The Infinite Dial

The release of Tuesday's Infinite Dial report from Edison Research and Arbitron showing that 10% of respondents nationally had listened to Pandora in the previous week, may prompt some extra cognative dissonance for those who feel that time spent with Pandora is coming from the iPod or its predecessors, not from traditional listening to music radio.

I've written recently that trying to separate the time that listeners give to their own music vs. somebody else's is increasingly a fool's errand. If radio TSL is down, it is cold comfort that an iPod might conceivably have lost even more listening. But a few things have convinced me recently that Pandora, for whom Edison does several research projects, belongs in the radio stack, not the "successor to 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, and iPod" pile.

1) In recent years, those discovering and using Pandora have very much had a shared experience of the sort that radio used to specialize in providing. This was driven home at a recent Country Radio Seminar panel -- a live focus group of "real" radio listeners. It wasn't a very talkative bunch. But when moderator Charlie Cook asked the Pandora listener on the panel to describe it, she snapped to attention, describing it in detail, and in pretty much identical words to anybody else you've ever heard describe the service. With the increased amount of national radio programming, I've been waiting for radio to ramp up its shared experience quotient, creating an Infinite Dial of Musicradio 89 WLS and 77 WABCs for our age. But, clearly, that isn't the only sort of shared experience radio can offer.

2) It's been the case for a while that if your Pandora listening starts with a mainstream music choice, it will continue among those lines and may even be a little more conservative and gold-based than what you would hear on a comparable terrestrial radio station. While Pandora's personalization and the ability to skip songs leads some people to think of it as "the other," it's actually the culmination of what many radio programmers have been trying to do for the last 35 years, since listener music research took hold on a large scale: progressively eliminate more and more of the "bad songs." It's just that Pandora users have the advantage of deciding for themselves what the "bad songs" are, even if their own tastes aren't all that different from what 100 respondents typically decide.

The issue of how radio stations fill their stopsets on their Webstreams has gotten a lot of trade press this week as an increasing number of industry observers take up our call of the last four years. Some of that, undoubtedly, is because the issue is being put in sharper relief -- hearing six minutes of dire-sounding PSAs and bad fill music never sounded good, but it sounds worse now that radio is competing with pureplays that typically run only a few units an hour.

As an avid consumer of terrestrial radio online, the stopset issue has gotten better over the last four years. The worst practices of today are about equivalent to the best practices of four years ago and everybody has improved proportionately. If you were running the same two pieces of fill music over and over four years ago, now you are probably filling with PSAs. If you were interrupting the "stress free workday" to remind listeners repeatedly that their children are at risk, you've may have upgraded to a paid spot or two and a fill song.

That doesn't solve some of the larger issues, of course. If you fill up a six-minute Web-stop with twelve :30s, as I recently heard on one station that seemed to be running a mix of paid spots and promos for co-owned Websites, it's still 12 units (perhaps 24 an hour) vs. a pureplay's three. But it's not actively exacerbating the problem as we were a few years ago.

One possible solution? I still feel that we will utimately have to re-open the issue of selling sponsorships, not spots, as a way of sporting a competitive spotload. But if that's easier said than done today, would it at least be possible to fill with music or other station content and sell it to one sponsor. After all, it's unlikely that all the units in a six-minute Webstop are sold anyway. And any advertiser who bought an entire stop would get the sort of share-of-mind among streamies that now goes to McGruff the Crime Dog and the Red Defender.

So whose time, if anybody's, is Pandora beating?

One talking point that often seems to emerge in any discussion of radio's future on new platforms and its future viability is that Pandora is merely the most recent delivery system for people to listen to their own music. It's the argument of those who, nearly a decade ago, would have told you, "We survived the 8-Track and the cassette deck and we'll survive the iPod, too."

But even as somebody who loves the "real radio" experience that I grew up with, I've never been able to break it down that neatly. My first iPod in 2002 certainly replaced dubbing mix CDs for a CD Walkman, itself a successor to cassette mixes. But building and maintaining my iTunes library certainly cut into desk time that might have been otherwise accompanied by Internet or FM radio. When I got a car with an iPod plug, it certainly replaced radio listening--or more precisely, it replaced a half hour of punching among stations looking for music in the morning. When I got my iPhone, streaming radio replaced listening to the iPod. But recently, my attempts to stream in the car have been so erratic that I've been returning to the iPod and even CDs.

If that distinction is fluid to somebody who grew up with the shared radio experience and plans to do everything in his power to help carry it forward on any platform necessary, how much more specious must it seem to a 16-year-old. And more important, if radio's TSL among today's 16 year olds is not what it was a decade ago, it doesn't do much good to argue that a new platform is biting into somebody else's time, because something is still cutting into AM/FM's time.

So with yesterday's announced purchase of Thumbplay, you have to respect Clear Channel for taking a logical step in being able to offer both "our music" and "your music," just as CBS Radio did with Last.fm. That makes a lot more sense than trying to teach that distinction to a new generation. Or waiting around arguing about who the competition is.

I've worked alongside radio broadcasters for nearly 20 years, helping them understand their audiences by researching and anticipating their wants, needs and desires. You don't do that unless you have a deep love for the medium - and I truly do. That's why articles like this one, "Radio Exec Says Suckers Invest In Pandora" don't make me laugh, elicit a snide remark, or turn on my generally dormant inner cynic. No, they make me sad - genuinely sad.

Read the article. I have no interest in engaging the arguer here, so I'll deal solely with the argument, as presented: Pandora is a "sucker's bet," for two reasons:

1. Pandora isn't available in cars.

2. Pandora has no localized human connection.

Proponents of this argument - the "Pandora as fad" argument - are clinging desperately to the ephemeral nature of #1 and drastically overstating the importance of #2, especially with listeners under 40.

We have plenty of research that shows the lengths to which people will go already to listen to Internet radio in their cars - this stat isn't limited by the availability of car-based Internet, it's only limited by (at this point) feature phone penetration (not even "smartphone" penetration) and a cheap patch cord. More importantly, however, is the stat that is right under everyone's noses - even with Pandora's car "disadvantage," they currently enjoy somewhere between 40 and 50% of all internet radio listening. Even if you only look at the AndoMedia rankings, which, though not comprehensive, do at least include the largest radio companies (Clear Channel, CBS, Citadel, Cumulus, etc.), Pandora is as big as the rest of the top 20 combined.

When you superimpose the enormous Internet listening Pandora enjoys today with the significantly smaller penetration of in-car Internet radio capability, you do NOT get a "sucker's bet." You get pent-up demand, just waiting to be unleashed by technical developments that aren't 5 years away, or even one year away. They are happening now. Ignoring that, putting your head in the sand, is the real sucker's bet.

The "local" advantage is similarly a "sucker's bet." Presumably, all of those Internet radio listeners (and they are legion) already live in cities and towns that offer "localized" broadcast media. Half of them have demonstrably voted with their mice, keyboards, phones and tablets that they don't care about #2. In most cases, they don't care about radio's local advantage because most of what passes for local on broadcast radio are the ads and the weather. Ask your neighborhood repeater for Rush Limbaugh or Ryan Seacrest if they are winning on "local."

I rarely, if ever, sound so strident in this space - it's generally unhelpful, and distracts from my arguments. But broadcasters simply have to do better. No longer can you rest on the deteriorating advantage of your towers. On the Internet - and believe this - you are David, and pure-play streamers like Pandora are Goliath. David didn't beat Goliath by underestimating him. Goliath figured out what Internet consumers really want from a music radio service in 2011, and provided it, pure and simple. It is now David's turn to learn, and not to denigrate Goliath with ineffective taunts.

If terrestrial broadcasters are going to survive in the next several years - and some of them will, don't get me wrong - it won't be by dismissing Pandora. It will be by studying Pandora and offering meaningful improvements that offer value to today's listeners. So many broadcasters are resolutely incurious as to the reasons for Pandora's success, and it is that lack of curiosity that some broadcasters may not live to regret.

One of the challenges for the '90s/Gen-X formats that have proliferated over the last year is trying to put together a wide variety of music that was never played together at the time. CHR in the '90s--what there was of it--changed direction every few years, only returning to all-the-hits for a few years around 1997. So is all-'90s an hour of "Impossible Segues"? What about other gold-based formats?

I was looking through this sample hour of an all-'90s station from last year and began thinking about whether any of the segues could have actually happened on Top 40 radio at the time of the newest song. And the answer was almost always no:

Sublime, "Santeria" into Johnny Gill, "Rub You The Right Way" - Gill and his New Edition colleagues were long gone by the time "Santeria" came out. And, of course, that song got most of its exposure at Modern Rock, not CHR, at the time. Followed by . . .

Sheryl Crow, "My Favorite Mistake" - Again, Gill was long gone in 1999;

311, "Down" - Could have happened: not on CHR, but perhaps on a harder rockin' Modern AC that hadn't yet cleared out 311 by the time Crow was out;

Arrested Development, "People Everyday" - "Ease My Mind," the first single from their second album, was a career killer, but this song and "Mr. Wendell" actually did pop up in a number of Mainstream CHR libraries throughout the '90s. But generally not the same rock-leaning stations that would have played "Down";

OMC, "How Bizarre" - This, however, could have happened, probably on a more mainstream/smaller market CHR;

Stone Temple Pilots, "Interstate Love Song" - Probably gone from most CHRs by the time of OMC. Could have still happened at the right Modern AC;

En Vogue, "Hold On" - Could have played next to STP at the right pop-leaning, medium/small-market CHR in 1994.

Santana, "Smooth" - En Vogue was still in play through the late '90s when "Smooth" came out, thanks to "Don't Let Go (Love)," but "Hold On" had pretty much disappeared.

Alanis Morissette, "You Learn" - Santana/Alanis is the most likely segue here. Probably happened at CHR and all the time at Modern AC.

Notorious BIG, "Hypnotize" - In Canada, where "Hypnotize" was a pop hit, and Alanis was Cancon, it probably happened all the time. In the U.S., despite the songs being only a few years away from each other, probably not at all.

Tom Petty, "Mary Jane's Last Dance" - Probably gone from CHR by the time "Hypnotize" was out, but wouldn't have happened for the same reasons as Alanis/Biggie.

Sarah McLaughln, "I Will Remember You" - Again, Petty was pretty much gone from CHR by now. Could have happened at the right Modern AC.

So were all these records really not meant to be played together, as some contend?

Well, now consider this 2 p.m.hour of very successful Greatest Hits outlet KLUV Dallas, courtesy of BDSRadio.com.

Three Dog Night, "An Old Fashioned Love Song" into KC & the Sunshine Band's "Boogie Shoes" - Limited by the relatively small number of stations that actually played "Boogie Shoes" as a "Saturday Night Fever"-era current. And Three Dog Night was rarely a CHR act by 1978.

Mamas & Papas, "California Dreaming" - Same issue

Elton John, "Daniel" - Mamas & Papas was very much still in many Top 40 libraries in 1972, so probably;

Pat Benatar, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" - Elton was also likely to still be in certain Top 40 libraries in that almost-Hot-AC period for the format in 1980;

Eagles, "Peaceful Easy Feeling" - Same as Elton/Pat Benatar, could have happened at the same type of station.

Climax Blues Band, "Couldn't Get It Right" - Eagles were at the height of their "Hotel California" popularity when this was out in early '77. Would have certainly happened.

Beatles, "Get Back" --- Would have still been in certain types of Top 40 libraries in 1977, it was actually a few more years before anybody dared suggest that the Beatles were not the No. 1 image artist, even at Top 40;

Jimmy Buffett, "Margaritaville" - From a few months after Climax Blues Band, so would have happened for the same reasons;

Carole King, "I Feel The Earth Move" - Finally a little less present at Top 40 in 1977, would have still happened at AC, of course;

Bee Gees, "How Deep Is Your Love" - Another 1977 song. Yes at AC. Probably not at Top 40;

Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" - Hung in as a CHR gold until the Mike Joseph early '80s era where most older songs finally went away;

Stevie Wonder, "Part Time Lover" - Would have been unlikely in 1985-86, since libraries had been gutted by that time.

Loggins & Messina, "Danny's Song" - Wouldn't have happened in 1985-86 on CHR. Loggins was still hot, post-"Footloose," but '70s soft rock was in short supply and research hadn't brought this version (as opposed to the long-exiled Anne Murray hit) back to the fore yet.

Okay, one more, the 2 p.m. hour of Mainstream AC standard bearer WBEB (B101) Philadelphia:

Prince, "Little Red Corvette" into Deep Blue Something, "Breakfast At Tiffany's" - Prince's "When Doves Cry" was one of the handful of '80s songs that still popped up at CHR in the late '90s but "Corvette" wasn't.

America, "Sister Golden Hair" - Long exiled to AC by the late '90s . . .

Daughtry, "Home" - . . . so wouldn't have played next to Daughtry as a current on any other format either;

Gloria Estefan, "Everlasting Love" - Never that big a CHR hit at the time and never lasted in CHR libraries. Its utility was allowing AC to play a newer version of this perrenial than Carl Carlton;

Maroon 5, "This Love" - Gloria/Maroon wouldn't have happened at CHR for the same reason as Gloria/Daughtry'

Lionel Richie, "All Night Long" - Lionel's current hitmaker status faded out after the late '80s;

Eddie Money, "Take Me Home Tonight" - These two would have just made it on the CHR format together, however, being about three years apart;

Rob Thomas, "Someday" - Minor CHR hit and Eddie was, of course, long gone;

Madonna, "Into The Groove" - Probably hung in at CHR until the early '90s. Now her representation is, if anything, the Madhouse remake of "Like A Prayer";

Train, "Calling All Angels" - Again, "Into The Groove" was gone by 2003;

Pat Benatar, "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" - One of the few early '80s oldies that endured for a few extra years when CHR PDs cleared the deck of all gold in the Hot Hits years, but disappeared after her career faded in the late '80s;

Huey Lewis & the News, "If This Is It" - But when this was a current, Benatar was at her peak as well and "Hit Me" was still represented at Top 40;

Taio Cruz, "Dynamite" - Huey, however, fell off CHR by the early '90s and, of course, was long gone by last year. This is an "only on AC" segue.

So, to review, Oldies/Greatest Hits stations have the "shared experience" that CHR represented even in the '70s on their side, along with the tendency of most CHR stations in the '70s to play some gold. Some stations had a three year rule on libraries, as the '70s went on and CHR softened, those rules were relaxed considerably.

AC stations cover such a wide swath that it would have been impossible for most of it to play next to each other at CHR. In fact, if you have impossible segues, you're probably delivering on the variety front. The strength and durability then becomes the unifying factor.

'90s/Gen-X stations have an interesting job in trying to create a coalition that existed mostly on MTV and in some listeners' music collections at the time. CHR in 1997 should, of course, have played "Hypnotize" and "You Learn" together. It's a format that probably wouldn't have been possible in the pre-Bob/Jack-FM era when the diversity of listeners' own collections hadn't been proven. But it is interesting to see that segueing a '90s one-shot like Deep Blue Something into an '80s or '70s song is easier, so far, than playing it next to a song from a few years away.

I missed the RAB/NAB Radio Show's group heads panel, but a little birdie told me that a great deal of time was spent lamenting the fact that "no deals are getting done," or speculating that "more deals" (specifically, more consolidation) would jump-start the industry and wake it from its doldrums.

I don't know much about this side of the business, to be honest - I assume that stations are currently trading at a multiple of "x", and for deals to start happening, they have to trade at "Z," where Z<X. I am glad to see the captains of the radio industry hungry for deals, but I am afraid that the "deals" they are waiting for represent a pretty myopic view of the opportunities that are out there.

Consider: for the price of a few major market radio stations, some enterprising radio group could have closed a "deal" for TechCrunch, which AOL just snapped up for a reported $25 Million. TechCrunch is one of the biggest blogs in the business and generates tons of content every day. Furthermore, it's possible that some empire building radio group could make a deal for Gawker Media, which operates top-ranked blogs on topics that include gadgets, sports, cars and gossip - the mainstays of many a radio morning show. Presumably Gawker would fetch a higher price than TechCrunch, but it's exactly the kind of deal that radio groups should be making - content deals.

Too rich for radio's blood? There are other, potentially attractive partners out there, from RawVoice to Wizzard to Revision3. Want to make a credible claim on music discovery/curation? Why not snap up IndieFeed or The Hype Machine? Self help/advice is another great category, and there are players like Quick and Dirty Tips or Personal Life Media throwing off loads of content every day.

Now, I have no specific knowledge that any of these properties would even entertain a sale - but maybe they would. In any case, an investment in any one of these properties would be a content investment, and it's ownership of original content that the radio industry desperately needs - not more towers.

Besides: what happens if radio's lust for consolidation reaches its natural conclusion - all programming centralized in one location and syndicated worldwide via the web with no local jocks? Well, you'd have Pandora - and they are already there.

I was saddened yesterday to learn that Global Radio has scrapped the Galaxy Network (and a few other local stations) in order to consolidate the programming to a new, nine-station "Capital Network" originating in London. I used to provide audience and marketing research for several of the Galaxy stations when they were owned by Chrysalis, and, as a big fan of the music, these ranked amongst some of my most satisfying projects back in the 90s.

I have no specific knowledge with which to second-guess this decision, and I assume it's at least partially rooted in the economic realities of the business. I do, however, want to point out this quote from Ashley Tabor, Global Radio's founder and CEO, from today's Guardian:

[O]n the decision to syndicate programming across the network, Tabor said: "I'm afraid to say there are not 33 good mid-morning presenters in this country and there are not another 33 good afternoon presenters. I wish there were, but there aren't."

You've heard this before, surely - I know I've heard it from a variety of radio clients over the years. Every time an airshift is voice tracked, or a local show is replaced by a syndicated one, the decision is often justified with some version of Tabor's sentiment - Tabor simply had the courage to state it publicly.

We've encountered this piece of received wisdom - the lack of available talent - so often over the past decade that we no longer question it. We simply nod our heads, and commiserate with Global's predicament. From all appearances, the fact that there aren't enough talented and skilled radio personalities is as firmly grounded in reality as PPM, performance royalties and every other perceived constraint of 21st century terrestrial radio. I have no reason to doubt Tabor or anyone else who states that there isn't enough available talent to go around.

And yet, if you take this statement out of the context of the radio industry, and apply it to any other business, you're left with one inescapable conclusion: it's patently absurd.

It's completely ludicrous to think that there couldn't be 33 good morning presenters in the UK, or 12 good afternoon jocks in Milwaukee or even five talented salespeople in Raleigh-Durham. Talent is everywhere. What is in short supply, however, is imagination, and any sense of an HR strategy for the radio industry.

When I began my career in research, I was super fortunate to have been nurtured by some outstanding managers. I made loads of mistakes (still do, don't you?), often rushed to judgement without wisdom, and occasionally told truth to power in a style that did more to hinder my arguments than promote them. In short, I was rough around the edges. I am enormously grateful to the people in my life who made me better at what I do, and patiently worked to develop my talent, passion and style so that I could start to realize my potential. It would have been very easy to look at the Tom Webster of 20 years ago and say that "there isn't enough young research talent to go around." Tom took some work, believe me, and is still a work in progress.

Today, in the radio industry, that work isn't being done on a corporate scale. At the local level, managers are being stripped of time, resources, and yes, airshifts that could be used to nurture and develop tomorrow's Howard Sterns, Scott Munis, Pierre Roberts and Charles Laquideras. Without a strategic reinvention of radio's HR strategy, the systems simply aren't there to attract, develop and retain the talent radio needs to thrive in the 21st century. Look around at all the innovation happening in Internet radio, location-based services/networks, social media and online video. Talent is everywhere. The long-term issue is not the scarcity of talent - it's radio's inability to provide an exciting, entrepreneurial environment to attract the talent that is already there, and a lack of HR resources to develop that talent and create what Radio desperately needs: stars.

The bottom line on the "talent gap" is this: short investment horizons, quarterly strategies and "just give me three good years" are the real strategic problems, not a lack of talent. The difference between coal and diamonds is simply pressure and time. There's plenty of the former in the radio industry, but precious little of the latter.

UPDATE: My friend Nik Goodman has another, eminently sensible take on Capital's move.

Okay, the Labor Day Weekend format changes continued and we also got:

* A Rhythmic AC simulcast replacing Country Oldies in Atlanta;

* A new Rhythmic Top 40 in California's Inland Empire;

* An AC to Classic Hits transition in Green Bay, Wis., and a related switch from Classic Rock to a Classic Rock That Really Rocks;

That brings our tally to 12 launches of gold-based formats, five launches of something more contemporary. And a number of gold-based formats giving way to other gold-based formats, sometimes adjacent ones.

Holiday format flips are always a good bellwether of the radio climate. Two years ago, during the scariest moments of the economic downturn, they slowed to nothing. Then the format change activity picked up again and we actually saw a flurry of CHR launches -- as opposed to just creative repackaging of old music. So how are we doing in this always-active format change week? As of lunchtime on Friday, so far we have . . .

* New Adult Hits stations in Corpus Christi, Texas, and in Eastern N.C.

* New Classic Country AMs in Youngstown, Ohio, and again in Eastern N.C.

* New Oldies AMs on the Jersey Shore and in Knoxville (replacing the True Oldies Channel FM affiliate).

* A second old-school station in Honolulu, with Clear Channel's new KHJZ (93.9 Jamz) doing a more '90s-based version of the format against very successful recent launch KUMU.

So far the old music is winning, but we also have:

* A return to Spanish-language rock at More 98.9 San Diego -- an unusual case of music replacing sports on FM.

* CBS-FM launching a new, '00s-and-now-based Adult Top 40 with Play 98.7 Tampa, Fla., the former WSJT.

* Duluth, Minn., getting a new Mainstream Top 40 and a new Hot AC, the second in the market.

No inference should be taken here that a Top 40 launch is positive and creative repackaging of gold isn't. Any Classic Country station is a bold statement and the two new Rhythmic Oldies stations have made the always quirky Honolulu market even more fascinating. But there will be a lot to talk about at next month's NAB Radio Show panel, "The Next Great Radio Format."

One of the ironies of the consumer electronics industry's attack on radio--specifically any attempt to mandate an FM in cellphones--is that it's taking place during a back-to-school shopping week. On the station I listened to for two hours the other night, I heard multiple consumer electronics retailers and wireless providers advertising PCs, notebooks, and, yes, cellphones. This week, in particular, radio is a particularly relevant technology to the electronics industry.

While I believe in the inclusion of an FM tuner in mobile phones, the notion of bartering it with Congress for a performance royalty is risky and easily attacked -- as the CEA's Gary Shapiro did -- in almost the same language with which broadcasters assailed the music industry in the first place. From the legislative approval of radio's consolidation to restrictions against LPFM, owners of an FM license have been the beneficiaries of much Congressional protectionism already. And 80% of our own talk hosts would be on the air already mocking any other industry that asked for this sort of intervention or any Congress that gave it to them.

Perhaps what radio should do instead is further demonstrate its own effectiveness. In my fantasy, broadcasters team up and create their own mobile phone. Of course, I'm still waiting for them to create a direct competitor to Pandora or take a stronger hand in designing the Infinite DIal of the future, rather than leaving the directory function of tomorrow's IP radio in the hands of people who make the CEA look like radio boosters.

But would it be crazy to suggest that the free advertising time that radio has given HD Radio for the last few years be redeployed to support those mobile devices that do contain an FM radio? There are, of course, challenges. Broadcasters are asserting that the low sales of existing devices are due to the products themselves and aren't a referendum on consumer interest. And the entire HD campaign proves that you have to pick your causes carefully. The campaign that sells an FM-compatible-smartphone will probably be focused on the phone itself, which would need many attractive features, not just FM.

And, of course, broadcasters have to be prepared to take advantage of actually being on mobile devices. But we know that radio can sell electronics. And this week is one of several each year that proves it. So why not make that industry feel the collective sting of our buggy whip?

There has been an awful lot of digital ink spilled in the last several weeks about the issue of radios on cell phones. Part of the proposed NAB agreement with the labels on a performance royalty be to force an FM receiver into every cell phone.

And while forcing FM onto phones seems extreme and borderline anti-competitive, I wanted to weigh in with this thought: It really would be a good thing if more mobile devices also included radio receivers, and I think those receivers would get a lot of use.

What do I base this opinion on? Several factors:

1) Go to Europe and take a look. Lots of people are listening to FM Radio on their phones. I simply don't buy the argument that some are making that "no one" wants or would listen to FM (or AM for that matter) on their phones.

2) The announcement by AT&T that they will no longer be offering unlimited data plans is a potential game-changer. A lot of people will become much more concious of their usage and perhaps think to use their radios more as a result.

3) Assuming it doesn't add unwanted cost or weight to a phone (which I don't think it would, but I'm no engineer), who wouldn't want another option from their phone? How is more extra stuff a bad thing?

I don't buy the argument that since the few phones that have radios haven't sold well, this proves there is no desire or market for radios. Of course the existence of a radio is not the 'make or break' feature for a new phone. This doesn't mean no one wants one.

Much has been made of the fact that this crusade is a distraction, or that putting FM tuners on phones won't "save" radio. But that turns the issue into a straw man, really - the issue isn't whether or not FM tuners on phones will catapult the industry to double-digit growth, it's whether or not it would be good for radio. It would be good for radio.

So again, I don't see how forcing radios onto phones is a good thing. But I do think the radio industry should do all it can to encourage, cajole, or wheedle the phone companies to add radios. Giving people the option can't subtract from radio listening. If we should "be where people are" by offering apps, what is an FM tuner but a really great app itself?

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.

In 1975, Gene Amdahl left IBM to start his own company, Amdahl Software. Amdahl felt he could compete in one area with IBM, and set out to build a better mousetrap. What he learned was that IBM was countering his sales efforts by essentially implying to his prospects that they'd be "safer" going with IBM than with some fly-by-nighter like Amdahl. Amdahl coined a term for IBM's tactics: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt - better known as FUD. When you can't compete on price or quality, FUD is your only option.

