," the beginning of which, I now know, is:

"Oh yeah, oh, oh yeah
Feels good, feels good,
oh huh";

A few minutes later, Mariah Carey's "Fantasy" played. The lyrics displayed on the tuner were:

"Oh yeah, oh";

And Wild Cherry's "Play That Funky Music":

"Hey do it now
Yeah hey";

"Tom's Diner" by DNA & Suzanne Vega didn't show lyrics, so there's no way to tell how much of that song's opening "do do do do"s would have printed. But I did click to the My 106.1 Website to see the opening blurbs for the following, some of which are truncated as shown:

Ne-Yo's "Closer"

"Closer, closer
Closer, closer"

Beyonce's "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)"

"All the single ladies
All the single ladies
All the single ladies
All the single ladies
All the si..."

Chris Brown's "Forever" opens with the producer's "1-2-3-4" tag, but for some reason it just read as " *** *** *** 4" here.

Marky Mark & the Funky Bunch's "Good Vibrations"
"Yeah, can you feel it baby?
I can too."

Toni Braxton's "Un-Break My Heart"

"Lala Lala La Lala
Hah Aaa Aaaa
Aah aaa aaa oh"

And, finally, Amber's "This Is Your Night":

"Dah dah dah dah dah ditita ta tay
Dah dah dah dah dah ditita ta tay
Dah dah dah dah dah ditita ta ..."

One of the central tenets of music programming is that anything softens with time and becomes more palatable as listeners age into an Adult Contemporary or Hot AC demo. But not everything softens (or endures) equally. Consider three late '80s rock records: Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer" has made it to some AC stations. Def Leppard's "Love Bites"--softer texturally--got only as far as Hot AC and Adult Hits. Warrant's "I Saw Red" is softer and more melodic than either, but there's not much demand for it now on any format.

So it's not hard to hear Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" on WHTZ (Z100) New York (a frequent occurrence these days) and know that it will make its way to WLTW (Lite FM) at some point -- whether it's a year or 10 years from now. Hearing Lady Gaga's first hits are a lot like hearing Madonna when she was new, with songs like "Holiday," "Borderline," and "Lucky Star" that were considered Urban then, but are Lite FM mainstays now. Same goes for Chris Brown's "Forever" and Ne-Yo's "Closer." They're not on Mainstream AC's radar now, but they're really Lionel Richie songs for our time in a way that will eventually become apparent.

So what are the prospects for the rest of the current Mainstream CHR top 10? Here are some predictions. It's important to note that we're not talking about the current programming value of any song here. "Nobody will be playing that in a year" is usually a pejorative for programmers, but most of these songs will be on CHR in a year. We're talking about their likely spread through other formats. And by the way, these predictions stand even if the listeners (or the robots) are the only ones choosing music in 10 years. Programming may change; the songs people grew up with do not.

1, Beyonce, "Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)" -- Like a lot of '70s/early '80s disco, it could get to AC one day. Even "You Dropped A Bomb On Me" is on some ACs. And she's already cracked the format with "Irreplaceable."

2. Lady Gaga, "Just Dance" -- Already doesn't seem edgy to a Top 40 listener now after months and months of airplay.

3. Taylor Swift, "Love Story" -- Already there, of course.

4. T.I., "Live Your Life" -- By 2019, they'll probably have worked out this "hip-hop for the AC demo" thing and found a new format to play this as an oldie, but I'm not expecting to hear it on "Tomorrow's Lite FM."

5. Britney Spears, "Womanizer"
6. Britney Spears, "Circus" -- They're both receiving Hot AC airplay, which is a good sign. But AC hasn't yet brought Britney into the fold like they have Christina Aguilera. And, when they do, "Toxic" will likely be first.

7. Kanye West, "Heartless" -- So he's now had two more singing/less rapping hits at Top 40, but "Gold Digger" is more firmly entrenched with adults.

8. Pink, "Sober" -- Depends ultimately on how big a CHR hit it is. But she's already in at AC with "Get The Party Started" and "Who Knew."

9. Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours" -- Also already there; this week's No. 2 AC song.

10. Kevin Rudolph, "Let It Rock" -- "Single Ladies" will get there first, although this one will also be considerably softened by time, arena events, weddings/parties, etc.

Two years ago, Radio One's R&B Oldies WAMJ Atlanta added the syndicated Steve Harvey Morning Show to a lineup that already included Michael Baisden in afternoons and Radio One's new midday talk programming. With Harvey and Baisden, already the tentpoles of many Urban AC stations, framing more conventional talk radio, we predicted "A Breakthrough For African-American News/Talk" radio, a format that had existed more than 25 years, but finally looked to get traction on a major-market FM. And part of what looked to make the format viable was that the talk shows for the African-American audience, Baisden, Harvey, Tom Joyner, Wendy Williams, etc., were already on FM -- easier then to build a FM lineup around them than to compete with them on AM.