FUD is alive and well today, and equally as dangerous for the radio industry as it was for Amdahl's software venture. FUD occurs when our attention is diverted from the prize, from the main thrust of your strategy, by shadows, intimations and rhetoric. Here is the latest example, in the form of Harker Research's claim that PPM has cost the radio industry seven billion dollars.

In the search engine optimization world, they call these sorts of posts "link bait"; outrageous and calculated to drive publicity and ultimately traffic. The more sites that link to the link bait in question, the higher the "baiter" will rank for relevant keywords. (Ask your webmaster/Internet guru about "nofollow" links, which I've employed here.)

The crux of this particular FUD is that there is a gap between what Arbitron's PPM says and what Nielsen's diary methodology says, and that this gap has cost radio seven billion dollars. That's "billion," with a B. What is certainly true over the PPM years is that radio has declined about 6 billion dollars, and that PPM is one of many variables in play during that span. Ask yourself this, however: how has print done over that same span? Yellow Pages? Classifieds? Billboards? Direct Mail? Does PPM have anything to do with any of that?

More troublingly, this is a time when radio looks to those who provide it with valuable inputs like research and consultation for guidance, truth and to shine a light for the industry. This particular FUD was cooked up as a "back of the envelope" calculation. Yet, it could so easily be proven or disproven with actual existing data. How have radio's fortunes fared in the Nielsen diary markets? Are they flat? Up? Or are they, as in the PPM markets, also down considerably? This is a company with "research" in its very name; yet, in a time where the radio industry needs cold hard facts the most, Harker Research has turned its back on truth in favor of FUD.

Obviously the authors of this FUD know that some people want to believe this is true, because it's a convenient untruth, and that it will thus linger around as a canard, a nagging doubt, and a dangerous distraction. In short, pure unmitigated FUD. Let's work to make PPM the best it can be, of course. But let's all keep our eyes on the prize: content innovation, sales innovation and relationships. Nothing else matters.

After more than three years of our railing against the hardsell PSAs, fill music, and even occasional silences that punctuate the Web-only stopsets of streaming radio, more people are finally starting to express similar concerns, as evidenced by last Saturday's Conclave session on station streaming.

Of course, as with the problem of programmers not listening to their own radio station on its terrestrial feed, knowing there's an issue and knowing what to do about it are two different things. You would think that with the work that some major groups have done in improving the creative of their sponsors that there would be some in-house resource for the streams. But until then, may we suggest . . .

"Chickenman"!

It's still funny (to me, anyway). Creator Dick Orkin's skewed sense of humor is still all over radio, thanks to the ubiquitous Regional Help Wanted spots. And anything is better than a PSA reminding you that your kids are in mortal peril three times an hour on what was supposed to be your stress-free, refreshing at work choice.

Okay, now some equal time: At Conclave, I actually had somebody tell me that their mother had liked the ambient music that used to run as fill on KLOS Los Angeles. And a few weeks ago, I had a listener of a Gospel station in Atlanta e-mail me to ask where she could hunt down that rappin' Scruff McGruff PSA--having seemingly Googled one of my many jibes about it. But imagine how many calls the Great White-Winged Warrior would generate!

My Edison colleague Tom Webster will probably find plenty of takers for his assertion that "the Internet as a medium is actually better suited to music discovery than radio anyway." And I don't disagree that radio could do a much better job of using its Websites to compete with YouTube, Vevo, and other music discovery choices.

But if I were radio, I wouldn't give up the on-air battle just yet. Even as an industry person with access to music, I still discover music all the time over-the-air. WXRK (92.3 Now) New York rushed Eminem & Rihanna's "Love The Way You Lie"--easily one of the most talked-about songs of the summer--on to the air before I got access to it anywhere else. Crosstown WRXP was the first place I heard OneEskimO's "Kandi," a song that I'm ashamed to say had been at arm's length on my desk for weeks.

And I still have a lot of over-the-air destinations for music discovery, particularly now that I have streaming radio on-the-go: Juice FM Liverpool and FM 107.9 Oxford, U.K., will play more songs that I haven't heard than their more recurrent UK Top 40 counterparts. Hungary's M2 Petofi is a reliable showcase for the hipper records that get European pop airplay but rarely make it to any U.S. radio besides the handful of true-Alternative outlets. Similarly, Tom Leykis' online indie rocker, New Normal Music, sold me at least four songs in the hour I listened last week.

On the Top 40 side, there are a handful of stations I can count on from KLJT (The Breeze) Tyler, Texas, to WKSE (Kiss FM) Buffalo, N.Y., that won't necessarily give me my first listen to a song, but will be the first place I hear it in a radio context and remember what it sounds like. Almost any European or Australian Oldies/Greatest Hits/Classic Hits station can send me looking for a song; so can a half hour with non-comm Oldies treasure trove WGVU-AM Grand Rapids, Mich.

Even though I earmark a few hours a week for catching up on music and searching it out, there's still something very different about having a song or two put in front of you in the context of other songs you already know and like. Those songs make more of a lasting impression--as opposed to plowing through a pile (or cyberpile) of unfamiliar product.

This morning, the new Usher single, "DJ Got Us Fallin' In Love," went to radio. I did manage to find it posted online when I first heard about it a few weeks ago. Doesn't mean that hearing it on the radio this weekend will be anticlimactic. It's almost like the difference between watching the trailer and seeing the movie.

Again, I'm all in favor of radio offering something more robust than a handful of videos on its Website. But fighting for the music discovery image on-air would reinforce the value of anything you could offer on your Website (just as the Website could eventually bolster any on-air discovery claims). So what could radio do?

For starters, it could actually start talking about music discovery and recommendations instead of just "new music." As much as I've heard those terms bandied about, I don't hear it on the air in conjunction with new music. And I guarantee that for 90% of the people hearing the new Usher this weekend, radio can still credibly claim responsibility for discovery.

And, as has been previously suggested, it could also co-opt listeners and let them be the ones making recommendations on-air. If listeners are going to think they found everything first themselves anyway, using them in your new music stagers kind of allows radio and listeners to share the credit.

Finally, every so often, about the time a song goes No. 1, I'd put listeners on the air to talk about where they were when they heard the song on the radio for the first time. Many people never think of it in those terms like radio people do. But in August, when "California Gurls" is either officially set (or upset) as this year's summer song, there will be enough people who do have memories associated with it to get a great morning show bit.

One of the recurring themes we have seen in our annual research series with Arbitron is the continuing erosion of radio's image for music discovery. Certainly, radio has ceded this territory to the Internet - but as tempting as it may be to dwell on the negative, the fact is that the Internet as a medium is actually better suited to music discovery than radio anyway. This isn't a knock on radio as much as it is a recognition that the various cognitive activities that music discovery and appreciation engages are best served by the combination of audio stimulus, search, context and serendipity that only the Internet can provide.

Still, while the Internet may have wrested this crown from radio, it isn't a zero-sum game. After all, radio stations have websites too, right? In fact, the interactive capabilities of the Internet give ambitious radio stations more (and more powerful) tools than ever to foster music discovery. Today, there is no better example of this than NPR's music initiatives. In recent weeks, NPR has released a number of new music initiatives, and commercial radio would do well to follow their lead.

NPR recently released an NPR Music app for the Apple iPhone/iPad ecosystem that basically packages up all of their original performances, interviews and other artist information that they already had sitting in the can. This app, however, is but a taste of the significant web presence NPR has built at their online portal for NPR Music. There was certainly a time when "NPR Music" might have conjured up images of classical, jazz or folk music, but one look at the NPR Music website tells you that their goals are a bit more ambitious than that. NPR's "Listener Top 10" reads like the playlist at a college radio station, and the post itself is designed to encourage interaction, debate and ultimately engagement.

Music discovery matters - it's what makes music radio important, instead of simply a utility. NPR has boldly stepped into what has been a vacuum for radio on the web and provided a glimpse of one possible future. What's your take?

Last year I wrote a piece called "Radio's Looming Crisis Is Not Digital," in which I made the point that what radio really needed to focus on in the coming months and years was not their digital strategy, but their human resources strategy. Digital strategies are crafted by people, and having a great digital strategy means hiring the best and creating attractive environments in which to work.

You cannot control what Apple does, or what mobile phone manufacturers to, or the price of broadband, or what car makers do or even what listeners do. All you can control is what you do. When radio does things like this, and this, it sends a clear message to would-be talent, both on-air and off, that radio is not a particularly good career choice. Do I know the full details of what happened in those two situations? No, but it really doesn't matter. The story of those two situations is that radio is a crappy business, full-stop. It doesn't need to be. It's time for management to wake up and realize that in the age of social media, you can't control the "spin," or the story. You can only control what you do, and how you treat people. Your format is not an asset. Your music doesn't belong to you, and is worth less and less everyday. All you are, is your people.

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.)

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.

We're very proud of the work we do here at Edison - not only for you, the radio industry, but also for our clients in politics, new/social media, consumer products and the many other industries we serve as a leader in opinion research. When you assume a leadership role, you take a few shots. It comes with the territory, and its generally unproductive to respond. In the odd case, however, these shots miss wide, and end up doing more collateral damage to our industry and our clients than they could ever do to us, and it is on those occasions that we are obligated to, at the very least, correct some inaccuracies.

In Mark Ramsey's post today, "My Internet Radio Stream Is Bigger Than Yours," we have one such shot, which appears to be directed at Edison, Arbitron, Jacobs Media, Inside Radio, Mary Beth Garber and the Southern California Broadcasters Association, and - ultimately - survey research, which is ironic, as Mark has at various times been a survey researcher. Do read Mark's piece - I encourage you to - but do also consider the flaws in his argument.

Mark's post was written as a refutation of this piece from Inside Radio:

Buzz aside, terrestrial webcast usage tops internet pureplays. A pair of recent studies shows that online radio listeners prefer pureplay internet radio stations over the streams of terrestrial stations. But unpublished results from Edison Research and Arbitron's 2010 Infinite Dial survey obtained by Inside Radio paint a different picture. The researchers found that 47% of Americans 12+ have listened to the stream of an AM/FM station, more than double the amount (22%) that have ever listened to "online audio from internet-only sources."

We are big fans of the work Ando Media does and are certainly friends with many from their parent company, Triton Digital Media (who, in the interest of proper disclosure, are clients of Mark but not Edison clients). Mark is 100% correct in noting that Pandora is the clear leader in streams today; however, this is so far afield of the Edison/Arbitron finding that it isn't merely apples-to-oranges, it's essentially a non-sequitur on at least three levels:

1. What the Infinite Dial survey shows is that a little more than twice as many Americans have ever listened to streams from terrestrial stations as have listened to online-only streams. This is a measure of people, not streams.

2. Furthermore, the question cherry-picked for this comparison refers to persons having ever listened to internet radio. Surely over the past decade this is true--Pandora's success as a mainstream play has been a fairly recent phenomenon. Mark is comparing a recent monthly ranker to what could be for some a 15+ year history of listening to radio online.

3. Finally, Mark states that Pandora outstrips usage of terrestrial radio even when you aggregate some of the top radio groups together, and later in the article notes that there are as many tuned to Pandora as CBS and Clear Channel combined. Again, this is apples-to-oranges to our question. We did not ask a representative sample of Americans if they had ever listened to the streams of "some of the top radio groups" or "CBS and Clear Channel combined," but any terrestrial radio stream. This is compounded by the fact that while Ando measures much of online radio, they don't measure all of it. Again, we are measuring Americans, while webcast metrics measure streams.

Most troubling, however, is the tacit assault on survey research in general, which is what truly prompted me to write this response. In the service of his argument, Mark positions survey research against server research, but this is simplistic and, at best, an intellectual shortcut in an argument populated largely by straw men. Mark notes that the "competing" webcast metrics "are not estimates. These are not polls. These are not opinion surveys. These are not samples. These are accurate accountings of all stream usage among the pure plays and broadcasters who allow their usage data to be measured by Ando."

Webcast metrics do indeed measure things that survey research is not well-equipped to measure. Certainly, I'd trust a server-based accounting of streams and sessions six-ways-to-Sunday before I'd buy a survey on the same data. Measuring unique Americans, however, and gaining insight into why those Americans use Internet radio, is the purview of survey research, and to pit the two against each other is truly a false choice - they are not only highly complementary, they need each other to truly provide the full picture on media consumption, advertising effectiveness and what really rings the till. I have to believe that Mark, who again provided survey research for clients in the past, believes this as strongly as we do. Perhaps, however, Mark's breathless pronouncement that "Pandora...is redundant to nothing and complimentary [sic] to everything" belies the fact that his criticism is less a polemic against survey research, and more of an emotional assertion that in his mind the battle for ears online is already over.

Indeed, Mark ends his piece on this note: "if you want to be assured the online radio sky isn't falling, I'm sure I can find a blue sky survey somewhere out there." We are not in the business of 'blue sky surveys.' On the topic of Pandora, in fact, I wrote this piece last week, and I hope you'll agree that I'm far from a Pollyanna on the topic. There are plenty of wake-up calls for the broadcast industry in our most recent Infinite Dial research report, and I invite you to spend some time with it and feel free to ask us your questions - the hard ones, and the easy ones. For our part, we pledge to do more than just critique; we will continue to create content, resources, and, yes, research to help you create your future. Ultimately, you will be the ones to make the hard choices, and to execute moving forward. Mark is right that the "whose stream is bigger" argument is frivolous - so why have it?

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.

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?

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.

Just wanted to give you a First Listen to what our friends at Entercom launched in Sacramento, Calif., earlier this week--a market that had been without Alternative since KWOD flipped to all-'90s last spring. "It's great to have a choice again," says one liner. "Why pay for your music? Let our music sponsors pay for it," says another. Radio 94.7, which replaced Smooth Jazz, is low-key in the spirit of sister KNRK Portland, Ore., or Clear Channel's WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia. Here's the station at 2 p.m. yesterday (March 6).

Tonic, "If You Could Only See"
Bush, "Come Down"
Death Cab For Cutie, "I Will Possess Your Heart"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Scar Tissue"
Muse, "Starlight"
Beck, "Devil's Haircut"
MGMT, "Kids"
Incubus, "I Wish You Were Here"
Sublime, "What I Got"
Live, "Selling The Drama"
Kings Of Leon, "Sex On Fire"

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.

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.

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.

The inexorable march of Pandora and other streaming services to auto dashboards has some pundits speculating that we've seen the end of "The DJ." ReadWriteWeb, for instance, reacted to Pioneer's new Pandora-enabled dashboard radio as more than just the death of Satellite radio, but the end of professionally curated music, period.

That online streaming radio will stick a fork in satellite-delivered radio is beyond debate. The survival of Sirius XM (especially post-Howard) is almost entirely dependent on their untethering themselves from those pricey birds in the sky, and getting their cost of doing business down to the level of their competition--which ranges from Pandora to Spotify and on down to some guy with a server in his garage.

The death of "the DJ," or to put it more broadly, professionally curated music, is another story entirely. While terrestrial broadcasters are, in fact, killing off DJ's left and right either through downsizing or simply eliminating live and local airshifts, the role of curation has never been more important, especially with the skull-drillingly vast array of music-as-commodity services available to music fans.

One thing the Internet has done has been to give artists themselves the ability to serve as curators to their communities. Spent anytime on the celebrity playlist section on the iTunes Music Store? I have, and I can tell you that it has driven hundreds of dollars of my music purchases.

Curators are important. I've written before here of my friend Chris MacDonald's venture Indiefeed, a wonderful "single-serve" podcast in various genres that showcases a single song per podcast as a music discovery service. Chris knows full well the value of curation, and goes beyond simply backselling artist and title to tell you why you should care about a song--its influences, backstory and place. With thousands of online streams doing little more than serve as faceless jukeboxes, adding value to both the music AND the experience is the only way to escape becoming a commodity. "Branding" is more than just a few audio jingles, and I suspect that even current streaming king Pandora will figure this out as the next generation of music discovery services starts to eat into their market share.

The insidious belief that has crept into the hearts and minds of many terrestrial radio executives is that professionally-programmed playlists are demonstrably superior to what the jukebox services can offer. This may or may not be true in various cases, but one thing is for sure--listeners will never grasp that distinction unless it is meaningful, and they are aware of it. New startups like Songza are certainly aware of the value of a professionally curated experience, and they are selling the fact that real humans choose their curated song lists. The only difference between what Songza is doing and what terrestrial radio stations are doing online is in their recognition of the value of playlists.

Playlists matter. Edison and other research companies have done scores of studies showing that finding out what has been played (or will be played) is one of the top three things listeners look for on radio station websites. Playlists are content. Furthermore, the word itself has immense power. One thing that Apple and iTunes have done in the 21st century is turn the word "Playlist" from radio industry wonkery to today's "mixtape." If I publish a list of the last 20 songs I heard on Pandora, that list may or may not have some meaning for some people. But if a recognized arbiter of taste, a curator, posts such a list--it instantly adds value not only to the individual songs, but to the selection and flow of those songs. Selector can never do this, as my super-smart Twitter pal Tom Barnes reminds me. Jocks do this--jocks that have built credibility and value as musical curators.

Music radio doesn't have to march its way into a commoditized future if broadcast leadership recognizes that even though the individual songs are commodities, the playlist is original, locally-owned content--and it has value directly proportionate to the equity the station has built in its music-focused personalities. You might be amazed at how much time visitors to your station's home page spend with super-sticky content like my friend Jeffrey Specter's TuneGenie. Jeff certainly knows--he sees the impressions, length of visit statistics and search queries for his online playlist discovery service. I've seen some of his aggregated data, and I can assure you that adding playlist discovery to a radio station's otherwise moribund homepage can have immense value. What Jeff has discovered is that not only is playlist discovery extraordinarily sticky content, it is also social content.

Services like TuneGenie are one of the keys to unlocking the value of the playlist as original content, but curation is the rest of the equation. Though sites like Mashable and ReadWriteWeb are fond of prognosticating the death of today's broadcast radio industry at the hands of web streamers, there is another possible future--a future in which radio stations and online-only streamers alike achieve technological parity in the distribution of their product, but differentiate themselves though the value they create in their music brand. Sorry, "Jack," but liners and drops won't do it in the 21st century. As Charlton Heston teaches us, it's people.

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"

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.

2010 is going to be an immensely challenging year for many radio groups, and often when we are challenged, we have a tendency to retreat to positions of comfort. With dollars for things like research and programming consulting being stretched and even eliminated, the budget your station actually has to spend on outside help now has to pass through more hoops, cooks and committees, which often means that there is little bandwidth or stomach for radical departures from what you have done in the past. Yet a radical departure is just what is called for in 2010--what got you here, won't get you there, and if radio continues to trot out the same set of goals for its research initiatives, the industry simply won't be relevant in the years to come.

Fred Jacobs wrote today that "The entertainment and information media marketplace has only become more competitive during this last decade, and yet radio's research techniques are still very 1978." This is a theme that Fred has addressed multiple times in his blog, and I commend him for challenging us all in a time when none of us can say we have the right answers. None of us. However, I completely disagree with his conclusion that the problem is with radio research techniques, and I challenge his impulse to make radio research the straw man in this debate.

First of all, it is a bit disingenuous to pin blame on radio research, when surely Fred and everyone else reading this knows that radio has cut 90% of its research budget. Surely one can't blame research techniques when one hasn't actually made their acquaintance in a while. In a time when radio's need for consumer insights is most dire, the budgets for radio research have been brutally slashed industry-wide. This not only hurts radio, it also helps competitive technologies, outlets and media channels that ARE investing (including with companies like Edison) to further increase the gap. Certainly those clients are hiring us to ask the types of questions to which Fred alludes.

There is a tacit assumption behind Fred's assertion that there are better mousetraps out there, and radio researchers are either unaware of them or unwilling to try them. Well, there are better mousetraps, surely (at least, better questions), and I can certainly speak for the team of researchers at Edison that we are not only fluent in these techniques, we use them daily for our portfolio of political, agency and online media clients. Furthermore, I have no doubt that our research brethren like Warren and Jon at Coleman, or Mark Ramsey, or our partners at Arbitron would say the same.

Yet, time and time again I have been in situations where I've challenged the status quo on a research project, only to have the assembled programming team retreat to safety--cutting away the really interesting stuff so that we can re-ask questions from the last survey for "tracking." I can tell you the direction of radio tracking research, believe me. Often it isn't just the station pushing back--it's the group heads, the regional VP's, and yes, even the programming consultants. I can recall multiple instances in the recent past where we have proposed a line of questioning that could provide key insight into radio's consumers, only to have station management and their consultant question "how is that actionable?"--only to then push for questions like "how should we place our stop sets?" which are not only not actionable, they are unanswerable.

All of us are culpable, and few have been willing to buck the flight to safety and attempt the really hard questions, which, while they carry increased risk of failure, are the key to radio's mandatory transformation over the next couple of years. My biggest regret in these engagements is surely that I didn't push harder. There's a New Year's resolution for me, right there. How about you?

So yes, let's challenge the status quo from your research vendors, but also from your consultants, managers and even your CEO's. You might stand a chance of losing status, face or even your job--but if you don't, you definitely won't have a job in the future of audio entertainment.

In Radio Business Report today, Cumulus Media CEO Lew Dickey was quoted: "...more than ever before we believe efficiency is becoming the greatest source of competitive advantage [in radio] today."

Today, that's correct. Tomorrow, it's not. Tomorrow, when towers and sticks are irrelevant, then a passionate Jimmy Buffet fan with a server in his garage will be vastly more efficient in serving a given audience than any station with overhead could hope to be.

The industry can never forget that its core business is to develop relationships with listeners and advertisers, and use those relationships to promote profitable interactions between the two. Relationships aren't efficient. Human business doesn't scale very well, but I find myself increasingly drawn to companies that act like humans when I spend my hard-earned cash. The things that will set radio stations apart will be an army of dedicated local relationship drivers--sales talent, air talent, technical talent and enthusiastic social media practitioners. More humans, not less--and an investment in entertaining programming to make the pie higher.

Art isn't very efficient--neither is entertainment in general. It's not very efficient to rent a copter and drop a gigantic pumpkin from the sky to watch it splatter on a parking lot, but it's hella funny. It probably isn't very efficient in terms of ROI to send your stunt team to bridges and tunnels to pay people's tolls for an hour, but it sure makes me warm and fuzzy. Seurat, luckily for us, wasn't a very "efficient" painter--surely all those little dots took time. Harper Lee only managed one book, but it was a book to be proud of. I think we'd all like to make things we are proud of. It's a small, good thing.

I'm not knocking efficency, per se--but eventually radio is going to realize that they can never cut their way down to compete with one passionate music lover with an ever-growing list of Twitter followers. The most efficient distribution of Rush Limbaugh will be direct from his house, no towers needed. When that happens, all those stations that cut their way to growth will suddenly be driving empty trucks to nowhere.

Good to see CBS continuing to roll out its local stations as HD multicasts in other markets, including bringing Alternative KROQ to San Diego and Hot AC KSCF (Sophie 103.7) to Los Angeles. It's a strategy that we've been endorsing for more than two years. Great local brands are better, even in other markets, than a hastily assembled local product or a white-label generic with local stagers.

That said . . .

Sophie, for those who will now be able to hear it, fills a need in a market that never got a direct replacement for KYSR (Star 98.7) when that station segued from Modern AC to Alternative. So does bringing WFAN New York to expatriate or wintering sports fans in Orlando, Tampa, and West Palm Beach.

KROQ, on the other hand, will be going against two local Alternative stations of relatively similar stripe. It will be interesting to see how that station's charisma stacks up against the also-world-famous XETRA-FM (91X) and KBZT on their own turf. And there are still CBS markets with no alternative station where KROQ would be welcome.

CBS, by the way, has done a great job of promoting its new Last FM Discover channel, which appears both on-line and on HD-2. To listen to any CBS station on-line (or view its Website) over the last few weeks has been to hear about Last FM Discover--another commendable alternative to the HD throwaways.

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?

I'm proud to work with Absolute Radio in the UK. Since taking over Virgin Radio in the UK just one year ago, the team at Absolute Radio, led by COO Clive Dickens, has launched an incredible array of digital initiatives which put to shame the efforts of most integrated, consolidated radio operators around the world.

Allow me to list just some of the things they are doing. And think about them in the context of providing unique, non-commodity experiences in exchange for signing up for a master Absolute VIP membership. This squarely puts Absolute in the database game with a whole host of revenue (and relationship) opportunities that may or may not have anything to do with "ratings."

• www.comparemyradio.com is a cross-station search engine that combs through the "now playing" metadata on all UK stations and returns information on what the most popular songs are and what the most played artists on each station are. It allows you to enter an artist or song, see how often it is played on various UK stations, so that you can pick a station that best suits your taste. The engine is "egalitarian" in that it includes both Absolute Radio stations and their competitors, and certainly has a user benefit -- but the really clever bit is that Absolute is capturing all of that search and click-through behavior, instead of their competitors getting it. Learn more from James Cridland's blog post.
• www.songofthedecade.com is a user-generated content site that allows visitors to vote for their favorite song from the past decade and contribute notes about the music. It's a unique joint venture with Spotify and Shortlist and the especially clever bit is that it captures email addresses in an entirely contextual and appropriate manner to drive Absolute VIP membership.
• www.dabbl.co.uk is a completely user-controlled radio experience that broadcasts online and on DAB. Again, it drives Absolute VIP membership by requiring sign-ups to vote for songs, with the added hook that all the songs are special live concert versions from the Absolute archives. Unique content, unique experience. Essentially, they have built their own version of the "Listener Driven Radio" or "Jelli" packages that are being syndicated, with the added benefit of unique content that simply cannot be matched.
• www.onegoldensquare.com/labs. They have developed their own internal development group called One Golden Square Labs. They likely have as many Web and Mobile developers for their one radio station as any American group employs. As with Google Labs, they allow users to see what they are up to, allowing users to act and feel like "insiders" while they experiment with the various new toys OGS is developing.
• Of course, they have a free iPhone app called the iAmp for live streaming, but they also offer a paid app (for about 99 cents) called LiveAmp which offers a richer gateway to live festivals, gigs and concerts by aggregating live videos of bands, interviews, photos of various festivals and even twitter feeds that mention musical acts. A calendar of upcoming shows is also integrated. Listeners can also stream the Absolute stations, but this app really aims to be the "home page" for the UK concertgoer. The iAmp Android app is also up and running with support for Nokia & Blackberry on the way.
• They have developed their own dynamic Podcast channel on the iTunes music store. This helps facilitate even more downloads and they are making podcasting a profitable business, while many American companies are still struggling to figure it all out. Absolute has over 750,000 downloads per month of their unique, non-music content, and it is growing at a fast clip. The new iTunes channel will likely accelerate downloads even more.
• They have 'open' playlist meetings for listeners and advertisers, humanizing the company with behind-the-scenes views of the stations. Tom Webster wrote about this over the summer, and it is an idea Absolute have truly taken to heart.

It's worth mentioning that virtually almost all of these efforts are profitable, or at least paid for. Most podcasts go out with a spot attached. Every site is ad supported. Partnerships abound.

These are just the efforts that have already gone public. A variety of other new approaches to relationship building and digital assets are in the pipeline.

Is Absolute Radio the most innovative radio station in the world? They are certainly the most innovative I've come across. Have other nominees for such a title? What are your nominees for the most innovative radio station in the world? Let us know in the comments!

Here is a station in a major market. It features a morning show from Chicago; a drive-time show from Nashville. There are no local shows. This, in the very short term, is a compelling option for some broadcasters today. With such low overhead (i.e., no "talent.") it may even be throwing off some cash with a modest amount of local advertising.

Some stations are genuine entertainment sources, others merely provide "services." This particular station provides a service of convenience--rebroadcasting some national shows into the market--but that service is no longer unique in a world where "repeaters" are irrelevant. IP is the new FM. Very, very soon, every iota of programming on this station will be available everywhere, either live or on demand, from sources other than this particular station, wherever mainstream Americans want to hear it. If I have a relationship with Mancow, or Phil Hendrie, then the advertising power of that relationship rests with them, and not with the utility that happens to rebroadcast them in my local market. All of those stations, those "utility" stations, have now essentially been deregulated. To use an airline analogy, these stations are still operating in a hub-and-spoke world, while the post-deregulation startups are eating their lunch point-to-point. Stations like this one, that offer no added value other than a rebroadcasting service, are essentially middlemen. The Internet has not been kind to middlemen.

When the service provided by stations like this becomes irrelevant, they are probably just going to go away. This is not radio's strength. Radio's strength has always been about shared experience, local community. When the relationship rests with the local jock, morning show or other community fixture (on-air or off) then the radio station can use those relationships to put butts in car seats, stores and restaurants. Only that sense of community will empower listeners and make them feel like they are a part of something larger than themselves, and part of something that matters. Then--and only then--can a radio station really deliver results for local advertisers and fill the void left by the cascading failure of the newspaper industry.

Stations that master local relationships will survive. Stations that own unique, strong music positions with passionate communities will survive (that playlist, after all, is also unique content--and most stations don't do enough to capitalize on that online). 10 years ago, stations that did neither would change formats until they did. When IP is the new FM, those stations might just go dark. The market is already making that decision, for some.

Is this 5 years away? 3? 2? Already here? If you knew this was happening, how would you build a station to meet the challenge?

Could you build that station now?

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?

Trick question. Yesterday, I watched a panel at the Inbound Marketing Summit (#ims09) discuss getting past the "social media hype." Panelists included Brian Solis, Chris Brogan, Jason Falls, Paul Gillin and CC Chapman, all respected voices in social media. At the end of the session, panelists were asked to give a last word of advice for companies seeking to adopt or enhance a social media presence. For the most part, the responses were fairly tactical in nature--not wrong, mind you, just tactical. "Be Human." "Be Helpful." "Be Transparent." We've heard these admonitions numerous times, and they certainly sound reasonable. But what does it mean to you--to a radio station--to be "human?"

The answer, of course, is that a radio station isn't human, or helpful--its people are. Asking whether or not your station is ready to embrace a social media strategy is really asking whether or not the culture of your station or group embraces its humans, and whether or not those humans are empowered to transfer that love to their listeners.

It struck me watching this panel that not every station is going to engage in social media the same way--rather, each station has its own culture, its own level of comfort with transparency, and will find its own way to engage in social media. The key is to try--anything and everything--and see what resonates. Some efforts might fail. Chris Brogan has said that a blog is not a kitten--don't be afraid to kill it off. But don't be afraid to try it, either.

One thing that definitely works is a differential approach to all of the various outposts for social media. You already have a "broadcast" platform--that big tower--so using the various platforms to "tweet out" to followers is, at the very least, an inefficient way to use social platforms. Twitter is great as a listening platform, and as a way to extend invitations to engage, while Facebook allows for deeper engagement and community contribution. Platforms like Foursquare and Brightkite might be great mobile social outposts for jocks doing remotes and live appearances. There's no shortage of sandboxes to play in.

What is best for you? I can't answer that--only this guy would prescribe one approach for everyone. What you can do, however, is educate yourself on the various platforms and how they work, and see what feels right for you--in other words, in which platform(s) do you feel most comfortable and human?

Since it's your humans (and not your "station") that will be the touchpoint of those interactions, why not ask them? At the NAB Radio Show recently I watched a panel of some of today's best air talent talk about some of the ways they interact with listeners. I was particularly impressed with Sheri Lynch, co-host of the syndicated Bob and Sheri show. As a resident of North Carolina, the show's home state, I have long known that Sheri is extremely smart and talented. So it was unsurprising to hear that she is indeed very savvy with social networks, and has developed her own Facebook strategy that is actually quite brilliant.

Sheri never promotes her Facebook page to listeners on the air. She may talk about the show's presence, or her blog, but not her personal Facebook page. Instead, she lets listeners find it on their own (not all that hard to do) and treats it like a special place, something more personal and private that only "select" people stumble upon. Of course, she knows full well that her "friends" on Facebook include lots of listeners, but because her Facebook presence is treated like a "secret garden" of sorts, she can use it for more personal musings/photos/videos and let her listeners feel like they have an even more special, deeper relationship with Sheri than the general listening public.

I was blown away by this. Is this the right idea for you? Only you can be the judge of what is and isn't comfortable. What impressed me about this was the amount of careful thought Sheri had given her use of this particular outpost, and how this wasn't a tactical decision at all--it was all part of a shrewd differential communication strategy to engage listeners on multiple levels. So how should the Bob and Sheri show use social networking to engage listeners? Maybe the answer is to ask Bob and Sheri.

How should your air talent engage their listeners online? I bet they already know, or at least have a clear sense of what feels right--and no one can ever know that better than the talent themselves. After that, it's a simple matter to find the right tools and platforms to allow them to express themselves however they feel comfortable and most human. So, is your station ready to engage? The better question is: are your people ready to engage? Why not ask them? If they are, they are.

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'"

Last week I attended the NAB Radio Show in Philadelphia. Certainly, attendance was not what it used to be, but numbers alone don't tell the whole story. What was really missing, was you. You, the over-worked promotions director, sales manager, program director and/or air talent looking for an edge--a spark for an idea, a tip from a colleague, or even just a mental sorbet to help you reconnect and rediscover your passion for the medium.

You weren't there because you couldn't afford it, or your station wouldn't pay for you to go. You weren't there because you are spread across 5 stations, and couldn't leave the station in a crucial ratings month. You weren't there because there weren't enough sessions (or interesting enough sessions) for your particular discipline.

Next year, the NAB Radio Show is going to be in DC--an expensive city to visit. You probably won't be there, either, for various reasons, but maybe I'm wrong about that. You might be at The Conclave, or CRS--still fantastic events--but you won't be at R&R, or The Gavin or any of a number of "big events" that have faded out of existence.

Here's where you should be. Radio needs its own version of Podcamp. I've attended several Podcamp events (geared towards new media content producers) and they are refreshingly, fantastically user-oriented meetups with a low barrier to entry and a vibrant, democratic atmosphere. Though these events are regional, they are open to all (I've attended events like this across the country) and are entirely content-driven. Podcamps are "unconferences:" events without trade show booths, tchotchkes and T-Shirts, very low registration fees (sometimes free, in fact) and designed to have multiple local presences rather than one "national" event in order to encourage as much participation as possible.

The six "rules" of Podcamp (which govern whether or not you can use the term "Podcamp" in your own event) are integral to the spirit of these events, and a "RadioCamp" would do well to incorporate them:

1. All attendees must be treated equally. Everyone is a rockstar.

2. All content created must be released under a Creative Commons license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/

3. All attendees must be allowed to participate. (subject to limitations of physical space, of course)

4. All sessions must obey the Law of 2 Feet - if you're not getting what you want out of the session, you can and should walk out and do something else. It's not like you have to get your money's worth!

5. The event must be new-media focused - blogging, podcasting, video on the net.

6. The financials of a PodCamp must be fully disclosed in an open ledger, except for any donor/sponsor who wishes to remain anonymous.

"RadioCamp" events could be held in multiple cities, encouraging radio employees of all stripes to come out and share what they have learned with their peers, and participate in the narrative of radio's future. Rule #1, above, is sacrosanct. Sessions are not comprised of windbags like me "presenting," or sales pitches, but rather sessions led by you, sharing what you have learned and asking questions of your fellow participants--sessions are co-created by leader and audience, and 45-minute PowerPoints are forbidden. ALL sessions are accepted, space permitting, and the law of two feet rules the day. Not getting what you hoped from a session? Get up and move to the next one without stigma.

Also take note of Rule 2, above--ALL content must be released under Creative Commons. Podcamps (and, hopefully, RadioCamps) are not walled gardens of information, restricted to attendees--they are the seed events for the dissemination of ideas. Flash photography is not only permitted, it's encouraged--along with videos, podcasts and blog coverage. Fred Jacobs detailed his mixed feelings about not allowing the content at the recent Jacobs Summit to be recorded, but if the cost barriers to such events can be all but eliminated, people will come even if all the content is later available. Besides, the value of RadioCamp wouldn't be in videos of presentations, it would be in participatory dialogue across all disciplines. What a great way to remove the ridiculous church-and-state barrier between programming and sales by providing both a low-cost, regional opportunity for both to share and connect!

What's more, a "RadioCamp" would be a great way for local new media content producers to meet and engage with their broadcast bretheren. Y'all have lots to teach each other, and since they aren't going to the NAB, this is a great way for you to trade experiences and network with other passionate creators of online audio and video.

RadioCamps all across the US would be organized by you (some advice can be found here), not the "suits," and would be designed to break even through a combination of discounted space (universities are good places to go), modest fees (think 25-50 bucks, or free if you can swing it) and sponsorships. You know who should sponsor these? Clear Channel, Cumulus, Citadel, CBS, et al. In light of the intense debates yet to come about localism, it would be a valiant gesture by these companies to support local radio efforts in an era when the vast percentage of "local" content comprises traffic and weather drops. Sponsoring a regional RadioCamp would cost a company--or a cluster--less than sending a few suits to a national conference, and could provide a collegial atmosphere for all employees to share, learn and reengage.

So, hopefully I've planted a seed. I love PodCamps, BarCamps and all of the many varieties of "unconference" I've been able to attend over the years, and would love to see that local, democratic spirit spread across the US for the benefit of the radio community. In fact, though I hope this article has planted a seed, I'll do more than that--I'll start locally myself. Who's up for a RadioCamp Raleigh/Atlanta?

Note: This is the complete text of a recent speech I gave at the NAB Radio Show in Philly. The topic was "A Stimulus Package for Radio." This speech has sparked a lot of interest, so I've decided to reprint the transcript here for all of the Infinite Dialers who couldn't attend.

Good morning. I'm Larry Rosin, President of Edison Research. This is my 22nd consecutive NAB Radio show - I have been at every one since the 1988 show in Washington DC.

I am a graduate of Princeton University class of 1984 and have an MBA from Wharton here in Philadelphia. I pretty much never mention this in my 'radio life', but it is germane to what I want to speak about today.

While there are so many issues challenging radio, at least most of them are on the agenda at this meeting. But other than the heroic efforts of, mostly, my colleague Edison VP Tom Webster, there is almost no one discussing one core issue. We are fast becoming an industry of old men and an industry with a glaring HR crisis.

Industry of old men? Take a look around at this conference. I am still, after 22 years, among the youngest attendees, just as I was in Washington in 1988. If it weren't for Daniel Anstandig I might actually be at the age of 47 one of the whippersnappers of this industry still.

Take a look at this panel, despite appearances, I am the youngest male member of this panel. Thank goodness they asked Heidi to be a presenter so it wasn't just a meeting of the grumpy old men.

Our panels are largely panels of old men saying things like: "We really need to develop a digital strategy." And for the record, this is at least the twelfth straight NAB Radio show with mostly the same increasingly older men saying that radio needs to develop a digital strategy. And oh, what sweet memories I have of the 2000 NAB Radio Show, now incredibly nine years ago, the best one ever. Held in San Francisco if you remember that one. I'm sure most of you do because almost everyone here is a long-time attendee of these conferences. Ah that 2000 show, when more Internet companies showed up than radio employees. I know because I gave one of the principle speeches at that conference, about the Internet, and as I stood in a room and spoke to an audience of over 2000 people in the Moscone center and asked: "Raise your hand if you work in traditional radio" and then I said: "Raise your hand if you work in the Internet" and more hands went up for the latter.

The Internet companies showed up at that show with a million plans to transform radio, and course simultaneously build it into what it could have become. But their bubble was about to burst, and most all of them were gone by the time of the 2001 show. Radio's 'masters of the universe' seemed to mostly say: "Phew - glad that's over and we can go back to the fundamentals of radio - building clusters, acquiring stations, and firing people."

So my radio stimulus plan is largely more of a dream than an actual plan. At the risk of sounding bitter, I have promoted endless numbers of practical, real plans to help the industry in the short and long terms, and most of them have gone unheeded, and for the record so have many of the other people on this panel suggested many practical, inexpensive things that could be done to help radio, and mostly they have been ignored. So why not dream?

Let me steal from Tom Webster's writing, just yesterday, from our company's radio blog the infinite dial dot com.

He had been sitting through yesterday's group PD panel, when one of the panelists, a group PD for - let me just say a really really big radio group - said that radio does have a way for young people to get into the industry - by starting in the tiniest markets and working their way up. Tom writes:

The biggest problem in broadcast radio is not their digital strategy, but their HR strategy. Work has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, and the workplace of today has little in common with the workplace of the previous decade. I sit on the Alumni Board of the business school from which I got my MBA, and from an admissions and retention perspective, the world of work has changed irrevocably. Where MBA programs used to get mid-level managers from big companies in droves, those big companies and those mid-level managerial positions have disappeared. The potential student body for our program has become the thousands of young entrepreneurs in our area that the Internet revolution has created, and our challenge is no longer to give an assistant manager the sheepskin they need to be a manager--it's to keep these thousands of entrepreneurs in business and improve the economic climate of our region.

Into this new world of work comes today's talented young creative professional. They have the tools to create their own future, and they are using them, not waiting around for their "shot." Attracting young talent has to be the primary focus for the radio industry today--there simply are not enough young people in the business for it to be sustainably competitive in the medium term. One of the panelists reiterated the importance of their digital strategy, and that young talent will think radio is "cool" when they are able to use all of the digital tools to make it so. This is the wrong end of the funnel. Today's web-savvy young creatives already know how to use the tools, and most of them are free. They already have that knowledge, and they are already using it. The solution is not to make a bunch of tools and hope young creatives are attracted to the business to use them--it's to hire the best young creatives now and tap into the knowledge they already have.

In one breath, a panelist in today's session proclaimed that "we need to have a strong digital strategy" to attract young talent, but then added "I don't know how we are going to pay them." THAT is the problem, in a nutshell, and all the Twittering in the world won't really address it.

Radio needs two basic types of professionals: creative talent (for on-air, programming and promotions) and business talent (the quants and marketing analysts that will blend science into the art). In the case of the latter, Radio has never done a good job of attracting the best talent. I've noted before in this space that when I finished my undergraduate degree, I had three choices: I could go to graduate school, I could take a high-paying job with one of the McKinsey/Andersen/PWC-esque companies recruiting on campus, or I could get Carlos and the Chicken's coffee for two years in the hopes of getting an overnight shift someday. Guess which one I didn't choose. Attracting the best minds in marketing, analysis and finance is not a matter of working people from Kaline to Moline and asking them to tough it out--it's attracting the best people NOW and creating attractive positions, favorable working conditions, and humane career paths that don't involve uprooting families every 18 months.

For creatives, things have changed dramatically. There was once a time when we could expect creative talent to gravitate to radio, tough it out for a decade or so, and finally crack the big time. Today, however, all the most creative people need is a Mac and a mic and they already have the same potential access to a digital audience that we do, without all of the restrictions of corporate broadcasting today. The brightest young talent today is more entrepreneurial, and has the means to syndicate themselves anytime they want--and do things their way. Maybe they will fail, maybe not--but they can do it on their terms, and that is increasingly important to today's potential young talent. If they are going to "pay their dues" for little money, they are more willing to do it on their own than ever before.

Wow. Bravo Tom. I couldn't have said it better, and thus I didn't - I just stole your work (Tom's post, and all the comments it has generated, can be found here.)

My stimulus plan again is a dream, as is exposed by the quote embedded within Tom's piece - "I don't know how we are going to pay them." My dream, then, is that we get the government to pay for, with their monopoly money, radio to start hiring, developing, and using an entirely new generation of young people to take us into our future. Since radio's masters of the universe decided to use all of the monstrous profits radio creates to just leverage up for more and more debt, instead of reinvesting in its future, we will need the government's money.

And what will we do? We will go to the Harvard Lampoon, and instead of letting every one of their graduates go to work for The Simpsons, or 30 Rock, or Conan O'Brien, we will get them to begin filling a real talent pool of creativity for the industry.

We will hire the very kinds of young business students Tom is describing, emerging from today's business schools with an entirely different picture of media and of the world, who will guide us into a real future, not one where many prescriptions for the industry are to 'go back to what worked in the 1970s.'

We will start aggressively recruiting the best podcasters, the best talents from YouTube or whatever other new media stars we can find and say: "Take six months, hone your craft further on our HD stations - don't worry no one is listening any way -- and invent the future of our medium. We will hire these people by the dozens or hundreds, and we will let them loose. In this way we would truly be doing nothing different than radio actually did in the 1970s - when FM was essentially a similar kind of playground. Look at the geniuses who emerged from that period - and it's not hard to do so - a huge portion of that crew is the crew that continues to come to this meeting.

An astonishing number of the people who have propelled this medium for the last 30 years are graduates of that era, the early FM days when 24 year old geniuses could become GMs, and 21 year olds could become major market program directors.

And most of the people who populate radio today are people who just knew at incredibly young ages that this is what they wanted to do with their lives. So they started hanging around at radio stations at the age of 14 or 16. This has been radio's recruitment strategy for the last several generations. Hope and pray that talent just walks in the door as a teenager.

But ask yourself, if a brilliant creative talent walked into a radio station today, or for that matter walked into the group office of a radio company today, with a college degree, looking to make - oh -- $35,000 per year - where would he or she be placed? Let's face facts, we simply do not have anything close to a career path for that person. Could we really ask that person to go find a job in Topeka doing overnights? Well we all know the answer is no - because we long ago eliminated live talent there. I suppose we could offer them a job in sales, and if this person were desperate enough to work in 'media' to take such a job, he or she would be discouraged and gone within six months.

So please, Mr. Obama, give me the money, as radio stimulus czar, to build a team to identify, hire, nurture, and let loose this talent onto radio's future. So that Daniel Anstandig has someone within 20 years of his age to hang out with at the NAB Radio Show 2012.

This is a long post, but I hope you'll indulge me and read it through, because I hope you'll agree that the issue is too important to treat lightly.

I just sat through a panel comprising some of the top programming executives in radio at the NAB Radio Show in Philadelphia (in fact, it ended about an hour ago, which tells you how passionate I really am about this topic.) During this session, programming leaders from companies like Clear Channel, Emmis, Saga and Radio One talked about all of the ways they are using social media, streaming, mobile applications and other digital tools to grow radio and engage audience. If you came to the session wondering if today's radio corporations "get" digital, you got your answer--they do.

And yet, there was something tremendously disappointing about this panel--in particular, how the panelists responded to some of the audience's questions about growing and nurturing talent in an industry that is relying increasingly on syndication, voice-tracking, and other "right-sizing" measures. The response to one question struck a particularly sour note--how do we nurture our "farm system" when so many of the potential jobs for newcomers have been eliminated and automated?

The response from one panelist was that there continues to be a "farm system": small and medium markets. Talent can still work their way up the system in smaller markets--only, the progression is now from morning show in small market "a" to morning show in medium market "b" (and not from overnights in market "a" to drive time in market "a.") He then gave a sports analogy--when a rookie is drafted in baseball, they don't start out making millions in the big leagues, they "pay their dues" in single A, double A and so on. The big market jobs are there for talented people that "pay their dues in the minors" before they make the big leagues.

Full disclosure: I despise sports analogies in business. I find them not only simplistic, but generally irrelevant. In this case, trotting out this analogy revealed quite clearly that the biggest problem in broadcast radio is not their digital strategy, but their HR strategy. Work has changed dramatically in the past 10 years, and the workplace of today has little in common with the workplace of the previous decade. I sit on the Alumni Board of the business school from which I got my MBA, and from an admissions and retention perspective, the world of work has changed irrevocably. Where MBA programs used to get mid-level managers from big companies in droves, those big companies and those mid-level managerial positions have disappeared. The potential student body for our program has become the thousands of young entrepreneurs in our area that the Internet revolution has created, and our challenge is no longer to give an assistant manager the sheepskin they need to be a manager--it's to keep these thousands of entrepreneurs in business and improve the economic climate of our region.

Into this new world of work comes today's talented young creative professional. They have the tools to create their own future, and they are using them, not waiting around for their "shot." Attracting young talent has to be the primary focus for the radio industry today--there simply are not enough young people in the business for it to be sustainably competitive in the medium term. One of the panelists reiterated the importance of their digital strategy, and that young talent will think radio is "cool" when they are able to use all of the digital tools to make it so. This is the wrong end of the funnel. Today's web-savvy young creatives already know how to use the tools, and most of them are free. They already have that knowledge, and they are already using it. The solution is not to make a bunch of tools and hope young creatives are attracted to the business to use them--it's to hire the best young creatives now and tap into the knowledge they already have.

In one breath, a panelist in today's session proclaimed that "we need to have a strong digital strategy" to attract young talent, but then added "I don't know how we are going to pay them." THAT is the problem, in a nutshell, and all the Twittering in the world won't really address it.

Radio needs two basic types of professionals: creative talent (for on-air, programming and promotions) and business talent (the quants and marketing analysts that will blend science into the art). In the case of the latter, Radio has never done a good job of attracting the best talent. I've noted before in this space that when I finished my undergraduate degree, I had three choices: I could go to graduate school, I could take a high-paying job with one of the McKinsey/Andersen/PWC-esque companies recruiting on campus, or I could get Carlos and the Chicken's coffee for two years in the hopes of getting an overnight shift someday. Guess which one I didn't choose. Attracting the best minds in marketing, analysis and finance is not a matter of working people from Kaline to Moline and asking them to tough it out--it's attracting the best people NOW and creating attractive positions, favorable working conditions, and humane career paths that don't involve uprooting families every 18 months.

For creatives, things have changed dramatically. There was once a time when we could expect creative talent to gravitate to radio, tough it out for a decade or so, and finally crack the big time. Today, however, all the most creative people need is a Mac and a mic and they already have the same potential access to a digital audience that we do, without all of the restrictions of corporate broadcasting today. The brightest young talent today is more entrepreneurial, and has the means to syndicate themselves anytime they want--and do things their way. Maybe they will fail, maybe not--but they can do it on their terms, and that is increasingly important to today's potential young talent. If they are going to "pay their dues" for little money, they are more willing to do it on their own than ever before.

This is a long post, and it's long because I'm passionate about this and alarmed by broadcast radio's response to date. Is a digital strategy important? You betcha. But the secret to all the options that young web-savvy talent have before them is the fact that all of these tools are free, and they are already using them. The real strategic issue at the root of radio's problem is this:

We cannot continue to say, over and over, that content is king--and then continue to invest in tools. Tools don't make content, people do. The tools are free. Pay the people.

Each week (pretty much), I send out an email to the many thousands of you that subscribe to our email list that highlights some of the things we have been talking about here on The Infinite Dial. Because these emails come directly from me (and not from a marketing bot), I get every bounceback, every out-of-office notification and every piece of fan (or hate!) mail. This week, I got something else--an alarming number of automated "...is no longer with the company" messages.

Losing your job is traumatic. Behind every "great opportunity" and "exciting next chapter" in the press release, lie the weeks, months and possibly years of time spent coping with financial and emotional distress.

I have nothing to say here about radio's continued "right-sizing." Nothing I write here will do much, really, as therapeutic as it might be to vent. If you want to vent, however, do me a favor: take ten minutes of your day, right now if possible, and use that energy to call someone you know that has lost his or her job. Just say hi. Now's a good time.

Cheers. Hope to see you next week at the NAB.

Going to the NAB (or at least going to be around Philly Sep 23-25)? Interested in radio's digital future? I can think of at least two places you need to be to join in and help lead the dialogue. First, I hope you'll join me on Wednesday, September 23rd, at The Digital Meetup (registration required), which will take place at The Phoenix Rooftop Deck near the convention center. This is a fantastic networking opportunity and your chance to exchange ideas with some really smart people (scroll down the main invitation page to see the attendee list) including, hopefully, YOU.