As recently as the spring Arbitron book, that strategy was paying off. The station, now dubbed "Grown Folks Radio," was top five with a 4.2 share 12-plus to heritage Urban AC WALR's 4.8. The station was No. 2 in 18-49, a better showing in that money demo than WALR. Then Arbitron converted Atlanta to PPM and in December, WALR was at an 8.5 12-plus, while WAMJ was at a 3.1. (In the holiday report, it fell to a 2.4.)

Now Radio One has blown up its Smooth Jazz WJZZ, switching it to a more straightforward Urban AC, going head-to-head with WALR. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution's Rodney Ho is reporting that Baisden and Harvey, but not the rest of the talk programming, could move to WJZZ (already reimaged as Majic 107.5), while 102.5 becomes the new home of gospel WPZE.

As soon as the debate over PPM's impact on Urban radio began, programmers began to look askance at the afternoon personality shows that had increasingly seemed unbeatable. With an instant dogma of tightness and consistency taking hold among programmers in all formats, talk looked less like a secret weapon for Urban radio. And while Atlanta -- with its 30% African-American population -- has been a better PPM market for Urban radio than others, it looks like other PPM markets in that the numbers now most favor one or two Urban stations, rather than the entire suite that had done well in some diary markets.

It was not so long ago that Atlanta was one of an increasing number of markets where major groups so wanted to do Urban radio that they were willing to create a niche within a niche, as Cox did with its short-lived Hot Urban AC format on WALR. Urban radio's building boom slowed to almost nothing with the advent of PPM. And if owners aren't so eager to do Urban radio that they will cover a niche format, that doesn't bode so well for African-American Talk being replaced, if indeed Rodney Ho's scenario plays out. (And, of course, the format's potential stars will all be accounted for elsewhere.)

With every format still finding its way in a PPM world, and each absolute belief about PPM being dented by the roll-out of another market, or another month's data, there's no reason to think that African-American talk would not ultimately be viable, given how well some general market Talk stations have done. In a world that favors consistency, one might even think that Harvey and Baisden might be better served on a full-fledged talk and entertainment station, and then it's just a function of experimenting until we find the programming that best fits with them all day long. So it would be discouraging to lose the format's best test market to date.

Last fall, when we considered the prospects for "Organizing the '90s Into A Format," we wondered when somebody would next attempt it on a large-market station. Then came last week's news that Radio One Urban AC WRNB Philadelphia had repositioned itself as "R&B of the '90s and Today" under PD Elroy Smith.

WRNB signed on a few years ago by appropriating syndicated morning man Tom Joyner from rival WDAS, but saw the impact of that hire muted with the rise of the Steve Harvey Show on WDAS and elsewhere. Its move makes sense for a few reasons. It's hard to beat WDAS at its own game. Urban AC has had a hard time grappling with new listeners moving into 25-54 without the same loyalty to the '70s slow jam. And Philly has a Rhythmic AC in WISX (My 106.1), which also uses forgotten '90s R&B as a calling card. (It's also worth noting that in Dallas, Radio One's KSOC is on the other side of an Urban AC battle with the more contemporary KRNB.)

There are parallels here to the "today's AC" of Fresh 102.7 (WWFS New York), but listening to the station this afternoon, the calling card is very much '90s music. The call-in-to-win song is "The '90s song of the hour." "These '90s jams are absolutely amazing," says one stager. Another listener actuality declares that "change has come to America, and change has come to [WRNB]." And to Smith's credit, he's managed to do '90s and now without a lot of obvious records that wouldn't ever test for a more typical Urban AC.

Here's WRNB, just before 4 p.m. today:

Faith Evans, "Soon As I Get Home" (1995)
Lauryn Hill, "Doo Wop (That Thing)" (1998)
Kindred The Family Soul, "Far Away" (2003)
Mary J. Blige, "Be With You" (2006)
Jodeci, "Come And Talk To Me" (1992)
Jamie Foxx, "Unpredictable" (2006)
Glenn Jones, "Here I Go Again" (1992)
Robin Thicke, "The Sweetest Love" (2007)
Soul II Soul, "Keep On Movin'" (1989)
R. Kelly, "Step In The Name Of Love" (2003)
Janet Jackson, "That's The Way Love Goes" (1993)
Chubb Rock, "Treat 'Em Right" (1991) (Hip-hop makes its first appearance at 5 p.m.)
Donnell Jones, "U Know What's Up" (2001)
Marvin Sapp, "Never Would Have Made It" (2008)
Arrested Development, "People Everyday" (1992)

It's interesting how Adult Standards, denied a full-fledged home of their own in many markets, are starting to show up as trace elements of the Oldies format. After all, a lot of Oldies listeners have no memory of anything before the early '70s as a current song. The songs that endure for them are the songs that still play in bars and at weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc., where you're likely to hear "The Way You Look Tonight" in between "We Are Family," "Brown Eyed Girl," and "Love Shack."