Also, Kurt Hanson is bringing the RAIN east--or, at least, the RAIN Summit. I've been fortunate enough to attend the last two RAIN Summits in Las Vegas, and bringing an abbreviated edition of this wonderful forum for Internet Radio to the NAB is a great idea and a welcome addition to the slate of events that week in Philly. The event will be held on Thursday the 24th at the Hard Rock Cafe next to the convention center. More details are available here.

Finally, I'd love to connect anytime with you. If you want to meet up--either professionally, or just socially--at the NAB, I'll be there all week, as they say in the lounges. Hit me on the Twitter or text/call me at 919-260-0228. I'll be on a social networking panel on Friday morning (which I hope you'll attend!) but would much prefer some actual, you know, old-fashioned networking to learn what you are doing and how your station is seizing its place on the Infinite Dial.

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.

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!

I live and work firmly within the New York metropolitan area. I happen to love much of the programming available that emanates from New York on the AM band -- sports on WFAN and ESPN Radio, News on WCBS and WINS, talk from WABC and WOR, business news from Bloomberg, and Radio Disney especially when I'm with my daughter.

There is only one problem -- I can BARELY HEAR ANY OF THIS. To listen to these stations from my metro, I usually have to listen through all manner of scratch and hiss. Often, I can hear nothing at all. If it is raining (and it has been non-stop for several weeks), almost nothing comes in. And let me restate -- I'm not 'DXing' radio stations from hundreds of miles away. I'm trying to listen to my market's own radio stations!

At last year's Jacobs Media Summit in Austin, I was privileged to be asked to run for "President of Radio" and to give a speech with policy suggestions for the radio industry. In my speech I proposed a plan for 'sunset-ing' the AM Band. Let's pick a time period, perhaps five years, for a date certain when AM Radio will cease. At that time the bandwidth can be sold and a fund created to compensate license-holders. During those five years, any AM brands worth their salt would likely make the transfer to the FM band, replacing duplicative FM music stations, and allowing people to actually listen to that great programming.

I honestly thought I might get some traction with this idea, or if nothing else some attention. But for a variety of reasons, few of the many good suggestions made that day got onto the industry's agenda. So I thought I would give it another go.

AM radio's secondary purpose of providing communication to rural America has long since obsolesced. There is too much radio advertising inventory chasing too few advertising dollars. All manner of fabulous programming -- programming that compels listeners and advertisers -- is going unheard on the AM band.

So what do you say readers: Is it time to start the sun setting on AM Radio? Your comments are welcome.

I can't believe these guys aren't syndicated yet. And that production!

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.

When the old CISS (Kiss 92) Toronto was CHR in the late '90s, it unabashedly leaned both rhythmic and young. On the former score, it had help from a burgeoning Canadian rap and R&B scene. On the latter, it was more willing than any American CHR to play, say, Aaron Carter and a few other teen pop artists that were usually exiled to Radio Disney. It was, essentially, the forerunner to the "tween" version of "Amp Radio" that lived on HD-2 in Los Angeles until earlier this year.

The new Kiss 92.5, which returns CHR to the frequency occupied for six years by CJAQ (Jack FM), sounds a lot more like L.A.'s current more rhythmic version of Amp, (97.1 KLSX), (as do most of today's CHR launches). It pulls into a crowded market. Since Kiss' departure, Top 40 CIDC (Z103.5) has become a much stronger station, although it holds on to some of its eclectic dance lean. Adult Top 40 CHUM-FM and CKFM (Virgin Radio 99.9) have not only gone considerably more rhythmic, but managed to redefine Hot AC throughout Canada. (It's a much more rhythmic format up there. The '90s pop/rock Hot AC, faltering here, is almost completely dead there.) There's also CFXJ (Flow 93.5), which has moved back toward Urban after a more pop-leaning period.

The new Kiss will definitely differ from its competition in its rotations, running at an apparent 90 minutes on powers on Friday. CHUM-FM plays its powers 64x a week and the others are all in the high 40s. It was also more relentlessly current than CHUM-FM, which has a good amount of '90s gold (and will also throw in a Bob Marley or "Summer Of '69" now and then as well). Here's the station on Friday afternoon:

Nelly Furtado, "Do It" (Canadian)
Black Eyed Peas, "Boom Boom Pow"
Karl Wolf, "Carrera" (Canadian rhythmic pop -- follow-up to his Canadian hit remake of Toto's "Africa")
Kanye West, "Stronger"
New Cities, "Dead End Countdown" (Canadian teen punk/pop)
Soulja Boy, "Kiss Me Through The Phone"
Kardinal Offishall, "Numba 1 (Tide Is High)" (Canadian)
Madcon, "Beggin'"
Beyonce, "Halo" (begins 5:00 top-of-the-hour top three countdown that ends with Jamie)
Black Eyed Peas, "I Gotta Feeling"
Jamie Foxx, "Blame It"
Suzie McNeil, "Supergirl" (Canadian power-pop artist along lines of Pink/Kelly, etc. This is a shuffle along the lines of "So What," "Womanizer," etc.)
Kristinia DeBarge, "Goodbye"

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.

Chris Brogan wrote a wonderful piece today entitled Audience or Community that I'd strongly recommend to our readers in the radio industry (and if you are trying to sort out best practices for using social media for external and internal communication, I highly recommend subscribing to Chris's blog and email newsletter.)

Broadcast radio is in the business of building audience, but "audience" just doesn't cut it online. As I recently presented at the Inbound Marketing Summit in San Francisco, more than one in three Americans (and a majority of Americans 12-34) have a profile on at least one social networking site. These stats, coupled with the enormous growth in 35-54 adoption of services like Facebook, are clear indicators that your "audience" is looking for something completely different online: community.

What's the difference? Brogan offers a simple, yet powerful distinction:

The only difference between an audience and a community is which direction the chairs are pointing.

Here is one simple, yet powerful idea: open your weekly music meeting to your listeners. You don't need anything fancy for this--no web integration, no fancy-shmancy chat application, no consultant required. You don't need to spend a dime. Just hold your music meeting live, each week, on Twitter: append a hashtag (like #WXYZMusic) to your tweets, and talk about the songs you are considering adding or dropping and why. Use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck or Twhirl (or simply go to search.twitter.com) to search for that hashtag, and start conversations with the listeners that reply. Be sure to promote your Twitter account and the weekly music meeting time on the air, and--here's the easy part--listen. If you get a body of passionate Tweeters fighting for a song or artist they believe in, reward that passion. If the song fits the format, why not give it a few spins? Don't forget to Tweet when you are playing it to let your listeners know that their feedback really counts.

Taking chances on songs and artists that your listeners on Twitter are passionate about will go a long way towards translating that passion to your online--and on air--efforts, and help to turn your audience into a community. You have nothing to lose here--either you are doing music research and can quickly verify whether or not that chance was rewarded, or you aren't doing music research--so who are you to argue with your listeners anyway? Sure, holding public music meetings on Twitter will be good for PR and give your station a temporary buzz, but that buzz will only be self-sustaining if you actually transform your station into a listening entity, and not just a broadcasting entity.

Spin those chairs around.

"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.

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.

Last fall, when the all-'90s format had not yet made its way beyond Sirius XM Radio to a large-market FM signal, we were very candid about both the reasons that the format would be hard to do (not a decade that contributes a lot of strong testers beyond Rock radio, lots of warring musical factions, rhythmic music that has already failed to take hold as its own format) and why it was inevitable (the very successful all-'80s stations were already in evidence a decade ago, every generation demands its own Oldies, and an economic downturn was likely to help things along).

The '90s are certainly the music of many current programmers' lives; I arrived at a client's group programming meetings the evening the article was published and many excited hours of lobby discussions ensued. So you can expect Entercom's KBZC (the Buzz) Sacramento, Calif., to draw some fire from both sides -- those who use any new gold-based format (including the still-vital Bob- and Jack) as an excuse to give their "fad format" stump speech and those who do have a personal attachment to the music and have their own idea how it should sound.

But this morning, on day four, The Buzz was cohering pretty well. With the exception of the first two songs in the hour below, most of the songs would have either been heard next to each other on the Top 40 radio of the '90s or should have been. Skid Row's "I Remember You" was already gone from the radio by the time the Red Hot Chili Peppers' "Give It Away" came along two years later. And in the prevailing wisdom of 1993, there was no station that would have played either of them along with Snoop Dogg's "Gin & Juice." (Possible exception: WHYT Detroit.) But from a 2009 standpoint, one recognizes all three songs as having appealed to a lot of the same guys.

Here's The Buzz at 7 a.m. this morning:

Dr. Dre, "Dre Day"
Sheryl Crow, "My Favorite Mistake"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Give It Away"
Snoop Doggy Dogg, "Gin & Juice"
Skid Row, "I Remember You"
Kid Rock, "Cowboy"
Will Smith, "Gettin' Jiggy With It"
Depeche Mode, "Personal Jesus"
No Doubt, "Spiderwebs"
Fugees, "Killing Me Softly"
Duran Duran, "Ordinary World"
Natalie Merchant, "Kind And Generous"
Prince, "1999" (did chart again in 1999 because of New Year's Eve play)
Blues Traveler, "Run-Around"
Nirvana, "Come As You Are"

A friend called KHWG Fallon/Reno, Nev.,to my attention a few months ago. Deep Classic Country, he said, including the old stuff. Songs even he didn't know. "The Mighty 750" turned out to be everything he promised, but there were also the KPIG-like liners (including a drop from Mel Tillis promising "10,000 watts of pure Country pork") and some spots that were like "Northern Exposure," but real, such as Fallon Bail Bonds: "If you ring, they spring" and "they finance"!

Here's KHWG at 12:14 p.m. yesterday:

Lynn Anderson, "Big Girls Don't Cry"
Roy Rogers, "Moonlight on the Prairie"
B.J. Thomas, "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head"
Loretta Lynn, "Fist City"
Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Kissing Bug Boogie"
Tanya Tucker, "Highway Robbery"
Frizzell & West, "You're The Reason God Made Oklahoma"
Bill Anderson, "I Get The Fever"
Gary Morris, "I'll Never Stop Lovin' You"
Monroe Brothers, "I'm Rollin' On"
Reba McEntire, "One Promise Too Late"
Lefty Frizzell, "Forever (And Always)"
Deborah Allen, "Baby I Lied"

Classic Hits/Classic Rock should be easy in a market with the rich musical history of San Francisco, right? But it wasn't that for any of the recent Classic Hits incarnations of KFRC-FM. Or for the Bob-and-Jack-like (but older skewing) Max 95.7. And any new entrant finds themselves flanked by Cumulus' KSAN (the Bone) and sister KFOG, a Triple-A station, but one of the few that is willing to play "Sweet Home Alabama."

There's a vaguely Triple-A feel to "103.7, the Band," the station which replaced longtime Smooth Jazz outlet KKSF tonight. A stager promises "songs that made you love music in the first place." The Website declares that "103.7 The Band has been designed around the rich heritage of the San Francisco music scene. A time and place where music was filled with passion and reflected the ideals of a generation.

Musically, however, it's much more of a nuts-and-bolts Classic Rocker -- very focused, at least until the end of this 75-minute stretch, on 1972-77. (Only the overall era suggests that the station might also, like the old KFRC, be trying to fill the Oldies/Greatest Hits hole as well.) Here's what the Band played between 7:10 and 8:25 p.m. tonight:

David Essex, "Rock On"
Styx, "Come Sail Away"
Eagles, "Already Gone"
ELO, "Fire On High"
Hollies, "Long Cool Woman In A Black Dress"
Boston, "Peace Of Mind"
Fleetwood Mac, "Rihannon"
Toto, "Hold The Line"
Simple Minds, "Don't You (Forget About Me)"
Led Zeppelin, "Stairway To Heaven"
Steve Miller Band, "Take The Money And Run"
Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, "Don't Do Me Like That"
Doobie Brothers, "Without You"
Elton John, "Your Song"
Meatloaf, "Paradise By The Dashboard Light"
Neil Young & Crazy Horse, "Cinnamon Girl"
Bon Jovi, "You Give Love A Bad Name"
Mamas & the Papas, "California Dreaming"
Van Morrison, "Brown Eyed Girl"

I take format changes more seriously than most people. But even in this dismaying year, it's been a long time since I was as bummed about any one format change as I am about the reports that WAMO-FM Pittsburgh and its two sister stations have been sold, have laid off 35 people, and will likely go religious.

Since there's already a Rhythmic-leaning Top 40 in rival WKST (Kiss FM), chances are excellent that the move would leave the market without an Urban FM for the first time in 35 years.

In 1996, WAMO traded a better signal for its current frequency -- sending such a shudder through Pittsburgh's African-American community that a fictionalized version of the sale is one of the key plot points in August Wilson's final play, "Radio Golf." So imagine the likely reaction in Pittsburgh tonight.

The sale announcement comes at the end of a week when broadcasters have been rallying listeners against any potential performance royalty by emphasizing the threat it poses to Urban radio. Six hours ago, you could have chalked that up to the hyperbole that has marked both sides of that debate. Now, WAMO's sale emphasizes just how many issues Urban radio has to deal with in 2009 -- with or without a performance royalty.

Meanwhile, anybody who might have been waiting for the big groups to turn radio back over to the smaller, dedicated operator is going to have to wait a little longer. Former Citadel honcho Larry Wilson, who announced his return to radio this week, and WAMO's new owners are both getting bargains as radio's current malaise claims smaller owners (not that Paul Allen, Wilson's seller, needs your tears).

WAMO's call letters are said to have come from Pittsburgh's Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers. But its slogan for many years was, "We Are Moving On." And it's devastating to think that this time "moving on" doesn't mean "moving forward."

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"

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"

In the late '90s, KKNG (King Country) Oklahoma City took the market by surprise with a successful, locally-owned Country Gold format that pushed its way into a very crowded market. At a time when Classic Country was thought of more as an AM music format or a niche at best, King Country managed to be No. 1, not only in the format but in the market. Then, faced with the same demo pressures as most, King Country evolved further and further toward mainstream country, allowing Clear Channel's KXXY to move into the gold-based Country position.

So it's worth noting that King Country segued back to a yesterday-and-today Country format in the fall. The story is still being written, but King did win the last month of a three-way Country battle in the winter book, and, unlike the station it once was, is posting 25-54 numbers in the same range as its 12-plus numbers. It's a story that we're proud to have been part of. And it's also encouraging that a yesterday-and-today Country format can still work, even as the format's all-ages coalition starts to splinter.

Here's KKNG at 11 a.m. today:

Toby Keith, "Who's Your Daddy"
Gene Watson, "Pick The Wildwood Flower"
Tim McGraw, "I Like It, I Love It"
Alan Jackson, "Country Boy"
Alabama, "Mountain Music"
Blake Shelton, "I'll Just Hold On"
Kenny Chesney, "She's Got It All"
Carrie Underwood, "I Told You So"
Steve Wariner, "All Roads Lead To You" (a staged triple-play)
Steve Wariner, "I Got Dreams"
Steve Wariner, "The Weekend"
Joe Diffie, "If The Devil Danced In Empty Pockets"
Faith Hill, "It Matters To Me"
Brooks & Dunn, "Ain't Nothin' 'Bout You"

Suburban NYC's WGHT (North Jersey 1500) has always had a special place in the hearts of music junkies for a reliable mix of the Oldies you hear everywhere and the songs that you hear nowhere else. But the emphasis has switched slightly toward the latter now that Rich Appel has started doing some weekend shifts on the station. Appel, a record label research department veteran during the week, has established a second beachhead in recent years as an oldies/music trivia expert, particularly with the newsletter Hz So Good (pronounce it like your Chief Engineer would). He's been appearing as a morning show guest on WGHT for a while now, so this was the next logical step. And it's one more reason to appreciate WGHT as a locally-operated small-market outlet that operates in defiance of current "radio law."

Here's WGHT in the final hour of Appel's Sunday afternoon show. The car themed songs are part of a special weekend:

Jan & Dean, "Dead Man's Curve"
Skylark, "Wildflower"
Charlie Gracie, "Butterfly"
Desmond Dekker, "Israelites"
Elton John, "Levon"
Elvis Presley, "Spinout"
Rick Springfield, "Human Touch"
Bruce Springsteen, "Human Touch"
William DeVaughn, "Be Thankful For What You Got"
Joe Jones, "You Talk Too Much"
Steve Miller Band, "Jet Airliner"
Paul Revere & Raiders, "Kicks"
Chuck Berry, "No Particular Place to Go"
Bob Dylan, "Tangled Up in Blue"
John Cougar, "Jack & Diane"

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"

We've been following Greater Media's WNUW (Now 97.5) Philadelphia since its sign-on last fall, when the station positioned itself as fresher (if not "Fresh"-er) than rival WBEB (B101), but played essentially the same music, including some softer '70s titles. In recent days, however, Now 97.5 has evolved toward Adult Top 40 under new PD Jules Riley. Gone is the "younger approach to today's soft rock" slogan, replaced by "today's best music."

Judging from the imaging on-air and on its Website, Now is positioning itself as close to WIOQ (Q102), the Top 40 that has gotten more adult-friendly under new PD Tracy Austin. The :00 music promo I heard this hour was Lady Gaga, Rihanna, and Katy Perry. But there's also '80s and '90s. This station, in fact, would have actually delivered on "a younger approach to today's soft rock" better than its predecessor. It is, in any event, moving into a position that has been vacant for nearly five years in Philly. And one that Adult Modern WRFF (Radio 104.5) gets to fill by default.

Here's the new Now from an hour ago at 10:25 a.m.:

Bryan Adams, "Summer of '69"
Fray, "How to Save A Life"
Finger 11, "One Thing"
Jason Mraz, "I'm Yours"
Matchbox 20, "3 A.M."
Pussycat Dolls, "Don't 'Cha"
Daughtry, "It's Not Over"
TLC, "Waterfalls"
Goo Goo Dolls, "Give A Little Bit"
Lady Gaga, "Just Dance"
Aerosmith, "Crying"

Updating the Ross On Radio mailing list in recent weeks, I've been subtracting a lot of e-mail addresses at major broadcast groups and adding a lot at gmail.com. Not all of the fast growing domain's radio users are between radio jobs, of course. And there are still a lot more addresses on the mailing list through AOL (835) or Yahoo (407) than Gmail (333). But Gmail is the one that has grown the most recently -- some of those AOL addresses are a decade old while the new provider's growth has been in the last year or so. And when somebody sends me their job-hunting or new consultancy address, it's usually likely to be Gmail these days.

And here's the chilling part, if only gmail represented new employment for radio people, it would be the second largest radio group represented on my mailing list, behind only Clear Channel (684 names). It would be a hundred names ahead of Citadel's 233, about twice the size of Cumulus and three times the size of Radio-One. And it makes you think, what if there were some logical new venture that all the new members of gmail nation could start together?

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.

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!

There are a lot of transitions in radio these days, but with the news this morning that WXTU Philadelphia PD Bob McKay will be leaving the station eight months ahead of his planned end-of-the-year retirement, a shout-out is in order. For the last decade, McKay crafted a unique Country station in a market where Country has never had an easy path, and unlike some programmers confronted with that task, never did it in a way that denied being a Country station. Despite his indelible association with Country, McKay brought a lot of the same CHR sensibilities to the format that successor Leo Baldwin will, and programmed a station that was, in a good way, different from the record-for-record, liner-for-liner homogeneity of many Country stations.

We warned you to listen to Oldies CHUM-AM Toronto while there was still time. Now it's time to issue the same sort of alert for eclectic Adult Standards KCEE Tucson, Ariz., which is ending its tenure as what the Arizona Daily Star calls owner Jim Slone's "giant public iPod." Slone is the former owner of Country KIIM and others in the market. He's run KCEE for three years with a Standards/MOR/Classic Country hybrid that sounds a lot like the format did elsewhere a decade or so ago. Now it's being sold to new owners who may keep the Standards format but expect, at the very least, to move it to a lesser signal. So enjoy it now. Or if it's not your type of music, just check out the music log.

Here's KCEE at 7:45 a.m. today:

Nat King Cole, "Fascination"
Frank Weir, "The Happy Wanderer"
Chad & Jeremy, "Willow Weep For Me"
Olivia Newton-John, "Have You Never Been Mellow"
Louis Armstrong, "It Takes Two To Tango"
Guy Mitchell, "Heartaches By The Number"
Bobby Bare, "Detroit City"
Eddie Rabbitt, "Driving My Life Away"
Andy Williams, "In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning"
Mitch Miller, "The Yellow Rose Of Texas"
Roy Orbison, "Blue Bayou"
Sylvia, "Nobody"

With so many radio people looking for a job these days, give Country WGKX Memphis PD Tim Jones some credit for creativity for listing himself here.

We did warn you a few weeks back that with Oldies having gotten easier to program on Canadian FM that your time to enjoy the eclectic Oldies format on 1050 CHUM-AM Toronto was probably limited. CHUM was on its second low-rated incarnation as an Oldies station. Canadian Oldies AMs have been phasing themselves out at a relatively regular clip in recent years. But its switch to all-news this week was still a shock to the system of many Canadian radio people. "What a disaster for radio! What an insult to our industry, to this city!" wrote one Canadian radio friend.

For the record, I'm really sorry to lose CHUM's Oldies format, too. In its second Oldies run under PD Brad Jones it had great depth and breadth. It was also one of the few Oldies AMs in Canada that gave you a sense of how many British hits had repeated their success in Canada without ever getting traction here. It was also one of the few stations that truly served as an example of "better living through voice-tracking" -- CKWW Detroit PD Charlie O'Brien pulled double-duty on CHUM and if you didn't know that, you wouldn't have figured it out from the on-air product.

That said, the CHUM-AM legacy has continued on its Adult Top 40 FM for 20-plus years and if there's anything better than heritage calls on an Oldies station, it's hearing them used on a station that still plays the hits. CHUM's similarly programmed sister stations, CKWW and CFRW Winnipeg persevere for now. And, most important, it can't be much longer until somebody goes FM Oldies in Toronto -- there are currently at least three candidates for a change.

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.

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.)

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."

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.

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.

An interesting nugget in the recent M Street/Inside Radio format counts for February. As you might expect in the current radio climate, there are now 235 stations off-the-air vs. 140 in February, 2008. And nearly 20 stations were reported dark between January and February. That number, however, has not yet caught up to the number of dark stations in the early '90s. The M Street Directories in those years show 323 stations off-the-air in 1991, 372 in 1992 and 394 in 1993. (Of that last number, 273 of those were AMs vs.121 FMs.) By 2005, the number of stations off the air would fall to 70.

So broadcasters haven't yet been forced to shut down the number of stations they were during the early '90s crisis that was used to build the case for deregulation. Then again, at 20 stations a month, they're catching up pretty quickly. And whatever other truck one might have with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it will be telling if, ultimately, broadcasters are no more able to keep their stations on the air than they were before deregulation.

With the Neilsen/Cumulus Sticker Diary soon to make its debut stateside, it may be of interest to American radio broadcasters to learn of a recent related issuefrom the UK.

While Neilsen does not do the radio ratings in the UK -- the entity that does (RAJAR) also uses an aided-recall sticker diary system.

As many people know, in the late summer of last year, well-known national Rock station Virgin Radio was bought and as part of the deal the name had to be changed. It became "Absolute Radio."

When the Rajar report for the fall came out a few days ago, Absolute had numbers well off from those of Virgin. Did people turn away because they were loyal to Richard Branson's famous brand name? Well, perhaps, but far more likely is that the aided-recall sticker system could not handle such a change.

The method there is to have respondents flick through 62 (!) index cards and find the names of the stations they listen to (and then the stickers are placed into the diary). Absolute was saddled with a card that said "Absolute Radio (formerly Virgin Radio)".

Now imagine flicking through so many cards. Do you think your eye would travel over to the "formerly" part? Or would you just flick past the unfamiliar "Absolute" before you would even get there?

Well, it turns out we can prove the situation -- the ratings period started two weeks before the name change! And, guess what, the numbers dove dramatically while the station was still called Virgin. The problem lied not with themselves but with the cards.

All other data produced for Absolute implies they have at least as many listeners, or more likely MORE listeners than before the change. They are serving more streams, their database has grown, other research shows increases; the ONLY downer is from Rajar. And while aided recall might sound like a boon to a station's chances, in this case with unaided recall, responents would likely have said "Virgin" and Absolute could have gotten their credit.

So our two lessons: 1) Don't believe any reports that Absolute's listening is down, only that Rajar's measurement shows less listening; 2) If you're in a Cumulus/Neilsen sticker diary market, be certain to finish off any name changes/format changes WAY before your once-a-year diary drop.

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.

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"

A lot of people have lost their jobs in radio; undoubtedly, more will. The thought here is that by "trimming the fat" radio can reengineer itself and move forward by concentrating on its strengths in a more efficient manner.

This might work, but only if the employees you didn't cut are, in fact, up to the enormous challenges ahead, and possess the skill sets required to succeed and create lasting strategic value in a world of ubiquitous on-demand content, commoditized music and endless personalization options. If that isn't the case, then all radio has done is exacerbate the problem. If your station is not winning in your market--both online and offline--then replacing a full staff of employees with a skeleton crew of the same employees will not only not get you there, it will hasten your demise.

This blog has been, since its inception, about constructive dialog and solutions. With that in mind, here are the five people your station needs to find the money to hire, not fire, if you are going to survive the next three years:

1. A community manager--someone who will regularly post to message boards, moderate comments, write your blog, post to Twitter and maintain your Facebook page. You need to create text content online and engage with your listeners where they want to engage. You may find this person already exists at your station--but not where you think.

2. A "minister of localism." If you aren't going to switch to the all-Ryan Seacrest format, your best bet is to be a dominant local player. That means doing a lot more than you are doing now to add local content to your website, be on top of local stories and issues, and be the arbiter of taste for the best in local events, cuisine and activities. You probably don't have this person now. Broadcasters probably think that the localism issue has died down--but those broadcasters need to examine the amount of local content they really offer: chances are, it's less than 1% of their content, and chances are even that is predominately traffic and weather. The FCC may or may not resurrect its dormant localism proceedings, but even if they don't, stations that are caught in the middle of big national brands on one end and dominant, locally connected brands on the other will probably just go dark.

3. A Downloadable Media Czar. Podcasting isn't going away--sure, it may change its name, and it may not look now like we thought it would 3 years ago, but time-shifted, snack-sized content isn't going anywhere. Your station needs a talented person in the role of developing and selling downloadable media in your market--developing original content (since most of you probably run music stations, this is an area you'd best attend to pretty quickly), packaging solutions and working with potential sponsors to achieve mutual goals. The goal of an effective downloadable media campaign is not reach and frequency, it's action. So why not ask potential local sponsors in your market what kinds of programs they'd like you to create? Chances are, they know their customers better than you do--so if you can help them craft a downloadable media strategy that appeals to their niche and drive more post-listen action and sales, you'll turn this area into a profit center right quick.

4. A talented web designer, at least one per cluster. Res ipsa loquitur.

5. Someone who can sell all of the above. This may be someone you have, it may be someone you don't--and it may have been someone you already let go. What got you here won't get you there--and the language, contacts, knowledge and skills required for successful digital media sales are not the same ones that broadcast sellers have. Sure, people buy from people, and people don't fire their friends--but radio needs to open new doors with today's digital media buyers, and that is going to require new blood, not merely bloodletting.

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).

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.

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.

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.

If you've been following any of our coverage of the way that R&B radio treated the election vs. other music formats, it shouldn't come as a surprise to you that most of the musical acknowledgements of President-Elect Obama when the election was called at 11 p.m. ET on Tuesday night took place on Urban AC radio. A spot check of Mediabase station monitors for 11 p.m. shows that roughly 50-60% of Urban AC played some song that would have had post-election resonance, compared to only a handful of Urbans and only one other station in any other format.

For most Urban ACs, including those carrying ABC's syndicated Michael Baisden, the song of choice was Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come," which was the #4 played Oldie at Urban AC this week. Others included McFadden & Whitehead's "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" (actually the most played gold title overall at Urban AC, based on play during the week), Marvin Gaye's version of "The Star Spangled Banner," Maze's "We Are One" Ray Charles' "America the Beautiful," the Five Stairsteps' "O-o-h Child," Marvin Sapp's "Never Would Have Made It," the Impressions' "People Get Ready," and Incognito's "Change."

Had they been eligible to make the charts again, "Ain't No Stoppin' Us Now" would have been in the top 30 at Urban AC and "A Change Is Gonna Come" would have been in the top 40.

A few Urban ACs such as WHUR Washington, D.C., and WKJS Richmond, Va., did longer election themed sets at 11 p.m. WHUR followed Cooke with Maze's "Happy Feelings," the Voices of East Harlem's "Giving Love," Earth Wind & Fire's "All About Love," the Emotions' "On and On," Quincy Jones & Tevin Campbell's "Tomorrow (A Better You, A Better Me)," finally ending several songs later with Donny Hathaway's "Young, Gifted and Black."

Only a handful of Urban stations seem to have broken format to acknowledge the election, with WPWX (Power 92) Chicago and WPGC Washington, D.C., among those who played Jim Jones' "Pop Champagne" at 11 p.m. WQHT (Hot 97) New York played Young Jeezy's "My President."

By contrast, none of our spot checks of Oldies/Classic Hits, Triple-A or Top 40 turned up any obvious acknowledgement of the announcement. Stevie Wonder's "Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours)," a campaign staple, was up slightly in spins this week at Classic Hits, but we didn't find anybody who played it at 11 p.m. The sole apparent acknowledgement of the election news we came across at a general-market station was Classic Hits WMXJ Miami, which played the Ray Charles song shortly after 11 p.m.

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.

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.

One of the most fascinating stories of recent months has been the terrestrial broadcasters who are using the combination of HD-2 multicast channels and FM translators as a way of giving themselves an additional berth on the FM dial. Cumulus has used this strategy to move its Urban AC in Harrisburg, Pa., from AM to FM. Saga has used it to launch a new Triple-A in Asheville, N.C. Now, DCRTV reports that WAMU Washington, D.C., is simulcasting its HD-2 Bluegrass channel on a Northern Virginia translator that had previously carried non-commercial Triple-A WTMD Baltimore's programming. The station is quick to position the simulcast as an experiment. (Unlike Asheville and Harrisburg's Websites, which treat the translator as the main frequency, there is not yet a mention of the new frequency on the station's Website.)

WAMU's move is interesting for a number of reasons. Its bluegrass programming certainly had a devoted following. If any format could sell an HD radio (no need for HD detractors to expend any energy on that first clause), this would have been it. It's hard to imagine a 250-watt repeater in Great Falls, Va., making any format a market powerhouse, but like Urban AC on FM in Harrisburg, it will likely find a following. Beyond that, it shows the rapid spread of this concept from major groups to, now, NPR affiliates.

It's been clear almost since the inception of HD multicast channels that they would more likely find their largest audience somewhere other than on an HD radio. Multicast stations always deserved more resources than they got, just in the interest of staking out a future place on The Infinite Dial. Perhaps using them as a way to get an additional FM frequency means that broadcasters will take their multicasts more seriously. Or make sure they're always on the air.

NRG's KOOO (the Big O 101.9) Omaha, Neb., evolved from its original '70s Rock AC position to more of a '70s/'80s companion piece to Modern AC/Rock 40 sister KQKQ (Q97.9), also programmed by Nevin Dane. Clear Channel's KQLL (Cool 106.1) has been evolving from traditional Oldies since last year under PD Kevan Seal. It's now positioned as "Classic Top 40."

They're very different stations. KQLL can segue from "Le Freak" by Chic into "Magic" by Pilot and has the same "greatest party songs of all time" feel that KQQL Minneapolis was also experimenting with for a while. (One of its liners promises "a lot of songs that no one else has had the guts to play.") Big O has more of a '80s Modern emphasis with some things like the Plimsouls' "A Million Miles Away" or Peter Murphy's "Cuts You Up" that probably didn't get a lot of local airplay when they were new. But both have the MTV '80s at their center with a smattering of late '70s. And, as Seal notes, Tulsa was one of the test markets for MTV.

Both are also examples of how many different angles the '80s are being attacked from. Late '70s/early '80s rock was the initial center of the Bob- and Jack-FMs. At least a few '80s titles are now a part of most Oldies/Classic Hits stations. From an era standpoint, only the lack of recurrents and (in Tulsa's case) the '90s keep these from being Jack or Bob, but the packaging and texture is completely different.

Here's the Big O last week at 11 a.m.:
Cars, "Just What I Needed"
Phil Collins, "I Missed Again"
Def Leppard, "Rock Of Ages"
R.E.M., "Losing My Religion"
Peter Gabriel, "Sledgehammer"
Yes, "Leave It"
Spin Doctors, "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong"
Stray Cats, "(She's) Sexy And 17"
Electric Light Orchestra, "Do Ya"
Prince, "I Would Die 4 U"
Frankie Goes To Hollywood, "Relax"
EMF, "Unbelievable"
Steve Miller Band, "Take The Money & Run"
Genesis, "No Reply At All"

Here's KQLL at 9:15 this morning:
Climax Blues Band, "Couldn't Get It Right"
A Taste Of Honey, "Boogie Oogie Oogie"
Stories, "Brother Louie"
Lipps, Inc., "Funkytown"
Wham, "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go"
Santana, "Winning"
Rod Stewart, "Love Touch"
Hall & Oates, "Kiss On My List"
Elton John, "Philadelphia Freedom"
Power Station, "Some Like It Hot"
Billy Joel, "Only The Good Die Young"
Donna Summer, "Hot Stuff"
Mike & the Mechanics, "All I Need Is A Miracle"
Billy Ocean, "Loverboy"

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.

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?"

Given the ongoing travails of Alternative Rock in so many markets, Regent's WGRD Grand Rapids, Mich., rates a mention. WGRD, the flagship station of the Free Beer & Hot Wings morning show, was up 4.7 - 6.5 12-plus in the spring, fourth overall in the market and the leading rock station.

WGRD doesn't solve any problems for those Modern Rockers that lean to the "true alternative" side. It's still billed as "rock alternative" on the air, but its music leans to the harder side. At various times, it recalls both the pre-White Stripes early '00s version of Alternative around the country or even the "kickass" rockers of the early '80s. (Its sweeps are called "music blitzes.") And that's not just a function of Grand Rapids, since WGRD leaned very successfully to the Modern AC side for many years, pulling the Blues Traveler records several years after the rest of the Alternative format. But at a time of continuing confusion for current-driven rock radio, it's a success story and a model of relative simplicity.

Here's WGRD at 12:50 p.m. today:

Shinedown, "I Dare You"
Beastie Boys, "(You Gotta) Fight For Your Right (To Party)"
Creed, "Higher"
Alice In Chains, "Them Bones"
Staind, "Believe"
Alien Ant Farm, "Smooth Criminal"
3 Doors Down, "Kryptonite"
Weezer, "Troublemaker"
Metallica, "Enter Sandman"
Taproot, "Poem"
P.O.D., "Alive"

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."

When Newcap's CFXL (XL103) Calgary and CKRA (96.3 Capital FM) Edmonton found a way to do Oldies/Classic Hits on FM, working within Canadian regulations that have effectively kept the format off FM in English Canada all these years, it seemed inevitable that other markets would follow suit. Last Friday, Rogers' AC CKCL (Clear 104.9) Vancouver made a foray into FM oldies as "FM104.9."

FM104.9's move is interesting since its sister station is CKLG, Canada's first "Jack FM." The new station has more of an Oldies feel than the Alberta FMs, with more Motown and more '60s overall, but it's still hard to steer completely clear of Jack, particularly when the regulations require half the music to either come from 1981 or later or have peaked at No. 41 or below.

Here's FM104.9 at 6 a.m.:

Commodores, "Lady (You Bring Me Up)"
Four Tops, "Standing In The Shadows Of Love"
Terry Jacks, "Seasons In The Sun" (Canadian)
Boz Scaggs, "Lido Shuffle"
Lighthouse, "One Fine Morning" (Canadian)
Billy Joel, "The Longest Time"
Monkees, "Last Train To Clarksville"
Guess Who, "No Time" (Canadian)
Beach Boys, "Good Vibrations"
Ides of March, "Vehicle"
Gino Vanelli, "It Hurts To Be In Love" (Canadian)
Doug & the Slugs, "Too Bad" (Canadian)

I hadn't had occasion until this morning to check out WAVV Fort Myers, Fla.'s No. 1 station 12-plus and one of the few stations still listed on the R&R ratings pages as B/EZ (shorthand for Beautiful/Easy Listening, for those who don't remember that as a common format appellation in the '70s and '80s). I had expected a supersoft AC/MOR station along the lines of Cox's also successful WDUV Tampa a few years ago. But WAVV bills itself as "modern easy listening" and that was indeed a fair description.

There won't be a music monitor of WAVV because there were a handful of instrumentals I couldn't name and cover versions of standards that I couldn't place, but one song that was backsold was an Anita Kerr Singers version of "Don't Get Around Much Anymore," which should give you an idea of what I heard. There were also recognizable Smooth Jazz instrumentals, a '70s B/EZ-type cover of "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love," Gloria Estefan's version of the '50s hit "Goodnight My Love," and the Sergio Mendes & Brazil 66 '60s MOR version of "Night & Day."

While the instrumentals put WAYV in the Easy Listening camp, there's still a high adult standards quotient. And there's also an apparent emphasis on various interpretations of the standards, as opposed to the "play only the hit version" variant of the format. (I realize that these distinctions are increasingly lost to time as the Standards format becomes harder to find and EZ becomes nearly impossible.) And even with WEZV Myrtle Beach, S.C., out there, it is now time to declare WAVV "The Softest Most Relaxing Thing On The Infinite Dial."

That's the question Edison and Arbitron set out to answer with their landmark study using PPM encoding on television advertising. Edison's Larry Rosin and Arbitron's Pierre Bouvard first presented this study last week at the NAB Radio Show, and our email software has been ringing off the hook with requests to make the data publicly available. If you are wondering how television advertising really impacts radio listening, here's your chance to view Tracking Encoded Television Ads With PPM now. Comments welcome!

Given the current state of the newspaper industry, we'll be seeing a lot more announcements like the one this morning that longtime Chicago Sun-Times radio/TV writer Robert Feder is accepting a buyout. Feder was the longest-running, best-respected of those on the radio beat and,having started in 1980 when radio was rarely on the consumer press' radar, his column became the template for what coverage of radio could be.

In making his own announcement, Feder allows that "covering the minutiae of the broadcast business isn't as much fun as it used to be." And in recent years, his coverage had become more sharply critical; a recent column opener begins, "The idiots who've ruined radio are up to their old tricks again." He could also be particularly uncharitable to market newcomers. (WKSC's Drex survived his gauntlet; CBS' Rover did not.)

But Feder was also the only person you could count on to report that a station was forcing its staffers to attend a station concert on their own dime, among his many scoops. Anybody who has covered radio listening on a national level will cheerfully admit that he did a lot of their legwork in reporting Chicago. And on the day after he leaves, there will be a lot less news about Chicago radio and TV making its way to the surface (as is already happening around the country).

Despite his willingness to criticize individual actions, Feder differed from many of his brethern in being a champion of radio overall. He never took radio to task for not playing his hundred favorite indie bands or for having the audacity to actually program to the largest audience possible. Feder arrived at his desk in 1980 a fan of radio, unlike many of those who showed up ready to exact their revenge.

When Edison Media Research named Chicago the best market for radio listeners last year, I didn't give Feder a shout-out by name. For one thing, I figured that he'd see through any obvious supplication. But when we wrote "this is a market where radio has always been taken very seriously and held to a certain standard," Feder was absolutely there by inference.

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)

A few of radio's more prominent streaming holdouts have become available (relatively) recently and rate a mention this week:

* KKDA-FM (K104) and Urban AC sister KRNB Dallas -- K104 was a streaming pioneer in the late '90s, but has been missing for many years. It is always thought of as one of the best-oiled machines in the R&B/Hip-Hop (or any) format. KRNB started as a soft Urban AC but has gone to a hyper-current (for that format) approach and come into its own recently with the addition of Paul Harvey. KRNB is also streaming a Gospel channel. Still missing, however, is R&B Oldies KKDA-AM (Soul 73), a national treasure where you can hear "You've Got To Earn It" by the Staple Singers into "Think" by Jimmy McCracklin with R&B legend Millie Jackson hosting afternoons.

* KBPA (Bob FM) Austin, Texas - One of the format's most durable Classic Hits/Hot AC hybrids. They didn't stream in the format's period of greatest national attention when they were often the format leader, so it's good that they've remained stronger than many of their counterparts.

* WGTZ (92.9 Fly FM) Dayton, Ohio - The former top 40 Z93 is one of the most recent entrants into the format. They differ from some of the others because they also have a notable '60s oldies component (meaning Dave Clark Five into the Clash, which makes perfect sense to some of us). It's not streaming yet, but it's now teasing a stream on the Website as coming soon.

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)"

Got a chance to listen to an early stretch of Harve Alan's new project, Opus Media's KEZP Alexandria, La., which just flipped from Classic Rock to a very hit-driven Alternative as Red 104.3 -- a good name for a radio station even outside the state of Louisiana. Besides doing a good job of cherry-picking the poppiest of today's modern rock, Red also gets liner of the week awards for this end-of-the-stopset sweeper: "Going back to the music beats going back to jail!"

Here's Red 104.3 at 10:45 this morning:

Muse, "Starlight"
Ludo, "Love Me Dead"
Shinedown, "Save Me"
Beck, "Where It's At"
Beastie Boys, "Sabotage"
Carolina Liar, "I'm Not Over"
Nirvana, "Dumb"
Trapt, "Who's Going Home With You Tonight"
Three Days Grace, "Never Too Late"
311, "Come Original"
Foo Fighters, "Let It Die"
Linkin Park, "What I've Become"
Staind, "Right Here"

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!"

There haven't been a lot of major/large-market R&B/Hip-Hop launches lately. The major group building boom of five years ago seems to have petered out, a product of saturation in some markets, Hip-Hop's now-clearly-relinquished position as "the only new music that matters" to anybody under 24, reduced 12-24 listening and concerns (justified or otherwise) about PPM's impact on Urban radio.

So a new launch is big news, particularly in New Orleans, where there was some initial concern that Urban radio might not be as dominant in a post-Katrina landscape. Clear Channel's WQUE (Q93) and Urban AC WYLD-FM remained market leaders, but the market lost both its Gospel FM and its second Hip-Hop station. And Urban AC KMEZ (Old School 102.9), with signal issues compared to WYLD, became less of a ratings presence.

So it was gratifying to see Citadel move KMEZ to the bigger signal occupied by former Country/Rock outlet KKND and then launch "Non-Stop Hip-Hop" Power 102.9 on its old frequency this morning, under OM LeBron "LBJ" Joseph. The station, which launched with 10,000 songs in a row, is targeting Q93 with liners that encourage listeners to "turn on the power and turn off the Q."

Here's the first 45 minutes of KKND. No prize for guessing the first song:

Lil Wayne, "Lollipop"
Kardinal Offishal, "Dangerous"
J. Holiday, "Bed"
V.I.C., "Get Silly"
Ludacris, "Stand Up"
Usher, "Moving Mountains"
Keyshia Cole, "Heaven Sent"
Lil Wayne, "A Milli"
Jay-Z, "I Just Wanna Love You"
Chris Brown, "Take You Down"
Kanye West, "Good Life"
David Banner, "Get Like Me"
Snoop Dogg, "Gin And Juice"
Rick Ross, "Here I Am"

By the time Citadel Country KTYS (the Texas Twister) Dallas became KPMZ (Platinum 96.7) this morning, the rough outline had been pretty well circulated -- Soft Oldies with the involvement of market legend Ron Chapman. KTYS' predecessor, KMEO, had done a similar format before as the flagship of an ABC Radio Networks syndicated format. Citadel also does a softer/older Oldies format on its WGVX (Love 105) Minneapolis and an older (but not softer) approach on its True Oldies Channel.

Chapman, as it turns out, is on-board as a consultant, but not part of the daily on-air schedule. That meant the first host heard this morning was Larry Dixon, like Chapman, a veteran of crosstown KVIL during its George John era. It was good hearing Dixon do that sort of Johns-ian brief personality again; (you can also hear that type of radio on long-time Oldies/Classic Hits outlet KLUV, one of the stations that KPMZ is aiming at). When Dixon played B.J. Thomas, he speculated on whether Thomas still lived in Dallas/Ft. Worth; by the next break, there was a call from a listener who knew where he lived.

Musically, Platinum 96.7 wasn't quite as deep or eclectic as Minneapolis, but was working from the same basic food groups: a few pre-Beatles oldies per hour, a few of the late '60s hits that have fallen off the radio in recent years, some softer early '70s music (Bread, Olivia Newton-John, and John Denver, but no Neil or Barbra in the stretch I heard), one softer '80s song. Less than 25% of the music overlapped with what you'd expect to hear on KLUV or most other '60s/'70s/'80s Oldies/Classic Hits outlets.

Here's Platinum 96.7 at 8:15 on its first morning:

Friend & Lover, "Reach Out Of he Darkness"
Bread, "Baby I'm-A Want You"
Supremes, "You Can't Hurry Love"
B.J. Thomas, "I Just Can't Help Believing"
Righteous Brothers, "(You're My) Soul And Inspiration"
Del Shannon, "Runaway"
England Dan & John Ford Coley, "We'll Never Have To Say Goodbye Again"
Chad & Jeremy, "Yesterday's Gone"
Glenn Frey, "The One That You Love"
Gary Puckett & Union Gap, "Lady Willpower"
FIfth Dimension, "One Less Bell To Answer"
Elvis Presley, "All Shook Up"
John Denver, "Annie's Song"
Dobie Gray, "Drift Away"
Monkees, "A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You"
Olivia Newton-John, "Let Me Be There"

It is perhaps a sign of the times, but the station I've seen advertised most since I arrived here on Thursday is KCMP (the Current), the non-commercial indie rock/Triple-A outlet, which has advertising in a lot of downtown buildings/walkways. Then I saw Christian AC KTIS' transit advertising. Finally, from my hotel window I saw billboards for Country KEEY (K102) and Oldies KQQL (Kool 108), the latter of which advised that it was "kool to listen again" (in keeping with its back-to-oldies stance of the last year).

I thought I was going to get to hear Ron Gerber's eclectic Friday night oldies show "Crap From The Past" on the radio in real time this week with WCNR Charlottesville, Va., PD Brad Savage as a special guest. Instead, community outlet KFAI's block was hit by a freak power failure that lasted until the last five minutes of the show. And, as Gerber notes, in the digital age, it takes a lot longer to reboot a radio station once you get the power back. So I had to make due with going to the archive.

The radio junkies had been waiting for it for years and yesterday WZZN (True Oldies 94.7) Chicago became WLS-FM again, bringing back its old jingles (or some that sounded like them) as well. Listening from Conclave yesterday during the midday Scott Shannon network portion and again at the tail end of Dick Biondi's show, it sounded more like a call letter change than a presentational one (although Shannon did play the customized version of Reunion's "Life Is A Rock But WLS Rolled Me.") But this morning with Brant Miller on the air, it did sound more like the John Gehron-era WLS that many of us grew up with in the '70s and early '80s, particularly when Gehron called in. Miller talked about Gehron hiring him from WPGC Washington, D.C., and thanked him for not listening to his jocks' advice on programming the station. Gehron, for his part, thanked Miller for following the format this morning!

More Twin Cities radio today in preparation for tomorrow's Conclave arrival:

* WLTE (Lite 103) -- Still unmistakably AC in texture but, like many of its brethern, newer these days: 50% '90s and now in the stretch I heard, with the remainder divided evenly between '70s and '80s. You'll still hear "Sometimes When We Touch," but it's now followed by 3 Doors Down's "Here Without You." Using the one-time Top 40 perrenial "102.9 Days of Summer" as its promotional framing device. Interestingly, also running ads for Brian McKnight's morning show at KTWV (the Wave) Los Angeles on its stream.

* KCMP (the Current) - Minnesota Public Rocker's indie rocker still does features like "My Three Songs," but the three songs today were "Bible Thumper" by Solid Gold, "Got To Give It Up" by Marvin Gaye, and "Ketchy Shuby" by Peter Tosh, and the listener who submitted the three song set didn't explain how they were related. The Current also wins today's "oh wow" award for playing "Breathe" by Telepopmusik.

* KEEY (K102) - In the early '00s, it was one of the few places where you could count on hearing a lot of newer Country songs in short order. Actually hearing two current songs in a row isn't as radical as it was five years ago, but K102 is still a good place to hear a lot of newer Country with energy (only two ballads in the last 40 minutes). There's also clearly an "impossible question" war in this market. The first thing p.m. driver Chris Carr did when he cracked the mic for his first legal ID was to ask one.

To see the first two parts of our series on Twin Cities radio click here and here.

In anticipation of Conclave, I'm doing my second round of Twin Cities listening today, and spending it (mostly) with the contemporay stations:

* Triple-A KTCZ (Cities 97) - In my first day of listening, I didn't come across a lot of specifically local content. (I was listening outside morning drive--usually the easiest daypart to hear live at a convention.) So when Cities' middayer began talking about various walk-a-thons (which get their own page on the Website) it was the most local break I'd heard so far. For a format that has historically been "all about the music," KTCZ played a lot more full-service than a lot of more foreground formats in these austere times.

* Rhythmic KTTB (B96) - They also do well on the local flavor and tying in with Conclave front, since one of their afternoon features, "Rep Your Hood," requires listeners to guess which area intersection they're talking about from various cues. This afternoon, it was the corner that J.D. Hoyts (known as the home of first-night-of-Conclave dinners) was on. And the feature was sponsored by Brown College School of Broadcasting. While other Rhythmic outlets have drifted further into the R&B side, B96 still felt very much Hip-Hop driven and identifiably different from KDWB.

* Top 40 KDWB - It's always been a well-oiled machine, and very consistent -- the stretch I heard was the 3;1 rhythm-to-rock mix that I've heard on the station for a few Conclaves now -- but in a good way. A rival PD once suggested to me that the station always put on an extra burst of speed during Conclave, but if that's true, they're getting a few days' head start. And even with the rhythmic lean, they're the first large-market station where I've heard Secondhand Serenade on the air in my casual listening.

* Hot AC KSTP-FM (KS95) - Having a high profile show in afternoons didn't turn out to be the answer for every Hot AC, but Moon & Staci still sound good here. (The topic this afternoon was "what co-worker did something that should have gotten them fired?" from which they went into their version of Impossible Question.) Musically, KS95 and KTCZ moved away from their Modern AC war a few years ago with the latter going a little more traditionally Triple-A, but it was inevitable that I'd hear them both play "Closing Time" by (local heroes) Semisonic today, which at least proved that I was listening to Minneapolis radio.

There's nothing like finishing up at a convention and realizing that you didn't get to hear a lot of local radio (except when you were in your room during hours that most stations were jockless). In that spirit, we started our Charlotte, N.C., listening early last fall, and we started our Minneapolis/St. Paul listening today in advance of Conclave 2008, where I'll be joining WCBS-FM New York PD Brian Thomas on the Oldies/Classic Hits panel at 1:30 on Thursday (26).

And based on that initial listening, Minneapolis may have become our most interesting Oldies/Classic Hits/Classic Rock market. Three years ago, with KZJK (Jack FM) signing on, Classic Rock KQRS began emphasizing its library depth. Then, KQ's sister, WGVX (Love 105 FM) launched an Oldies/Soft AC hybrid, aimed at KQQL (Kool 108), which had evolved from '70s-driven Oldies to a party gold format, emphasizing tempo, that allowed it to delve into the '80s (but also back to pre-Beatles oldies), and has continued to evolve.