Their parents may have drawn a line in the sand in 1956. But a listener who wasn't there at the time is going to have a hard time making the distinction between, say, Sinatra singing "The Way You Look Tonight" (never rock and roll), Bobby Darin's "Beyond the Sea" (somehow rock and roll at the time, but never on most Oldies stations), Etta James' "At Last" (a 1961 R&B cover of a standard that wasn't a pop hit at the time, but is much bigger now, thanks to TV ... got that?), and Louis Armstrong's "What A Wonderful World" (MOR in the '60s but considered Oldies now, thanks to a movie). These songs co-exist in roughly the same way on the Celestial Jukebox.

You're not likely to hear any of those songs (except "What A Wonderful World") on the average '70s-based Oldies-turned-Greatest Hits station. But you will hear them on those softer Oldies stations that play any pre-1964 music, such as KPMZ (Platinum 96.7) Dallas or WRNJ (Oldies 1510) Hackettstown, N.J., which gave me my favorite recent segue, until this afternoon when I discovered WLGZ-FM (Legends 102.7) Rochester, N.Y., which is in the process of segueing from Standards to Oldies -- a format that hasn't existed in Rochester for several years.

KPMZ has a loyal audience -- they've generated more comments than any station we've written about. But if some of its listeners feel like a second choice, here's Legends at 3:35 this afternoon. And see if you can guess my new favorite segue:

Billy Joel, "The River Of Dreams"
Fontella Bass, "Rescue Me"
Yvonne Elliman, "If I Can't Have You"
Peggy Lee, "Big Spender"
Yardbirds, "For Your Love"
Marvin Gaye, "I Heard It Through The Grapevine"
Doobie Brothers, "Listen To The Music"
Sly & the Family Stone, "Dance To The Music"
Kenny Rogers, "Lady"
R.B. Greaves, "Take A Letter, Maria"
Al Green, "Let's Stay Together"
Supremes, "You Keep Me Hanging On"
Ray Charles, "Busted"
Rod Stewart, "Maggie May"
Jeannie C. Riley, "Harper Valley, PTA"
Martha & Vandellas, "Heat Wave"

The demise of KDLE (Indie 103.1) Los Angeles got national attention last week, but Monday's passing of longtime Alternative outlet WHTG-FM (G-Rock) Monmouth/Ocean, N.J., is more of a milestone, and a change felt deeply in our Jersey backyard. For more than 20 years, WHTG carried the torch for fans of first generation (read pre-Nirvana) Alternative. At various times over the last 20 years, the station would segue to Modern AC or a new PD would tighten the music, but it was almost always a station that was aggressive on new music, always a station with library titles that you didn't hear everywhere else (even when the format became more library-based), and usually a station where you could hear Depeche Mode, the image artist of pre-Nirvana alternative radio, no matter what was happening with Depeche at the rest of the format.

For a while after the first demise of Alternative at WXRK (K-Rock) New York, it looked like G-Rock might find a niche, even with the kind of eclecticism that allowed you to hear "Bohemian Like You" by the Dandy Warhols as an Oldie. But it was below a 2-share in the fall book. And just as it was impressive that KDLE hung in for all of five years, the surprise is not that WHTG changed, but that it endured as long as it did.

In its first days, the new Hits 106 has been primarily satellite. Press reports have PD Terrie Carr and the local staff staying on, however, suggesting that more local programming could be on the way. It would be nice to think that the CHR that replaces G-Rock will ultimately be as distinctive in its own format as its predecessor (or as sister station WWZY/WBHX is among AC stations).

Next week's inauguration is as big a story abroad as it is here. Two interesting Canadian tie-ins:

* Newcap's CKRA (Capital FM) Edmonton, Alberta is sending a listener to the inauguration -- and managed to find one who was in Berlin when the wall came down.

* And Triple-A/Classical network CBC Radio 2 is having listeners vote on which songs would best represent Canada to our incoming president. See their suggestions for "Obama's Playlist."