The net result is four stations with playlists in the 900 - 1,000 titles per week range, and some interestingly shaped music mixes. KQQL still plays a lot of '70s, but has phased out most of the '80s, and put back some pre-Beatles songs. (There was even a mention of Bobby Vee having appeared at a local car show.) Love 105 will play pre-Beatles, a lot of the '60s titles that have disappeared elsewhere, a wide variety of '70s pop, early '80s AC titles that you don't hear much ("Theme from 'The Greatest American Hero"), and even an occasional Frank Sinatra or Dean Martin.

KQRS isn't hitting its depth quite as hard on-air as it was a few years ago, but there was still a staged "A to Z" double-play when I listened (two Stones songs: "Rip This Joint" and "Waiting On A Friend"),, "What If I Came Knockin'" by John Mellencamp, and even "Memphis" by Johnny Rivers, which isn't out of character for the station. Jack, meanwhile, continues as one of the most rock-focused stations of its genre but is playing some surprising currents/recurrents (Flyleaf's "All Around Me," Coldplay's "Viva La Vida," etc.).

A good presence for local spots on the various Internet streams, including one heard on KQRS for a t-shirt store that specializes in edgy t-shirts for kids (sample: "pink and blue make me spew").

More Twin Cities radio throughout the week leading up to Conclave.

Nearly eighteen months ago, as stations were finally starting to fill the stopsets on their Webstream with something more than PSAs and bad incidental music, we looked at five Atlanta radio stations and how they were handling Web-stops. So how is Atlanta radio doing now? We listen to seven local stations in this week's Ross On Radio. And we have some excellent comments already.

Listened to some Iowa radio on Thursday to try and get some sense of life in that state as the flood waters recede. Cumulus' Cedar Rapids stations aren't streaming at the moment, but the Clear Channel stations in that market are; so is locally owned KZIA (Z102.9).

In Des Moines, not hit as hard, things seem to be more business-as-normal. I listened to three different music stations for 30-40 minutes each and the only possible reference to the flooding I heard was an ad for Better Basement Technologies that promised to keep water out of your basement.

In the more severly impacted Cedar Rapids/Iowa City area, the flood was more of a presence on the air -- although an intermittent one (which is to say several times an hour, not every break) on the music stations I heard. Z102.9 was broadcasting from a local movie theater to raise money for a community group and selling commemorative t-shirts that said, "Cedar Rapids: Rising Above." Those remotes were preceded, by the way, by a stager that declared, "Z102.9: Live and Local."

Clear Channel's WMT-FM (Mix 96.5) was promoting the resumption of its Uptown Friday Night concert series and make-up dates for the two shows that had been cancelled. (There were also passing references in several places to station events that were taking place in new locations, like this one.)The station was also cross-plugging its Website and the nearly 200 photos of local flooding that had been posted.

Listening from outside the market, of course, it's hard to get a full sense of what's going on. For one thing, Web stream insertion means that you're not hearing the local ads in many cases, and it's often there that you hear the insurance company ads on how to file a claim or the auto dealers advertising to people who lost cars in a natural disaster.

By and large though, a week later the flood had much more presence on the Websites of many of the stations I looked at. Classic Rock KGGO Des Moines' Web poll allowed listeners to decide which public figure had emerged as the "Flood Stud." (The candidates included the mayor, the governor, and the head of the Department of Public Works.) Mix's midday host devoted her blog entries to the flood, including posting a song by a local artist called "Water In My Eyes." And front-and-center on KDAT's home page is a FEMA logo with the words "we will rebuild."

There wasn't much written when Clear Channels WXRA Lexington, Ky., switched from Latin to R&B Oldies last month -- it's a format that doesn't get much press, particularly in a small market. But the new WGVN (Groovin' 1580) is particularly interesting, not only because there aren't a lot of full-fledged terrestrial R&B Oldies stations, but also because this one is a Clear Channel Format Lab offering making its way from the broadcaster's HD-2 multicast stations to a terrestrial outlet.

Groovin' 1580 uses the same "old school hits from the '80s, '70s, and '60s" imager as the Format Lab's "The Groove," currently running on the HD-2 multicast channels at WWSW Pittsburgh, KOHT Tucson, Ariz., KALZ Fresno, Calif., and WMKS Greensboro, N.C. (The only time the two formats diverged when we heard both this afternoon was when WGVN was running spots; it also runs Tom Joyner in mornings.)

What's most interesting here is hearing the format in a different context. In between the format mainstays, Groovin' 1580 has been offering up a few songs that wouldn't be so unusual on a Web-only R&B Oldies station. But when was the last time you heard a terrestrial station play "So" by War? "Higher Plane" by Kool & the Gang? "Cissy Strut" by the Meters? "We Got The Funk" by Positive Force (outside New York, anyway)?

Here's an hour or so of the format, taken from WGVN, at 12:45 this afternoon:

KC & the Sunshine Band, "Keep It Comin' Love"
Commodores, "Machine Gun"
Isley Brothers, "Fight The Power"
Maze, "Joy And Pain"
Bootsy's Rubber Band, "Bootzilla"
Aretha Franklin, "Freeway Of Love"
Taylor Dayne, "Tell It To My Heart"
Van McCoy, "The Hustle"
Patti Labelle, "New Attitude"
James Brown, "Night Train"
Rose Royce, "Car Wash"
Archie Bell & Drells, "Tighten Up"
Wild Cherry, "Play That Funky Music"
Debbie Deb, "Look Out Weekend"
Erick Sermon, Keith Murray, Redman"Rapper's Delight"
Ready For The World, "Oh Sheila"
Barrett Strong, "Money (That's What I Want)"
Barry White, "What Am I Gonna Do With You"

A few interesting odds-and-ends heard in this week's listening:

* More "Sex And The City" -- It's become a lot less ubiquitous on the radio since the movie actually opened and all the promotional tie-ins went away. (I never did hear any station getting paid spots for all their troubles.) But there's still no escaping it: I was listening to a station in the Ukraine this morning and there was the theme song (playing as a bed under what seemed to be an entertainment report).

* The new AOL Radio/CBS Radio tuner sent me punching among the AOL stations for the first time in a while, and I settled on one that billed itself as "New Pop First." And in between some genuinely new records, I heard "SOS" by the Jonas Brothers, "How Far We've Come" by Matchbox Twenty, Mariah Carey's "Touch My Body" and a handful of other songs that had already run their course. To which I can only say that at a time when we're hearing that identifying, say, "Handlebars" by Flobots as "new music" on a Top 40 station would be considered lame by the 15-year-old music junkie who knew it months ago, the bar for any "new music" station is pretty high these days. The good news is that there is certainly a need for this now and it's a great thing to have on a tuner that also contains mainstream commercial stations. But it's a big promise to deliver on. And perhaps a franchise that could support much more than a jockless Internet channel.

* WEBX (the Source) Champaign, Ill., is the flagship of the new gold-based Alternative format from Jack Taddeo and Dan Binder. As you might expect, the hour I heard was more pop-flavored than some of its counterparts. Here's the station from last Monday:

Police, "Spirits In The Material World"
Tonic, "If You Could Only See"
Billy Idol, "Dancing With Myself"
Alice In Chains, "Would?"
Matchbox Twenty, "Push"
Stephen "Tin-Tin" Duffy, "Kiss Me"
Blur, "Song 2"
Depeche Mode, "Just Can't Get Enough"
Bush, "Comedown"
Replacements, "Merry Go Round"
Blink-182, "All The Small Things"

* Best Promotion Name of the Week: KCBS-FM (Jack FM) Los Angeles doing sticker stops and giving away bomb pops as part of its "Stick It and Suck It Summer Tour."

* Oldie Of The Week: I usually go for an obscure one, but there was no denying "Do Ya" by ELO, especially since I've heard it three times in the last eight days in various places, probably the most I've heard it since April, 1977.

Every few years, I come across my perfect gold-based radio station. It plays the songs of the '70s and '80s that I grew up with, including many which have selected themselves off the radio in most places. Ideally, it's also somewhere other than the U.S., so that I can discover some records that were never on the radio here.

There probably aren't a lot of people for whom this sounds like the perfect radio station, but I know a few kindred spirits and they should be made aware of Western Australia's Gold MX, which I've been listening to for hours at a time since I discovered them late last week. Gold MX is a small-market outlet with what sounds like a deep list of '70s and '80s, a smattering of '60s and '90s and some unusual segues (Hendrix into Chris DeBurgh).

Here's a stretch of Gold MX from early Saturday morning local time:

Jimmy Nail, "Ain't No Doubt"
The Sweet, "Wig-Wam-Bam"
Mary Wells, "My Guy"
Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger"
Bread, "Sweet Surrender"
America, "You Can Do Magic"
T-Rex, "Ride A Wild Swan"
Dusty Springfield, "Son Of A Preacher Man"
Harpo, "Moviestar" (European oddity that's somewhere between Abba and Pilot's "Magic")
Suzi Quatro, "The Race Is On"
Dire Straits, "Walk Of Life"
Queen, "Flash's Theme (AKA Flash)"
Redgum, "I've Been To Bali, Too"
Steppenwolf, "Born To Be Wild"
Bee Gees, "Love So Right"
Roy Orbison, "Cryin'"
Eric Carmen, "She Did It"
Climie Fisher, "Love Changes Everything"
Hoodoo Gurus, "Good Time"
Rolling Stones, "She's A Rainbow"
Orleans, "Dance With Me"
Jon English, "Get Your Love Right"
Bananarama, "Robert DeNiro's Waiting"
Wilson Pickett, "In The Midnight Hour"
Gordon Lightfoot, "Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald"
New Order, "Bizarre Love Triangle"
Cher, "Believe"
Fleetwood Mac, "You Make Lovin' Fun"
Martika, "Love Thy Will Be Done"

Recently, Inside Radio reported that "Smooth Jazz" was getting a name change--at least to the advertising community. While I agree that "Smooth AC" may be less off-putting to an agency buyer than "Smooth Jazz," if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's smooth jazz to the listener. The real test will be what the format ultimately becomes on the air. If buyers think Smooth Jazz describes a format with a "limited highbrow fan base" (as KKSF, San Francisco NSM Marcy Mills noted in the article), why would a listener think any different?

What I keep coming back to is the fact that the music is extremely palatable for a mass appeal audience, yet I have personally seen research that clearly indicates that most people who like the music do not consider themselves "jazz fans." Three months ago I wrote a post called "A Bumpy Road for Smooth Jazz," which I am reposting here, as a discussion prompter for readers of the Infinite Dial: if not Smooth Jazz, then what? Could the format be repackaged less for aficionados and more for soccer moms? Is there room on the Infinite Dial for a "Smooth FM," a "Chill" or do we continue radio's trend for "character" names--like, maybe, "Jacques?" :). Or would a sharp turn away from AC vocals and back into more fusion and even traditional jazz be the ticket to regain radio's dwindling college-educated audience?

Love to hear your constructive comments--post your thoughts and let's continue the discussion!

On Friday, Washington DC's Smooth Jazz outlet, WJZW, became the latest in the format to be unceremoniously dumped, leaving yet another of radio's ever-dwindling bodies of rabid fans with nothing more than a "thanks for listening" letter on their website. I'm sure there were reasons for the flip, and I hope those reasons extend beyond merely the most recent book. WJZW has had a very good run as a Top 10 performer in that market, but becomes yet another casualty in a long line of format flips designed to infuriate listeners. I have written before about the "snow globe" theory of audience dynamics that many programming experts still subscribe to--if we shake 'em up, they'll settle somewhere else, and we will either get them with Station 'A' or Station 'B.' Unfortunately, they never consider the third option--that the globe isn't sealed, and they never settle anywhere, period.

So we sound the death knell of Smooth Jazz in DC. Is it now time to sound the death knell for the format? I have mixed feelings about that. Clearly there are some markets (San Diego and Seattle, for instance) where the format is far from dead--it is dominant. Some of you may know that in a prior life I spent quite a bit of time working in the format--indeed, for WJZW itself back in the 90s--and have seen the format through its best and worst times. I've heard stations that you can't turn off when they are really humming (The Wave in LA (KTWV) always sounds perfect for its place and time to me) and I've heard forgettable jukeboxes--devoid of passion, local flavor and personality. When executed properly, the format can be a golden goose. Done poorly, it can also be positively moribund. With New York and Washington dropping Smooth Jazz, are the format's best days behind it? Is it a classic format? Or as much of its time and place as Arrow was?

I don't think New Adult Contemporary (NAC) is dead. There are very few formats that generate as much passion 35-64, or can still move those same adults to get excited about new music--it is like Country in that regard. It can also be a terrific sales performer--take a potential advertiser to a station concert or Sunday Brunch for a great NAC station and they can't help but be impressed. NAC generates passion, excellent qualitative numbers and sounds great in public settings (hello, PPM!) It is a format, however, that benefits from a dedicated sales staff, a luxury few clusters can afford. Even so, I would dispute the notion that NAC is dead.

I do think, however, that Smooth Jazz (TM) is on its last legs. The format needs more than just "TV" to survive--it needs to tap into a more compelling benefit than "smooth out your workday," like it is little more than a Xanax. There are few formats that respond as readily to local customization; yet many Smooth Jazz stations sound remarkably the same. There are, of course, programmers who have successfully crafted unique sounding NAC stations, but those are a struggle. In the case of WJZW, WQCD and other notable format flips, some operators have decided to switch rather than fight.

I'm not close enough to the product these days to dig authoritatively into the issues with currents, cover songs, or burn scores, so I won't go down that path here. Where Smooth Jazz (TM) has really failed to evolve is in how it is marketed. Even today, stations are rolling out the same purple-y sax logos and billboards with Dave Koz and Sade, proudly proclaiming themselves as "Smooth Jazz" even though there is plenty of research suggesting that the word Jazz may turn away as many potential fans of the music as it invites. The primal need to relax in this country is a powerful benefit that NAC could tap into and market in a thousand clever ways--with passion, with humor and with a more universal approach--yet the format continues to identify itself with unfamiliar artists and events geared to "jazz buffs" instead of helping moms get their kids to soccer practice, or otherwise truly mattering to the 95% of potential listeners who will NEVER go out to see Kirk Whalum at the local jazz club. Brands like Calgon, General Foods International Coffees and Quantas and don't market flakes, crystals or increased cabin legroom--they market where they take you. For too long, the tired, overworked "Trip-a-day" contest has served as the format's proxy for this, but contesting is not branding.

Reinventing NAC will take vision, commitment, guts and, yes, an investment in branding and marketing. Yet those few stations still putting Smooth Jazz on the air view it as a cost-cutting measure, or the ugly stepsister to the "more popular" AC. NAC could be a magical format, bringing disparate ages, sexes and races together. To do that, however, it can't be the ugly stepchild, and it can't be a format-in-a-box. The format has tremendous potential if and only if it is treated as a big box station, not as a jukebox, and if it is marketed for how it can reach and touch everybody, not just the select few who know who Boney James is. I'd love to see that happen. Until then, I fear we will continue to shake listeners completely out of the snow globe, never to return.

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

* CTVGlobal's new CHR, CJCH (the Bounce) Halifax, N.S., which launched this morning, giving the Maritimes something that many American markets don't have, a CHR war, as the Bounce (comparable to one of Clear Channel's rhythmic-leaning mainstream reporters) goes up against the rhythmic, but more eclectic CKHZ (Z103.5). This is, a big change for the market, since I remember being in the area in 1998 and hearing only one R&B record, "The Boy Is Mine," for the entire week. There were also very good, very different sounding new jingles on the Bounce.

* Heard even more about "Sex And The City" since Wednesday's posting. At AC/Country hybrid CIGY (Calgary 97.7), the website was teasing the morning show's movie-related topic, "the best place to make whoopi [their spelling] in the city."

* WPIA (Kiss 98.5) Peoria, Ill., one of the most musically aggressive CHRs in the Country. I tuned them in because I wanted to hear some different songs on the radio, but their night jock was doing a curious bit, the "dirty joke of the week" where only the setup was on the air, and you had to call the request line, and be 18, to hear the punch line. He did, however, string together audio of the callers laughing after they heard the whole joke.

* Checked out the new Adult Modern WCHH (Channel 104.3) Baltimore, the former WSMJ. From a First Listen, a little more mainstream than sister WRFF Philly. Interesting how a lot of the older gold that makes it on to the new Adult Moderns are the same that would come through in an AC or Hot AC test: Cure, "Love Song"; Police, "Don't Stand So Close To Me"; R.E.M., "The One I Love," etc.

* Oh Wow Oldie of the Week: "Start The Car" by Jude Cole in the no-repeat workday on Classic Hits/Hot AC WRFY (Y102) Reading, Pa., which was already a little unusual among (then) CHRs for pounding that song when it was new in 1992. (In any given week, WRFY probably has several contenders for the title. I'm on their Website now and they've just played "Hard Luck Woman" by Kiss.)

* Worst menu item name of the week: Boston's "Mama Meata" pizza, seen in a web banner on the player of Detroit's new No. 1 station, WKQI (Channel 95.5).

Could just be perception, of course, particularly now that Matt Pinfield has been hired for mornings, but I'm sensing a further evolution at Emmis' new Triple-A "Rock Experience" WRXP (101.9 RXP) New York. The Classic Rock isn't gone -- you'll still hear Springsteen, Stones, Who, etc., -- but there are stretches of several songs at a time where the station takes on a decided Classic Alternative feel (Costello, Morrissey, and, as I write, the Buzzcocks' "What Do I Get") -- a more eclectic version of WRFF Philadelphia and its Adult Modern ilk. For whatever reason, I've had several people tell me in the last few days that they're spending more time with the station.

Whatever the much-rumoured long-term fate of Citadel's KTYS (the Twister) Dallas/Ft. Worth turns out to be, I've wanted to give them a mention for a few weeks. KTYS launched as CHR-style Country, meant to hit a then-similarly-aggressive KPLX (the Wolf) from the other side on behalf of sister KSCS. Over the last year, KSCS has gotten more aggressive itself and KTYS had taken on more of a male/"Texas Country" lean. When I heard them nearly three weeks ago, they were also the closest thing I'd ever heard to a truly "Hot Country" station, since most of those often end up being dragged toward the mainstream by available product or listing to the Classic Rock side. It was the most energy/tempo that I'd heard on a Country station in a while, and it says something about the state of the format that you would only hear it on a flanker station (if not one that was already earmarked for something new).

Here's the Twister just after 11 a.m. on May 5:

Pat Green, "Wave On Weeve"
Toby Keith, "She's A Hotttie"
Rushlow, "Texas Is My Kind Of Town"
Gary Allan, "Learning How To Bend"
Cross Canadian Ragweed, "Anywhere But Here"
Montgomery Gentry, "Some People Change"
Dierks Bentley, "How Am I Doing?"
Mark McKinney, "Bonfire"
Eli Young Band, "When It Rains"
Pat Green, "Southbound 35"
Road Hammers, "I Don't Know When To Quit"
Blake Shelton, "The More I Drink"
Toby Keith, "Country Comes To Town"

... is a Christian rock station, specifically WUFM Columbus, Ohio, flagship of the "Radio U" network.

I spent about 40 minutes with them yesterday afternoon, and if I'd listened to them at my normal office level, none of my colleagues on the third floor would have been able to have a phone conversation. And after two songs with speed/thrash System of a Down-type elements to them, they then ran the promo for the Saturday night show that really rocked.

Now, I'm not a habitual Active Rock listener -- some of whom could possibly tell me that this was nothing on their 1 to 11 scale. And you will hear some less-edgy music on this station that could be Chevelle or Nickelback. But as Active becomes more mainstream and library driven in many places, Radio U stands out. It's been a while since radio stations decided the way to get a 19-year-old's attention was to rock harder, particularly because so few have wanted to get a 19-year-old's attention for a while.

Also standing out, by the way, was a promo soliciting listener contributions which asked, "Doesn't it suck when your favorite music is polluted with commercials?" thus proving, once and for all, that the once-graphic word in question is apparently now barely more profane than saying that something stinks.

Here's WUFM around 3 p.m. yesterday:

The Fold, "Medicine"
Emery, "The Party Song"
Underoath, "Everyone Looks Good From Here"
August Burns Red, "Composure"
Deas Vail, "Anything You Say"
Project 86, "Molotov"
Search The City, "Clocks and Timepieces"

There are a lot of people who just take it for granted that radio is no longer the best way to hear music. And inherent in some of their comments is the notion that radio's "music (of our choosing) + brief personality + commercials" only worked for 45 years because there were no other choices. So why is it then that WCBS-FM New York came back even bigger after the Oldies' format's two-year-hiatus. Didn't listeners realize they were better off somewhere else? We look at the larger implications for radio's future as a music delivery system in this week's Ross On Radio.

I wanted to give Hip-Hop and R&B outlet KXJM (Jammin' 95) Portland, Ore., one more listen before its announced change to all-Sports next week. Jammin' had created a lot of trouble for heritage Top 40 KKRZ (Z100), particularly during that period when many considered Hip-Hop to be the only music that mattered to an 18-year-old. And even as a lame duck, it ended the winter book with a 2.9 share to Z100's 2.8.

Today the station I heard in middays was jockless (teasing that a change was coming Monday, but with no mention of to what) and playing a lot of relatively new music -- a definite difference from the old days when the jocks of a station with an announced format change tended to dig in the crates for their favorite oldies that would never otherwise be heard.

KXJM's change shouldn't be spun into any larger pronouncement on the state of Hip-Hop radio. It wouldn't be entirely surprising to see somebody else show up with its morning show and name/library next week, as happened in Phoenix and (with Top 40) in Indianapolis. Besides, such pronouncements usually only mean that a rebound is imminent. And three hours away, KUBE Seattle -- the station that proved Hip-Hop had a place on Pacific Northwest radio -- remains atop its market.

Here's Jammin' 99.5 today just before 11 a.m. local time:

Baby Bash, "What Is It"
Day26, "Got Me Going"
Ray J., "Sexy Can I"
J. Holiday, "Suffocate"
Topic, "I Gotta Get It"
Alicia Keys, "Like You'll Never See Me Again"
David Banner, "Get Like Me"
V.I.C., "Get Silly"
Rick Ross, "The Boss"
Sean Kingston, "There's Nothin'"

There's a good piece in yesterday's Washington Post by Marc Fisher looking at the state of local AM -- weakened by the departure of All-News powerhouse WTOP and the recent advent of Gospel on FM. One of the most interesting aspects of Fisher's article is the connection between the type of local content that AM was once famous for and the things that people now look for elsewhere on-line.

"The swap shop call-in shows that once filled the midday airwaves on many local stations are the spiritual godfather of Craigslist and other online classified sites. The sports phone-in shows that have long been an AM staple spawned the fan message boards that have proven so popular on the Internet. And although the great American tradition of ranting -- passionate political tirades, righteous religious preaching, get-rich-quick financial schemes -- surely dates back to Colonial times, it was first propelled into a mass, coast-to-coast culture on AM radio, and has found a happy new home on the Web," Fisher writes.

When I first heard Clear Channel's KOLZ (Kolt Country) Cheyenne, Wyo., in the late '90s, it was a very different sounding station: more traditional (as you'd expect, given the market), and playing some interesting older library titles at a point when the "hits and legends" approach wasn't as widespread. It was, in short, a market leader that sounded like the market. KOLZ didn't stream its signal at the time, so I hadn't heard them since. But I found them streaming again this morning and am happy to report that Tuesday at the station is double-play "Chris LeDoux'sday," something that couldn't possibly work in many other markets. "Whatcha Gonna Do With A Cowboy," LeDoux's big duet with Garth Brooks was indeed one of the songs, but so was "Call of the Wild," which I didn't know. They're worth hearing here.

An interesting tidbit from yesterday's release of Arbitron March PPM data for Philadelphia and Houston that has, as best I can tell, gone uncommented on elsewhere:

Halfway through March, Smooth Jazz KHJZ Houston became Top 40 KKHH. That station, which was already declining in previous months, went 2.6 - 1.9 6-plus. Urban AC KMJQ (Majic 102) was off 6.9 - 6.7 but maintained its market lead. AC KODA (Sunny 99.1), which had been tapering off since the Christmas music ended, was up 4.5 - 5.9. The traditional jazz station, noncommercial KTSU, went down as well 0.6 - 0.5 although few partisans of either station would see the other as in any way connected.

Another full month might better tell the story, of course, but for now it's intriguing that the demise of Smooth Jazz seemingly does everything to help the Mainstream AC and nothing for the Urban AC -- this even though one of the existential issues for Smooth Jazz had become its musical proximity to Urban AC.

So what do you do when you have a morning host like WDCG (G105) Raleigh, N.C.'s Bob Dumas with a series of seemingly calculated outrages over the years, some of them trifling (anti-bicyclist) and some more serious? For more than 20 years, broadcasters have perfected the art of letting the people they offend become their public relations machine in a way that rarely backfires (Imus, Opie & Anthony) and rarely backfires indefinitely (Imus, Opie & Anthony). So what to do when neither engaging nor ignoring is the perfect strategy? There's always suggesting alternatives as this Raleigh News & Observer story does.

And here's the question that must now be asked anytime somebody goes into a small market and encounters a live and local personality:

Didn't they get the memo?

How is it that some stations carry on with a local staff when many stations in much larger markets went to the hard drive and/or jockless a long time ago?

Meanwhile, check out this small-market station (discovered by iN3 Media Partners' Robert Unmacht) and their playlist with 50 songs (and many, many extras).

There were reports elsewhere on line this morning that Clear Channel's KZPS (Lonestar 92.5) Dallas had completed the segue back to Classic Rock from its Americana/Classic Rock/Country hybrid. KZPS, you may remember, has been written about here every now and then as we check the progress of both this oft-attempted but tricky format and the station's attempt to replace traditional spots with sponsorships.

And the answer is that the station gets closer to straight Classic Rock all the time, but in the segment we heard this morning, there was still a Pat Green song standing between the station and a complete format change. There's also a lot of Southern Rock that you don't usually hear on most Classic Rock stations and, interesting to me anyway, a lot of that holdover blues rock from the early '90s that you never hear on the radio anymore (e.g., "Bad Thing" by Cry Of Love).

Willie Nelson is still the voice of the station's legal ID. Johnny Cash and Hank Williams, Jr., (and his dad) are still mentioned in the promos.

As for the sponsorships, we'd established a while ago that Lonestar was running some traditional spots. The streaming stopset we heard this morning was a mix of traditional spots, a seemingly pre-recorded testimonial that was meant to sound like a live read, and instrumental fill music. The stopset also went from :22 to :28, a long break for a station that used to not run spots at all. There was another stopset between :48 and :52.

(By the way, I shouldn't be too hard on that instrumental fill music. It was during that second stopset that a co-worker looked up and said, "Wow, I haven't heard that song in a long time," referring to Joe Satriani's "Motorcycle Driver," which then ended abruptly as the station went back to music.)

Here's Lonestar 92.5 at 11 a.m. this morning:

T. Rex, "Bang A Gong (Get It On)"
Bob Seger, "Night Moves"
Rossington Collins Band, "Don't Misunderstand Me"
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Who'll Stop The Rain"
Eagles, "In The City"
Pat Green, "Wave On Wave"
Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Saturday Night Special"
Rolling Stones, "Ain't Too Proud To Beg"
Fabulous Thunderbirds, "Wrap It Up"
Jimi Hendrix, "Foxey Lady"
Allman Brothers, "No One Left To Run With"
Eric Clapton, "I Shot The Sheriff"
Steve Miller Band, "Jungle Love"

Bonneville's new L.A. Triple-A is on the air and I wanted to put the first hour out there for anybody who's come to look for such things on this site. Here's KRBV (100.3 the Sound) L.A.'s sign on at 10 a.m. local time.

U2, "Beautiful Day"
Los Lonely Boys, "Heaven"
Rilo Kiley, "Silver Lining"
Rolling Stones, "Gimme Shelter (Live)"
Talking Heads, "Once In A Lifetime"
Lifehouse, "Hanging By A Moment"
Spoon, "Don't You Evah"
Elvis Costello, "Every Day I Write The Book"
Doors, "Love Me Two Times"
Keane, "Somewhere Only We Know"
Police, "Driven To Tears"
Bruce Springsteen, "Girls In Their Summer Clothes"
Foo Fighters, "Learn To Fly"
Grateful Dead, "Uncle John's Band"
Nirvana, "About A Girl (Unplugged)"

WRXP, New York's new Triple-A variant is two months old this week and, as you'd expect with any new station, it continues to evolve. Most notably, the mainstream current rock component that was (ironically) the most controversial element of the station early on seems a little less prominent now. Staind, Linkin Park, Nickelback, Finger Eleven, 3 Doors Down, and Puddle Of Mudd aren't gone, but whether by design, or just because some of the big songs ("Paralyzer," "Shadow of the Day") have run their course and been backed down, you're more likely to hear those acts once or twice per daypart than six weeks ago when you could hear them within a few songs of each other. (And Daughtry, maybe the most pronounced example of the station's determined populism, was off this week.)

It's not hard to understand the logic that put Linkin Park and Edwyn Collins' "A Girl Like You" on the same radio station. The Linkin Park/Nickelback mainstream rock cluster is often the only strong post-grunge music that emerges in any sort of Rock radio. WNEW-FM, the station's clear intended forebear, would undoubtedly play it if it had continued as a Mainstream Rock station since 1994. And the same PPM mindset that would make a station willing to launch Rock in 2008 would also dictate a certain amount of cume-friendliness. And Triple-A's usual rules about what is and isn't OK (Lifehouse and Collective Soul, but not Nickelback and Linkin Park) have always been a little arbitrary.

That said, the ability to hear those songs, and to hear them next to Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd, was creating at least an anecdotal distraction for some people who should have really liked the radio station. A station that plays the Decemberists, Black Keys, and Carbon/Silicon should get some leeway, but it is easier perhaps to notice what you don't like. You have to invest some time and energy in the cool new music; if you don't like Linkin Park, you already have a considered opinion from the first notes.

Here's the station at 10:35 this morning:

Rolling Stones, "When The Whip Comes Down"
Radiohead, "Karma Police"
Police, "Message In A Bottle"
Raconteurs, "Salute Your Solution"
John Lennon, "Whatever Gets You Through The Night"
R.E.M., "Hollow Man" (tying in with a on-sale-date giveaway of the new album)
Peter Gabriel, "Sledgehammer"
My Morning Jacket, "Off The Record"
Neil Young, "Southern Man"
Blondie, "Atomic"

Speaking of "La Radio Country Rock" (see below), it's a proposition that continues to bedevil U.S. broadcasters who have been trying for years to make the format work without ever fully tackling some of the inherent problems (not enough Southern Rock hits, not enough male/uptempo Country that tests). But I enjoyed hearing New Northwest's KXLW (96.3 the Wolf) Anchorage, Alaska on its second day, Friday (28). As with the format in general, there was at least one song where I couldn't quite figure out the Country angle (Joe Cocker?), but it was more focused and listenable than other similar attempts. It's worth noting that there's no "rock'n' country"-type attempt to explain the music here beyond "the Soundtrack of Alaska" and other similar liners.

Here's the Wolf on Friday at 3:20 a.m. local time:

Hank Williams, Jr., "Family Tradition"
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Travelin' Band"
Brad Paisley, "He Didn't Have To Be"
Eric Clapton, "Lay Down Sally"
Eagles, "On The Border"
Johnny Lee, "Looking For Love"
Dwight Yoakam, "Little Ways"
Joe Cocker, "With A Little Help From My Friends"
Stevie Ray Vaughan, "Little Wing"
ZZ Top, "La Grange"
Charlie Daniels Band, "Uneasy Rider"
Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Tuesday's Gone"

Readers have a lot to say about the recent Ross On Radio column, "How Fast Is Too Fast: The 45-Minute Power Rotation," a column inspired by the monster sign-on rotations on KHJZ (Hot 95.7) Houston, among others. To see their comments click here and scroll down, and then check out the discussion that began on Radio-Info.com.

It doesn't stream its signal yet, so unless you're in Upstate New York, you probably haven't had a chance to hear Entercom's newly acquired WPXY Rochester recently, so it's worth noting that the heritage CHR has returned to the mainstream-to-rhythmic side of the format, after a period of leaning more adult/Modern AC and competing more with Modern AC WDVI (the Drive) than Rhythmic WKGS. Here's the station in middays yesterday:

Justin Timberlake, "SexyBack"
Linkin Park, "Shadow of the Day"
Alicia Keys, "No One"
Akon, "Don't Matter"
Miley Cyrus, "See You Again"
Rihanna, "Don't Stop the Music"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly"
Beyonce, "Crazy In Love"
Chris Brown, "With You"

I've always been a little conflicted about the current Cumulus version of KRBE Houston. It's a well-produced, well-executed, well-presented radio station, as evidenced by its ratings success in a PPM market. It's just going back to Clay Gish's late '70s version of the station, I've always liked KRBE best when it was musically aggressive -- and this KRBE is its most conservative Top 40 incarnation ever.

There hasn't been a lot of new CHR building in recent years, but it always seemed that somebody would try to challenge KRBE, which indeed happened yesterday with the launch of CBS' "Hot Hits" KHJZ (Hot 95.7) under PD Jeff Garrison. The new station is more rhythmic and more current than KRBE with rotations of 45-minutes on at least a few titles. And as the first WNOU (Radio Now) Indianapolis did at its launch, it's also offering "the hottest hit of the hour" with the added wrinkle of sending listeners to vote for it on the station Website.

The new station had an instant purchase on the affections of radio junkies. (It was, for a while, hard to get an available stream yesterday afternoon, probably because of the number of industry people listening!) There have been surprisingly few attempts to invoke the spirit of Mike Joseph's game-changing early '80s "Hot Hits" CHRs in recent years. WNOU was one. WWWQ (Q100) Atlanta used the positioner at its launch, but resembled it in no other way. So positioning yourself as "Hot Hits" is a good way to get the industry's attention.

The 2008 version of "Hot Hits" doesn't have jingles between every song or jocks offering short, carefully structured breaks that always feature a local place reference. So far, it doesn't have any jocks. What it does share with the early Hot Hits station is fast rotations on a tight handful of titles. The station is billing itself as "the new generation of Houston radio" and promising "no more boring radio."

Rotations, as mentioned, have been as tight as 45 minutes on "Take You There" and ":Love Song" (although not every play on either song has been as tightly spaced). And depending on how you count, Mediabase shows the station as having played about 33 current titles and 28 gold or or older recurrent titles. (Most are relatively recent, but "Mo Money, Mo Problems" made it in there.) Musically, KHJZ is more rhythmic than KRBE, but it's also playing both Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers. And in a market where dance was once an important food group, it's playing both Cascada and Enur.

I listened to an hour of Hot 95.7 this morning, then punched over to KRBE which, again, was a good sounding radio station. It just happened to be playing three ballad recurrent/gold titles next to each other. Which means that the outcome of this battle will hinge on the following question: How much of an advantage does the younger, more rhythmic station automatically have these days? In the late '90s, a younger, more rhythmic CHR could at least create a war of attrition for the incumbent that most owners were unwilling to participate in. Of course, in the late '90s/early '00s, rhythmic product was also thought to be the only music that mattered. These days, the rhythmic hits are less dominant and more likely to be Chris Brown and Fergie than the DMX and Eminem records that challenged so many adult-leaning CHRs.

We'll check in on this battle every now and then. We'll also write more soon about the concept of 45-minute rotations. For now, here's Hot 95.7 at 9 a.m. this morning:

50 Cent, "In Da Club"
Sara Bareilles, "Love Song"
Miley Cyrus, "See You Again"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Cascada, "What Hurts The Most"
Finger Eleven, "Paralyzer"
Alicia Keys, "No One"
Rihanna, "Don't Stop The Music"
Buckcherry, "Sorry"
Timbaland f/Nelly & Justin, "Give It To Me"
Pitbull, "The Anthem" (the hour's "hottest hit")
Chris Brown, "With You"
Leona Lewis, "Bleeding Love"
Natasha Bedingfield, "Love Like This"
Enur f/Natasja, "Calabria 2008"
Fergie, "Clumsy"

And here's KRBE from the following hour, 10 a.m.
Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly"
Chris Brown, "With You"
No Doubt, "It's My Life"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Nickelback, "If Everyone Cared"
Avril Lavigne, "I'm With You"
Akon, "Don't Matter"
Ferras, "Hollywood's Not America"
Black Eyed Peas, "Hey Mama"
Buckcherry, "Sorry"
Santana & Rob Thomas, "Smooth"
Rihanna, "Don't Stop The Music"

One of the most fascinating stations of the mid-'90s was Rawlco's CKIS (Kiss FM) Calgary. At a time when Country music, despite its popularity, was M.I.A. from Top 40 and Hot AC, Kiss was an Adult Top 40 with a healthy compliment of Country titles, capable of going from Savage Garden into Vince Gill or a pre-stardom Shania Twain. For several years, it functioned as Hot AC, Top 40, and second Country station to the market.

The original Kiss is now Calgary's Jack FM and owned by Rogers, but Rawlco is back with CIGY (Calgary 97.7), that market's second new station this week. During the day, CIGY is very much like Kiss a decade later: a 50/50 Country/Hot AC mix that plays both Bon Jovi's "Living On A Prayer" and Emerson Drive's "Moments," Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly" and Dixie Chicks' "I Can Love You Better," as well as almost any song you can think of that straddles Country and AC. At night, it becomes considerably more eclectic: a mix of Triple-A and alt. country/Americana. (Canadiana?)

Throughout, the presentation is decidely mainstream -- reminiscent (in a good way) of the George Johns-consulted personality Hot ACs of 20 years ago. The eclectic nighttime mix is a product of the station's promise-of-performance to Canada's broadcast regulator. But something interesting happens when you take eclectic singer/songwriter music and present it like any other AC music, it sounds like AC music. (Of course, the late-'90s singer/songwriter boom proved the same thing.) And the positioning here is no more exotic than "all your music on one station."

Here are two monitors of Calgary FM. The first is from 5 a.m. this morning and thus doesn't include the Canadian music, which doesn't start rolling until 6 a.m. at most stations.

Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing In The Dark"
Alison Krauss & John Waite, "Missing You"
Faith Hill, "The Lucky One"
Traveling Wilburys, "Handle With Care"
Keith Urban, "I Told You So"
John Mellencamp, "Wild Night"
Big & Rich, "Save A Horse (Ride A Cowboy)"
Eagles, "Busy Being Fabulous"
Carlene Carter, "I Fell In Love"
Jack Johnson, "Upside Down"
Lee Ann Womack, "I Hope You Dance"
Georgia Satellites, "Keep Your Hands To Yourself"
Rascal Flatts, "Stand"

And here's a stretch of the more eclectic 10 p.m. version from last night (the first day):

Tracy Chapman, "Fast Car"
Justin Rutledge, "Robin's Tune"
Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man"
Cowboy Junkies, 'Misguided Angel"
Jennifer Warnes, "First We Take Manhattan" (one of two Leonard Cohen Cancon covers heard in 80 minutes time)
Tift Merritt, "Broken"
Barra McNeils, "Darling Be Home Soon" (cover of Loving Spoonful song)
Randy Hutchings, "South Country"
Randy Scruggs & John Prine, "City Of New Orleans"
Jeremy Fisher, "Cigarette"
David Gray, "Babylon"
Proclaimers, "Life With You" (from their new album)
Rankin Family, "North Country"
Piscale Picard, "Gate 22"
Robert Plant & Alison Krauss, "Please Read This Letter"

Amidst the various gloomy reports in America's radio trade press, I was interested to find this report from the U.K. Commercial radio in the UK actually grew 7.1% in the fourth quarter of last year - and the industry grew as a whole for the year.

Of course, commercial radio is a far younger industry in the U.K., which helps it. But what stands out is the last paragraph where one sees the impact of coordinated efforts by Commercial Radio's representative agencies. Surely there is a lesson for U.S. radio in that.

In America, the Jack- and Bob-FM Hot AC/Classic Hits hybrid may have been thought of as the next generation of Oldies. But in Canada, it was the closest thing to an Oldies format that had ever existed on FM. Canadian government regulations required stations to take roughly half their music either from 1981 or later or from songs that weren't top 40 chart hits (easier for a Classic Rock station than an Oldies station).

But as the Oldies/Classic Hits format moved further into the '80s, it was inevitable that it would become easier to do the format on FM. Quebec already has a French-language gold outlet. And this week, Newcap has launched a '60s/'70s/'80s-gold-based format on former Smooth Jazz outlet CIQX Calgary, now known as XL103.

As a longtime fan of Canadian radio and music, this is a launch that I was particularly proud to be involved with. Check it out here.

It's one of those things that people talk about wistfully when they recall the old days of Rock radio: coming out of a concert and being able to hear those artists on the radio for the ride home.

The Eric Clapton/Steve Winwood tour came through New York last week for three nights, so just out of curiosity, I checked out Classic Rock WAXQ (Q104.3) and new Triple-A rival WRXP (which in some ways invokes the spirit of the old WNEW-FM).

Both stations acknowledged the shows, although Q104.3 did so much more extensively:

Mediabase shows that WRXP had "Layla" playing around the time the shows let out on the second night; I heard them playing Clapton deep cut "The Core" when the show let out on the third night.

Q104.3 did six song sets of Clapton, Winwood, Blind Faith, Cream, Traffic, etc., for all three nights -- starting about 15-25 minutes after everybody would have been back in the car (and after WRXP's briefer tribute had ended).

All in all, I felt better than I did a few years ago when I came out of the musical "Jersey Boys" and couldn't find any place to hear the Four Seasons. WCBS-FM was gone. Suburban WMTR, which played a lot of Four Seasons, was in sports. I finally heard "Sherry" on the now-defunct AM oldies format on WWKB Buffalo, N.Y.

There are undoubtedly going to be some readers who find programming for the concert crowd to be just one more "Two for Tuesday"-style cliché. But it's something I wasn't hearing as much for a while. And it's not a bad way for a station to connect with listeners when those opportunities are becoming rarer.

A lot has been written here about the mess that many stations make of the on-line streamed versions of their stopsets. Some stations are doing a better job of selling local spots to parallel the national ones that would create an AFTRA issue. Others are still giving the audience 4 to 6 minutes of dire-sounding PSAs, bad incidental music, repeating morning show promos, fill songs, or some combination thereof.

In recent weeks, I've been spending more time than usual with Internet-only radio, and I've had the following moment of clarity (which I admittedly could have had a year earlier if I didn't do most of my on-line listening to terrestrial).

Almost every major on-line service offers a premium subscription level with no stopsets -- even though their stopsets are much shorter than most terrestrial stations. Terrestrial stations that at least do the work to fill their stopsets with actual songs are effectively giving the listeners that for free.

So while the best scenario would be to actually resolve the AFTRA issue (and the accompanying Arbitron issue of separately tallied stream listing), and the second best would be to sell more Web-only spots, stations that can't do that have a pretty clear mandate. It's time to fill those breaks up with songs, not fill music or McGruff the Crime Dog (the undisputed king of streaming PSAs) and to tell your stream listeners that they're getting commercial-free music without paying extra for it.

In today's Chicago Sun-Times, longtime radio columnist Robert Feder looks at how that market's radio stations responded to last week's shooting at Northern Illinois University. Feder praises the job done by WBBM, WGN, and suburban WERV (the River) and its OM Matt DuBiel, but he notes that Talk outlet WLS both chose to "bail out" of coverage at 7 p.m. to air a taped Sean Hannity program then ran on-air promos "bragging about its coverage."

Seeing Feder's column this morning reminded me that the recap of how local media covered a major news event, particularly a tragedy, used to be fairly standard within journalism. Now, it's rare to hear a music station break for anything other than tragedy, it's common to find national talk programming when you're looking for local information, and it's less common to see this sort of story about how the news was covered.

While Feder has a 10-to-15 year start on many of his colleagues, it was gratifying during the '90s to see daily newspaper coverage of radio proliferate in many markets. Much of the coverage, of course, was frustrating -- people who clearly didn't like radio in the first place and were now determined to make PDs pay for their failure to play enough (insert name of obscure critical favorite here). But the increased coverage also reinforced the notion of radio as a major medium and if broadcasters didn't take sufficient advantage of it, you can't blame the messenger.

So with newspapers, facing their own financial travails, continue to thin their workforces, you have to wonder what's going to happen to media coverage, and radio in particular. Writers who cover radio as a beat -- even the avenging angel rock critics -- generally have a better, more informed take on the industry. They are less likely to repeat the truisms about the business that are not necessarily true (e.g., "In response to the massive inroads made by Satellite Radio, panicked broadcasters have retreated from their lowest common denominator programming of playing the hits every half-hour"). They are also more likely to figure out that the man living on the billboard that said, "I need a job," didn't just coincidentally become a station's new morning man.

And more coverage of radio means that there will be continuing scrutiny, some of it perhaps unwelcome by others, of how radio covers the news or fails to. Radio's importance during a crisis continues to be one of broadcasters' talking points whenever radio's importance in listeners' lives is challenged. If radio is performing well, we need that story told. If radio is not, we need to be able to address it. It is distressing to think that one day there may be nobody to cover the news, and nobody who knows that it isn't being covered except for the people looking for information.

First WNYZ-LP (Pulse 87) New York launched last week with a big helping of late '80s/early '90s freestyle and other forgotten rhythmic titles. Then WKTU, which had always played some of those songs, seemed to make them more prominent. By this weekend, it was all out war with WKTU in an '80s weekend and both stations seemingly trying to dig deeper in the crates than the other. Not since 1991. when the brief repackaging of WPLJ New York as "Mojo Radio" had prompted WHTZ (Z100) to pull out some '80s music as well, was it as possible to hear two New York stations trying to out "oh wow" each other.

And the upshot? In the last week, I've heard all three Samantha Fox hits -- "Touch Me (I Want Your Body), "Naughty Girls (Need Love Too)" and "I Wanna Have Some Fun" on Pulse, WKTU or both. Fox, you may remember, is the former British pinup model who managed three American hits between late 1986 and late 1988 with a little help from Full Force and other prominent producers of the time. In a Britney Spears/Paris Hilton world, she'd hardly be notorious, but both her road to stardom and the retro-sleaze feel of "Touch Me" stood out in 1986. (I remember one PD in particular telling R&R that some of the hits of the time "said something troubling about society" and it wasn't hard to guess what they were referring to.)

These days, of course, the songs are innocuous and are, for better or worse, surprisingly of our time. And even if it was Full Force's doing, "I Wanna Have Some Fun" took on some larger significance as one of the first house records to breakthrough in the U.S., not unlike Missy Elliott's "Work It" becoming the mainstream point-of-entry for the "electroclash" movement (subsequently heard on "SexyBack" and Timbaland's own records). And most of Fox's hits were already playing on WKTU--you just weren't as likely to hear all of them within the period of a few days.

The songs that I've heard on WKTU and Pulse in the last week are rarely songs that would reliably perform well in research outside New York. And they're from an era which has proved hard to build a radio station around, as evidenced by the issues that the new Rhythmic AC has had in most markets. But in New York, those songs are the legacy of the old WQHT (Hot 103.5) and I can definitely think of a few co-workers here in Central New Jersey for whom those songs are indeed the music of their life.

When word began circulating last fall that WNYZ-LP New York, the LP-TV station that broadcasts audio on 87.7 FM, was switching from Russian pop to some form of Top 40 with Star & Buc Wild as the morning show, it was immediately clear that they would need to do two things:

1) Find the format that will make people seek out a frequency that is not even on every radio dial and doesn't have any existing traffic (except for Russian pop fans).

2) Sound "big-time" enough to be taken seriously and simultaneously underground enough to take advantage of the odd "TV on the Radio" nature of the station. There is certainly an audience out there for whom broadcasting at 87.7 FM gives you some extra points for not being radio-as-usual.

Being some form of Top 40 instantly eliminated some of the things that would draw people to a left-field frequency in New York: an all-Caribbean format; a harder-core rap format than what's being played on the two mainstream Urbans, or some sort of younger-targeted/indie rock-driven format (in which case you could play the group TV on the Radio).

That left playing current dance music -- which hasn't been heard much in the market since WKTU segued to Rhythmic AC a year ago, although it still maintains some presence on WHTZ (Z100). And that was indeed the format that the new Pulse 87 unveiled yesterday under new PD Joel Salkowitz, who was doing a similar format on his "Original Hot 97" Website.

As heard in its first two days, the new Pulse 87 is about 40% freestyle and lost '80s/early '90s dance of the sort that would have been on the original WQHT (Hot 97) New York, (okay, Hot 103.5 actually), about 20% current pure dance product, and 40% dance remixes of current pop and R&B hits. (As Billboard's Silvio Pietroluongo pointed out, what's not there yet is some of the dance music from the last two years or so that the market never got to hear--something which was a big part of the current WKTU when it launched in 1996).

It's not a bad time to be launching a dance music station. With recent hits from Cascada, Enur, Bob Sinclair, and even Rihanna's "Don't Stop The Music," you have a better chance of finding enough hits to represent dance music in a research cluster or a TV spot. And we can set aside the issue of whether Rihanna or even Enur represents "real" dance music: there's a lot of danceable R&B and pop right now and regardless of how listeners view it, it still helps them accept the music that comes from the dance community (as opposed to Timbaland or the Neptunes).

As for that other question, of how an LPTV pushes its way into the market with the big guys, adding Salkowitz to the mix added some extra credibility. On its first day (sweepers only, no moring show yet), Pulse certainly sounded slick enough in the opening stage, with one misstep: sending listeners to the Website for audio, even though there's not yet a Listen Live link at this writing.

And streaming will be key for the station. I was told that the signal would be surprisingly good on the station and it was -- I can hear it at my home in Northern New Jersey, about 30 miles from the city, although it's sometimes spotty. It dies out about 10 miles to the west, about 20 - 30 miles short of where other NYC FMs start to fall apart. And here in Somerville, what you get on 87.7 is the audio from Philadelphia's TV 6. But it's a comparable signal to, say, KNGY (Energy 92.7) San Francisco -- a well-respected station that hovers just under a 1-share at most times, and which many market observers think would do better with a better signal.

There's been some speculation among dance and radio fans in the last day about how and if WKTU would react. Yesterday and this morning, it felt like the station was doubling down on freestyle/late '80s (a monitor this morning shows Samantha Fox, Lisa-Lisa & Cult Jam, and George Lamond in close proximity) -- music that has always been on the station but felt like it was appearing with greater frequency today. As for current dance product, it's likely to be there only if the combination of Z100 and Pulse 87 is able to create some more records of the magnitude of Enur.

Here's WNYZ from around 5 p.m. yesterday. All non-dance songs are represented by dance mixes:

Ida Corr vs. Fedde LeGrand, "Let Me Think About It"
Ne-Yo, "Because Of You"
Justin Timberlake, "Until the End of Time"
Corona, "The Rhythm of the Night"
Mary J. Blige, "Just Fine"
Nelly Furtado, "Promiscuous"
Sandee, "You're The One"
Santana f/Chad Kroeger, "Into the Night"
Erika Jayne, "Stars"
Cascada, "What Hurts the Most"
Filo & Peri, "Anthem"
Hillary Duff, "Stranger"
DJ Antoine, "This Time"
Flo Rida, "Low"
India, "The Lover Who Rocks You All Night"
Sean Kingston, "Take You There"
Jo Jo, "Too Little, Too Late"
Ne-Yo, "Sexy Love"
Samantha Fox, "Touch Me (I Want Your Body)"

Meanwhile, if you're looking for another dance choice, one of the other great brands in New York dance radio is now represented by an on-line radio station as well. Longtime A&R person John Parker, now of Robbins Entertainment, is paying tribute to B91, the Brooklyn non-comm that started dance music on its journey to Hot 97 in the late '80s. Check out his station here.