Over the last decade, there's been an increasing gap between the movie soundtrack songs that make it to the radio and those that are nominated for Oscars in the Best Original Song category. Factors have included the domination (for a while) of the soundtrack field by R&B and Hip-Hop, then the decline of the soundtrack category overall as the availability of single-song downloads made it harder to force the purchase of any sort of compilation. Variety has a good article (including an Edison quote) on the subject today.

For several years, Greater Media's WMTR (Classic Oldies 1250) Morristown, N.J., was a reliable place to hear the '50s and early '60s Oldies that were disappearing from the format on FM. And for the few years when WCBS-FM New York became Jack FM, it was the only Oldies station that some in the area could hear. Pre-Beatles AMs proliferated at a pretty good clip during those years; WMTR was one of the few that got traction.

So it was disappointing last fall when WMTR turned most of its day over to a satellite mainstream Oldies format, and parallel programming began running on co-owned WCTC New Brunswick, N.J. WMTR had already dabbled in the early '70s a little, but once the new format was installed, there wasn't enough difference in era from what was again available on CBS-FM.

So it was encouraging when the New York Radio Message Board reported last month that WMTR was e-mailing its database promising a return to its Classic Oldies format. And on Jan. 4, I turned on WMTR and there was "Little Things" by Bobby Goldsboro, one of the old station's signature records that has indeed long disappeared from FM. (That may be for cause, but I was still happy to hear it again.) WMTR and WCTC are now running separate, mostly local Oldies formats with a mix of live and automated announcers.

If you follow format changes on AM music stations, you know how stories like this usually end. With a flip to sports. Or brokered programming. Not with this sort of reversal. Among radio's many downers right now, it's not a big story. But "Little Things" matter, too.

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 wasn't in such great shape. During those years, I often remember thinking that Coke's radio spots sounded better than any of the hit records around them. The one treatment that stands out was the spot that sounded like a cross between Color Me Badd's "All For Love" and Paula Abdul's "Cold Hearted." (In other words, the sound was about a year behind what was on the radio, but it still sounded great.)

That jingle should have been a hit -- and I wouldn't even have begrudged them sneaking it on radio either.

So "The Bryant Park Project," NPR's attempt at a Morning Zoo for a next generation of listeners, is gone.

Public Radio International's "The Takeaway," its younger/looser/more diverse alternative to "All Things Considered" has soldiered on through the summer but without signs of gelling yet.

And yet, there's proof that a funny, entertaining program with the elements of a great morning show isn't truly beyond public radio's reach. It's "Wait Wait ... Don't Tell Me," the long running, hour-long weekend news quiz, in which the questions are there mostly as a vehicle for pundits from P.J. O'Rourke to Paula Poundstone to Tom Bodett to riff on the week's headlines.

"Wait Wait" has all the elements of a great commercial radio morning show because:

* It has a funny host (Peter Sagel) who knows when to get out of the way of its funnier guests;

* It manages to sustain what is essentially a "Stupid News" segment for an hour;

* It gets celebrities to talk about something other than what they're currently stumping for (via the "Not My Job" feature in which they have to answer questions about some other area of expertise other than their own), although it does allow them their product plug first;

* It has listeners who call in and risk nationwide humiliation just to win an answering machine message from announcer Carl Kassel.

All it's missing is the prank phone calls -- just as well.

To be fair, the "Wait Wait" team only has to create an hour of radio every week, not twenty. It isn't airing live. And I can't tell you if their audience is any younger or more diverse than during the rest of NPR's week (although it was my gateway show to other NPR programming). But it does manage to be funny and loose without ever sounding like it doesn't belong on NPR. So it can be done.

There are probably some Top 40 program directors who would have liked some advance notice that Chris Brown's "Forever," their No. 3 song at this writing, was always intended as a jingle for Wrigley's Doublemint Gum -- the exhortation to "double your pleasure, double your fun" turning out to be more than just another random R&B/Hip-Hop allusion plucked from 40 years of pop culture ("I like the Whopper/[bleep] the Big Mac"). Broadcasters might have given some thought to whether they wanted to provide Wrigleys with free spots.

But probably not. Radio has never complained before about the various product placements in songs before, even after the suggestion a few years ago at one industry panel that artists start charging for shout-outs only momentarily raised eyebrows. Nobody in radio worries about playing the iTunes jingle when they play Coldplay's "Viva La Vida"; indeed, being part of an ad campaign has been one of the label promotion person talking points for new songs for the several years now.

As labels look for more revenue sources, the success of "Forever" is likely to spawn more placements. Will listeners mind? They've been indifferent for several years to the proliferation of product plugs in movies and TV although various public interest groups and the consumer press have been working harder to make a public issue of it this summer. The irony is that radio itself is still struggling with the sponsorship-instead-of-spots model, although many in the industry expect to see it take hold eventually.

One does wonder here what would have happened if the music industry had somehow been successful in pushing through a performance royalty for broadcast radio. Would the confectioner or label exempt radio from paying for the privilege of airing their commercial? Does it plan to do the same for the Internet and satellite broadcasters who do currently pay performance royalties?

And no matter how succesful the campaign may be, "Forever" will never be the best product placement for a Wrigley's product. That would still be "Juicy Fruit," the 1983 R&B classic, minor pop hit, and eventual Notorious B.I.G. sample from Mtume, in which the chewing gum (along with Good 'N' Plenty) got a shout-out for free (as far as we know). In that different time, the Wrigley's folks might not even have appreciated the song's PG-13-rated double entendre, although it probably would cause little corporate consternation now.

WNYC New York's daily "Soundcheck" weighs into our ongoing Summer Song discussion today with an on-line poll. And despite the slightly more eclectic tastes of an NPR affiliate's listeners (who suggested Hold Steady's Constructive Summer," Santogold's "L.E.S. Artistes," and the Feelies' "Crazy Rhythms" among others), it's still instructive that as of this writing, the No. 1 and No. 2 are still "I Kissed A Girl" and "Viva La Vida."

An interesting column this week in a place where you don't usually find a lot for the radio business, the July 21-27 issue of Variety. In "Rip and Read: TV, Radio Will Rue Print's Plunge," Brian Lowry highlights an unexpected impact of the "draconian layoffs strafing the newspaper industry" and the likelihood that less news will be generated as a result. And that's bad news for the radio station that has come to depend on the local paper as the bulk of its morning news reports.

"Talk radio stations frequently employ a news person, which is really just a lonely gnome culling half hour updates from the paper and wire. Newsradio generally exhibits the same overlap with whatever happens to be in print," Lowry contends.

If that's a little harsh on the News/Talk format, it's a more-than-fair description of most music radio morning shows where enterprise journalism disappeared two decades ago. These days, if anybody is aggressively dialing the phone at 6 a.m., it's the producer looking for a celebrity interview. The only thing that keeps USA Today from being radio's newsroom is the increased reliance on TMZ.com, which, Lowry points out, is part of the problem.

"Sure, they have TMZ and other websites devoted to sleaze and celebrity dirt, but in terms of serious and specially, local, news, the options are relatively few," he adds.

You haven't read much about Oldies WAKY Louisville, Ky., in the trades, but they deserve a mention today. WAKY is the former suburban Oldies outlet WASE; it picked up the call letters of (one of) the market's legendary Top 40 station(s) a year ago. And on Friday, it became the only Oldies station in the market when Cox switched longtime Oldies FM WRKA to Country as WQNU (New Country 103.1).

Like WLNG Eastern Long Island, N.Y., WAKY is one of those stations that operates in open violation of programming law (as it's interpreted in most places): longer playlist, heritage jocks, throwback formatics. Even with its signal issues, it was able to carve itself a 2.6 12-plus to WRKA's 3.7. And while it's certainly possible that WRKA would have left without a nudge--as Cox did with its Oldies outlets in Birmingham, Atlanta, and Stamford, Conn. -- it's still a nice story for independent operators and radio history buffs.

WRKA isn't currently streaming, but you can hear airchecks of them on the WAKY-AM tribute site.

Meanwhile, hearing Cox's New Country format on a better signal is intriguing as well -- while much of the format has evolved newer/younger/hotter these days, the Cox version of "New Country" is more pronounced than most. They're also running the attack ads that Cox used on Country KKBQ Houston and former dance outlet WPYM Miami. One charges that rival "WAMZ is all about commercials ... as many as 27 commercials an hour" punctuated by a Gomer Pyle-type voice exclaiming, "Commercials, commercials, and more commercials!"

With Citadel's Adult Top 40 WYSF Birmingham, Ala., in its second week of stunting toward a new format at this writing, the radio message boards are a mix of frustration and admiration, the latter that the station has been able to drag out the publicity for so long. And in so doing, we can ask the larger question, how long should a station stunt? After two weeks, is there anybody with a button still set to the frequency other than radio geeks?

Ideally, a new format is friendly to the existing audience -- particularly if it's not the type of format that will immediately create its own buzz and its own cume. When Jack FM launched in New York City, its particularly aggressive version of the format was the wrong thing for any Oldies fans who weren't mad enough already. When WCBS-FM came back, it came back with a strategic amount of the '80s songs that had powered Jack.

Some stations have done the sort of extended stunts that should ha