When Emmis launched Triple-A WRXP New York last week as "New York's Rock Experience," it was with a nod to the cult that has sprung up around non-commercial KEXP Seattle, even if the music mixes barely overlapped. Now, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer reports that the real KEXP will be heard in New York next month through a deal with non-commercial WNYE.

I didn't want to let the recent departure of KMBY (X103.9) Monterey, Calif., go unmourned. X103.9 was the most recent in a series of attempts at an Alternative/Hip-Hop hybrid, one of those formats like the Classic Rock/Country format that makes sense to everybody but often turns out to be an unstainable niche for a terrestrial station.

As do most stations, X103.9 had morphed a little since its heavily publicized launch. The music had gradually become a little more hit-driven and a little less extreme. By its final week, the powers (Flo Rida, Linkin Park, Finger 11, Timbaland./One Republic, Soulja Boy, Linkin Park, and Snoop Dogg) could have been the hits on any rhythmic-leaning large-market Top 40 (although X103.9 was playing them a little less--39 times a week or thereabouts). And if you looked further down the playlist, there was still Avenged Sevenfold and Flyleaf next to Lupe Fiasco and Gnarls Barkley.

When the first attempts to acknowledge that Hip-Hop had usurped guitar rock's long-ago place as "the only music that mattered" to a 22-year-old male came along, the issue was that there was still an age limit on a male rock listener's tolerance for rap. A 22-year-old might understand the mix perfectly. A 32-year-old would not. Lately, there's been another wrinkle. As many Top 40 programmers will tell you, Hip-Hop is definitely not the only music that matters to a 16-year-old either. So suddenly the notion of a Rock/Hip-Hop coalition isn't only limited from above but from below.

And yet, as was noted when we wrote about KMBY at the time, if X103.9 wasn't the way to go after the young males who are becoming disenfranchised from radio, the onus is still on broadcasters to figure out what is. You can't help thinking that the architect of today's Adult Modern hybrids or even the new WRXP New York are figuring that stations that mix new and old, whether it's Led Zeppelin or Local H. are targeting 18-24 males because, in the absence of galvanizing new music, they've turned to older music themselves. But it's hard to imagine somebody else's music being the thing that draws younger listeners to the radio again.

One of the interesting stories of the last year or so has been the continued rise of Oldies KLUV (K-Love) Dallas which is generally believed to have gotten a boost when Smooth Jazz sister station KOAI (the Oasis) switched to Rhythmic AC -- leaving them as one of the few 45-plus choices.

So the departure of WQCD (CD101.9) New York yesterday had to provide some encouragement to the folks at WCBS-FM, one scanner punch to the left. The new WRXP, with its ample Classic Rock component will undoubtedly be of interest to some CBS-FM fans, but they're also likely to send some folks in the other direction. So maybe it was no coincidence that the first song I heard on CBS-FM when I punched in this morning was Chuck Mangione's "Feels So Good." (I'm not waiting for Count Basic and David Sanborn, however.)

Meanwhile, WRXP, which signed on hosted in afternoons, has been jockless (at least for now) when I've heard them in late nights and mornings. During those times, they've been running a lot of those drops that sound like they could as easily be a jock or a listener as the station voice--so they're not without their WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia-type elements.

The early hours of Emmis' new Triple-A WRXP (101.9 RXP), "New York's Rock Experience," are going to be amply dissected everywhere tonight, but in the absence of a Listen Live link on the station site at this writing, I wanted to pass along a monitor of the station's first two hours for anybody outside their listening area, and some early notes:

Emmis isn't using the words Triple-A to describe the new station. On the press release, it's "new adult rock." On the air it's "where New Music, Classic Rock, and Alternative merge." It resembles a traditional Triple-A in its "Classic Rock through today" approach and in the presence of on-air hosts who serve as tourguides to the music (APD/p.m. driver Brian Schock, in this case). In that regard, it's trying to invoke the legacy of the old WNEW-FM and setting itself apart from the jockless Adult Modern hybrids that are regarded in many quarters of the industry as "the new Triple-A." (And it's ironic that the launch comes four days after heritage Triple-A WBOS Boston moved from the former camp to the latter.)

What WRXP has in common with the new Adult Moderns is a healthy component of Alternative gold and a small but noticeable "indie rock" presence. There were a few stretches where they might have been an Adult Modern for several songs. There was also, in the first two hours anyway, an emphasis on tempo and none of the singer-songwriter balladry -- old or new -- that one would hear on a typical Triple-A. (Newly appointed WNYZ-LP PD Joel Salkowitz has been doing something in the same ballpark on his The Finest Rock webstream for several months.) And WRXP does deserve points for being hip enough to play Iggy Pop and the Flaming Lips and not too hip to play Finger Eleven's "Paralyzer" or Nickelback.

Here are the first two hours of the station:

Velvet Underground, "Rock 'N' Roll (Live)"
R.E.M., "Supernatural, Superserious" (introduced by Michael Stipe as the New York premiere)
Elvis Costello, "Pump It Up"
Tom Petty & Heartbreakers, "Mary Jane's Last Dance"
Blondie, "Call Me"
The Bravery, "Believe"
Bruce Springsteen, "Blinded By The Light"
Flaming Lips, "Do You Realize"
U2, "Angel Of Harlem"
Nickelback, "Rockstar"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "The Zephyr Song"
Black Crowes, "Hard To Handle"
Killers, "Somebody Told Me"
Lenny Kravitz, "Fly Away"
Silverchair, "Straight Lines"
Iggy Pop, "Lust For Life"
Jet, "Are You Gonna Be My Girl"
Rolling Stones, "Shattered"
Cold War Kids, "Hang Me Out To Dry"
Pretenders, "Mystery Achievement"
Everclear, "Everything To Everyone"
Jimi Hendrix Experience, "Foxey Lady"
Radiohead, "Bodysnatchers"
The Police, "Message In A Bottle"

With Clear Channel's R&B WWPR (Power 105.1) New York in the headlines today, I thought outgoing PD Helen Little deserved a mention. Under her watch of slightly more than a year, Power became a much more listenable station -- almost an R&B version of Clear Channel's gold-based Modern/AC hybrids. (Arguably, in fact, Power got to that formula first. having experimented with various forms of it over the years.) I'm looking forward to hearing Little in her new job, middays on WLTW, but didn't want her tenure at Power to end without a mention.

Three out of New York's four Urban stations have had a PD change in the last 10 days, setting off inevitable speculation about direction changes. At this moment, both of the R&B/Hip-Hop outlets sound better than they did 15 months ago. But there is still room for a station that plays the Hip-Hop and R&B Hits like a WPGC Washington, D.C., or KKDA (K104) Dallas, sounds great doing it, and becomes part of life in N.Y.C. in the way that WQHT (Hot 97) was a decade ago, or WBLS did in the early '80s.

If Fort Wayne, Ind., isn't usually on your radar as a market, it's worth checking out the fall numbers for Russ Oasis' Country WBTU. The heritage Country FM, which had languished until being relaunched last year as US93.3, was up 4.3 - 8.6, pushing ahead of rival WQHK (8.0 - 7.7): a net gain of more than four Country shares over the spring book and nearly two shares over a year ago.

The easiest way to describe US93.3 is that it's like hearing "Froggy Country" in its early days, but with patriotic references instead of amphibians. The jocks are Sam Adams, Dolly Madison, Clara Barton, Andrew Jackson, Betsy Ross, and Patrick Henry (all shown as registered trademarks on the station Website). Frequent listener club members sign up for "U.S. citizenship." The station's current variation on the ages-old "High/Low" contest is "Operation Tax Refund," in which listeners have to guess what amount the check from the station's "Department of the Treasury" is written for. The language of the station is developed to the point where it has its own on-line glossary..

Musically, US93.3 is yesterday-and-today Country, imaged around "the newest of the new and the legends the other guys have forgotten about" with a heavy presence of early- and mid-'90s titles. Like Oasis' WKLU Indianapolis, its spotload is low (only four minutes in the two hours I heard). And like Oasis' other stations, its formatics are grounded in traditional top 40--in the 3 p.m. hour, Dolly Madison could be heard talking briefly about hockey's Ft. Wayne Komets playing that night or about Edwards and Giuliani pulling out of the presidential campaign.

In other words, US93.3 is a relatively developed package.at a time when stations are going more minimal. It plays a lot of music, including a lot of "oh wow" titles. But presentationally, it's not going to be mistaken for an iPod.

Here's US93.3 at 3 p.m. today:

Gretchen Wilson, "Here For The Party"
Josh Turner, "Another Try"
Billy Ray Cyrus, "Achy Breaky Heart"
Tim McGraw, "It's Your Love"
Craig Morgan, "International Harvester"
Vince Gill, "Trying To Get Over You"
Tanya Tucker, "It's A Little Too Late"
Gary Allan, "Watching Airplanes"
Rodney Atkins, "Watching You"
Clay Walker, "Dreaming With My Eyes Open"
Chuck Wicks, "Stealing Cinderella"
Brooks & Dunn, "You Can't Take The Honky-Tonk Out Of The Girl"
Reba McEntire & Linda Davis, "Does He Love You"
Brad Paisley, "Letter To Me"
George Strait, "One Night At A Time"

Throughout our debate on the role of imaging, there's been a recurring theme from advocates of the new presentational austerity that can be roughly paraphrased as follows: "No matter how much I liked listening to CKLW Detroit and WLS Chicago growing up, they would mean nothing to today's audience." But the new austerity isn't new either, and it wasn't a panacea the first time. For more, see this week's Ross On Radio, "The Last Days of CKLW."

WJPZ (Z89) Syracuse, N.Y., -- the student-run noncommercial station associated with Syracuse Univ. -- has always run more like a mainstream, commercial station than most college outlets, doing Top 40, Rhythmic, and (if memory serves) Dance formats over the years. And now it's gotten local press following a marathon of Michael Jackson's "Beat It," followed by a heartbeat to promote its segue from Mainstream to Rhythmic Top 40 tonight as "The Beat of Syracuse." In an interesting sign of the times, however, besides generating the inevitable call to 911 by a concerned listener, the stunt also set off a flurry of text messages to the station.

As is the case whenever we cover major format changes, the impending departure of WNNX (99X) Atlanta from its terrestrial frequency has brought forth a lot of comments from listeners, many of them seemingly from outside our industry, and many of them ending with that common last line of angry listener e-mails, "From now on, I'm going to listen to satellite rado and/or my iPod."

In the world of The Infinite Dial, of course, there are lots of other replacements for 99X. Which leads me to pose this question for readers: What currently extant terrestrial Alternative stations would a former 99X listener enjoy? While it's hard to replace a legend -- particularly one that is already looming larger in listeners' minds before it even goes away, there are still plenty of choices for a long-time 99X listener, who misses some of the music that the station made famous, still cares about new Alternative rock, and has sensibilities that lean toward the pop/singer-songwriter/true alternative side, not the harder side of the format.

That description covers probably 40-45% of the format these days, including two of the longest running success-stories, KROQ Los Angeles and KXRK (X96) Salt Lake City. Both have become slightly more adult over the last year in a way that might appeal to a 99X person, and X96, like 99X, prides itself on having a thinking person's morning show. You might also steer a former 99X person to:

* The first wave of Adult Moderns (which 99X briefly joined) like KBZT San Diego or KNRK Portland, Ore.

* The new crop of stations on the cusp of Modern Rock and Modern AC. And lest this become one more plug for WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philly, any of the Clear Channel hybrids have similar appeal, including WDVI Rochester, N.Y., or KJMY Salt Lake City. So, for that matter, would its Hot AC WMAX Grand Rapids, Mich., where the top 5 most played oldies are from the Bodeans, Shawn Mullins, Black Crowes, Nine Days, and Toad the Wet Sprocket.

* The more contemporary half of the Triple-A format (e.g., KBCO Denver, KMTT Seattle, KINK Portland, Ore.)

There's also the radio station that kept me on the terrestrial dial for Modern Rock when WXRK (K-Rock) New York went all-Talk for a year, WHTG (G-Rock) Monmouth/Ocean, N.J. Even after being tightened up by a new PD, it's still aggressive with both currents and gold and still has some "what will they play next" aspect to it.

Okay, this is a very partial list -- that's where you come in.

I was really looking forward to hearing Jack-FM or something like it come to Eastern Europe. Even before the wall fell, that area was a hotbed for all things Eurosynth: Pet Shop Boys, Depeche Mode, New Order, and a zillion others from the category that had much less impact in North America. Even now, listening to the Russian contemporary format on WNYZ-LP-TV in New York, soon to be Pulse 87 FM, it's possible to hear new music that sounds like '80s Europop.

There's actually disappointingly little of that music on Kekc-FM, the new Russian licensee of Jack-FM serving Moscow and St. Petersburg. Only about four songs an hour are in English and there are definitely some '80s-sounding Russian music, but there's also a lot of traditional sounding balladry and a lot of more generic pop/rock that is hard to place in any particular decade. The English language songs I heard in my first half hour were Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and Bryan Ferry's "Slave To Love."

Ferry, by the way, already has more of a presence on Kekc-FM than he has on its counterparts here in the U.S. WCNR (the Corner) Charlottesville, Va., PD Brad Savage sent an e-mail around to friends/colleagues on Friday night headlined, "I discovered the best radio station EVER," in which he writes, "I did hear "Lemon Tree" by Fool's Garden, a worldwide smash that U.S. audiences didn't get in 1996. I also just heard "Jealous Guy" by [Ferry and] Roxy Music. Different is Good!" Savage also writes that "the imaging rules," although the station voice sounds more sonorous and (if you can tell this about somebody speaking in a language you don't speak) somewhat less ironic than the U.S./Canadian voice.

To hear the station, click on the right-most drop-down menu icon on the right-hand side of the page.

It hasn't gotten the same national ink this week, but here in the New York area, the return to the radio of Luis Jiménez is a big story, generating nearly as much press coverage as the return of Don Imus. Jimenez was part of the market-leading ""El Vacilón de la Mañana" on SBS' Tropical WSKQ (La Mega) New York. He's been sitting out a non-compete for a year, but returns, as expected, on Univision's WCAA (La Kalle). That station was reggaeton but, like much of the Latin Urban format, has evolved heavily, putting it more in WSKQ's neighborhood these days. WSKQ has responded by re-adding Jiminez's partner Moonshadow to its morning show. Both stations have somewhat obscure Web addresses, but both are streaming and can be reached through the links above.

Mainstream(ish) formats are still sufficiently rare in the non-commercial band that I'm always fascinated when I run across one. I hadn't checked out WMWX (ClassX Radio) Cincinnati since its debut, but reading about some recent lineup changes prompted me to check them out again this morning. The station is doing a mix of deep cuts Classic Rock and like-minded recent material and reminded me, at its best moments, of my other favorite deep cuts outlet, KCDX Phoenix.

Here's ClassX at 11:30 this morning:

John Fogerty, "Eye Of The Zombie" (1986)
Eagles, "Ol' 55" (1974)
J.K. Northrup, "So Long" (2007)
Eagles, "I Don't Want To Hear Anymore" (2007)
Soul Asylum, "Sexual Healing" (1993)
Bob Seger, "The Fire Inside" (1991)
Neal Morse, Mike Portnoy & Randy George, "Where The Streets Have No Name' (2006)
ELO, "I'm Alive" (1980)
David Gilmour, "Wish You Were Here (Live)" (2007)
Albert Cummings, "I Feel Good" (2006)
Kiss, "Strutter" (1974)
Supertramp, "Sister Moonshine" (1975)
Bryan Adams, "Let's Make A Night To Remember" (1997)

In late November, we named Salt Lake City one of our Ten Best Markets For Radio Listeners. Since then, there have already been a few changes. One is the switch of Adult Standards KDYL to Oldies, the second station to go Oldies on AM in two months. But the other, involving public broadcaster KCPW-AM, makes the already wide variety of offerings here that much broader.

Just a reminder: If you haven't seen it already, be sure to check out the list in last Wednesday's Ross on Radio of the Most Intriguing Stations of 2007, as well as readers' own suggestions and comments.

This could have been an anti-climactic First Listen to write. The hole in Orlando for something in the Oldies/Classic Hits neighborhood on FM has been pretty obvious for a while now -- particularly since there were two Alternative outlets in the market. And the former O-Rock has been signaling its intentions by running "The History of Rock & Roll" this week. That said, the first hour of WOCL (Sunny 105.9) was very good, and very well-produced. If it wasn't as momentous as the first hour of sister WCBS-FM New York, it did have that "we've been here doing this all along" feel that few just-launched stations achieve these days.

Here's the first hour of Sunny 105.9:

KC & Sunshine Band, "That's The Way (I Like It)" (1975)
Foreigner, "Feels Like The First Time" (1977)
Prince, "1999" (1983)
Rolling Stones, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," (1965)
Four Seasons, "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)" (1976)
Marvin Gaye, "Sexual Healing" (1982)
Doobie Brothers, "Listen To The Music" (1972)
Maxine Nightingale, "Right Back Where We Started From" (1976)
Billy Joel, "Uptown GIrl" (1983)
Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl" (1967)
Barry White, "You're The First, The Last, My Everything" (1974)
Huey Lewis & the News, "I Want A New Drug" (1984)
Fleetwood Mac, "Don't Stop" (1977)
Beatles, "Twist & Shout" (1964/1986)

Even when he was group PD of United Broadcasting in the '80s, you didn't read much about Bill Parris, but he's always created quirky, intriguing takes on any format he does. And he's already had a knack for getting to some groups of records a few years before they end up back on the radio. When UBC did a short-lived Adult Top 40 format on WYST (92 Star) Baltimore in the early '90s, shortly before it became WERQ (92Q), it was the first place I'd heard "Hungry Like The Wolf" back on the radio in a decade. When suburban D.C.'s WINX was doing Oldies in the mid-'90s, I remember hearing it throw in "Staying Alive" and "That's The Way (I Like It)" and thinking it was kind of gutsy to play those songs as Oldies again. Now, of course, they're a regular part of most Oldies stations.

In recent years, Parris has doing a format that can best be described as the early '90s version of 92 Star a decade or so later on two AMs, WKHZ Ocean City and WYRE Annapolis, Md. The format is meant to promote a website, KHZTV.com that will launch March 1 as "an e-store for new DVDs and music from indie creators," but which is up and running now, if you want to stream the format. The "oh wow" records now are from the late '90s/early '00s. And even if this seems like an unusual mix now, I don't doubt that there will be something like it in the mainstream in a few years now.

Here's a recent hour of WKHZ in mid-mornings:

Kool & the Gang, "Celebration"
Good Charlotte, "Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous"
Meredith Brooks, "Bitch"
Sean Kingston, "Me Love"
Aerosmith, "Jaded"
Prince, "1999"
Avril Lavigne, "When You're Gone"
Michael Jackson, "Bad"
EMF, "Unbelievable"
Sheryl Crow, "If It Makes You Happy"
George Michael, "Monkey"
James Blunt, "1973"
Santana, "Maria, Maria"
Murray Head, "One Night In Bangkok"
Lionel Richie, "All Night Long (All Night)"
Jennifer Paige, "Crush"
Billy Ocean, "Caribbean Queen"

Many of you know that Edison Media Research does research in many other areas than radio. Our experience in doing research for many kinds of media businesses makes us better radio researchers. Doubtlessly our most high-profile work is the Exit Polling that we do for the television networks (ABC, CBS, CNN, Fox, and NBC) and for the Associated Press. When you watch television on the night of an election, or read the newspaper the next day, and see people saying things like: "Obama beat Clinton among women in Iowa," that information is coming from your friends at Edison. You can find examples of our recent work in Iowa by clicking here.

For the Iowa Caucus we actually do entrance polls, not exit polls. And in an example of The Infinite Dial, Larry Rosin was interviewed by a German radio station last night for their morning news this morning. Test out your German and you can listen to Larry's sound bite here:

We can make ourselves available to talk about our polling to any radio stations who want to discuss the topic. Send an email to info@edisonresearch.com if you are interested.

It was a distinctly contrarian position in the AC world until not that long ago, but the "soft and contemporary" AC has proliferated over the last year. Cox was an early believer. CBS was the chief proponent of "Fresh" and Clear Channel used KBIG (My 104.3) Los Angeles to showcase its own version. And you can hear Cumulus' take on soft and contemporary on the new WWFT (Warm 93.9) Indianapolis, doing an '80s/'90s/now AC without the '70s in contrast to gold-based rival WYXB (B105.7).

Within the boundaries of "no '70s" of course, there's a lot of wiggle room. Unlike WWFS (Fresh 102.7) New York, which has gotten a little edgier as the year goes along and dropped the word "soft" from its positioner, WWFT still feels very much like a mainstream AC, and has plenty of '80s (and still at least one '70s song in the hour or so I heard.). It's also emphsizing "best music mix" and "10-in-a-row" and not trying to reposition (or talk about) B105.7 as too soft. Were they inclined to do that, it could make things interesting, since B105.7 now has an Oldies station to defend against as well following the recent switch at WKLU.

Here's Warm 93.9 at 11:40 a.m. today:

Lee Ann Womack, "I Hope You Dance"
Rob Thomas, "Never The Same"
Wilson Phillips, "Hold On"
Josh Grobin, "You Raise Me Up"
Pat Benatar, "We Belong"
George Michael, "Faith"
Elliott Yamin, "Wait For You"
Sting, "Fields Of Gold"
Elton John & Kiki Dee, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart"
Phil Collins, "You'll Be In My Heart"
Bryan Adams, "Straight From The Heart"
Amy Grant, "That's What Love Is For"
Daughtry, "Home"
Richard Marx, "Right Here Waiting"
Edwin McCain, "I'll Be"

And here's WYXB (B105.7) at 12:05 p.m. today:

Foundations, "Build Me Up Buttercup"
Lionel Richie, "My Love"
Fleetwood Mac, "You Make Loving Fun"
Counting Crows, "Big Yellow Taxi"
Neil Sedaka, "Laughter In The Rain" (part of a mystery year contest/feature)
Steve Winwood, "Higher Love"
Bee Gees, "How Can You Mend A Broken Heart"
Atlantic Starr, "Secret Lovers"
Michael Buble, "Everything"
Bruce Hornsby & Range, "The Way It Is"
Kelly Clarkson, "A Moment Like This"

If you grew up with Country radio in the '70s -- and there aren't a lot of people my age who can make that statement -- it's hard to find more than a smattering of titles from that era on the radio. The relative (but growing) handful of Country Gold stations tend to emphasize the '80s with only the biggest '60s and '70s titles (hard to find songs that test as well as "The Gambler" and "Ring Of Fire" when not everybody heard the other stuff). Some Classic Country stations have a lot of the late '80s/early '90s music that has some presence on a lot of mainstream Country outlets.

Being part of a combo with a Mainstream Country station won't clear out that music entirely, but it does usually result in a somewhat older average era. Cox's KTHT (Country Legends 97.1) and Journal's KXBL (Big Country 99.5) both have the advantage of a mainstream Country next door. So does Clear Channel's WLND (the Legend) Chattanooga. And recently, I've really enjoyed KSOP-AM (Gold Country 1370 AM) Salt Lake City, which is good for lost Country titles from the '60s, '70s and '80s.

The combo factor also seems to be helping WLTM (The Legend 96.7), Clear Channel's Atlanta rimshotter, which over the holidays nudged its way into a market that already has three Country stations: CCs WUBL (the Bull) and Citadel's WKHX (Kicks 101.5) and WYAY (the Eagle), a one-time gold-based station that has gone more '90s and now. The 96.7 frequency has a long history of format changes, except for a period in the '90s when it concentrated on being a suburban station. Its best recent Atlanta traction was as Active Rock WBZY, which was eventually folded into WKLS (Project 9-6-1).

I've heard two stretches of Legends 96.7 so far. Yesterday, it was pretty unapologetically old -- only one foray into the early '90s and a lot of '50s, '60s and older -- in a way that only a station that is born-to-flank can be. This morning, it was somewhat newer. So it's clearly in the shakedown period.

Here's WLTM at 11:30 a.m. yesterday:
Juice Newton, "Break It To Me Gently" (1982)
Charlie Daniels Band, "The South's Gonna Do It" (1975)
Bellamy Brothers, "If I Said You Have A Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me" (1979)
Roy Acuff, "Wabash Cannonball" (1936)
George Jones, "She Thinks I Still Care" (1962)
John Conlee, "Backside Of Thirty" (1979)
Waylon Jennings, "Just To Satisfy You" (1969, the solo original version)
Tennessee Ernie Ford, "Sixteen Tons" (1955)
Crystal Gayle, "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (1977)
Mickey Gilley, "Stand By Me" (1980)
Brooks & Dunn, "Boot Scootin' Boogie" (1992)
Ricky Van Shelton, "Statue Of A Fool" (1989)

And here they are around 10:30 this morning -- a little newer and with more late '80s/early '90s:

Buck Owens, "Act Naturally" (1963)
Randy Travis, "Forever And Ever, Amen" (1987)
Waylon Jennings, "America" (1984)
Forester Sisters, "I Fell In Love Again Last Night" (1985)
Willie Nelson, "Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain" (1975)
Don Williams, "Lord, I Hope This Day Is Good" (1981)
Eddie Rabbitt, "Two Dollars In The Jukebox" (1976)
Aaron Tippin, "There Ain't Nothin' Wrong WIth The Radio" (1992)
Earl Thomas Conley, "Holding Her And Loving You" (1983)
Johnny Cash, "I Walk The Line" (1956)
Mark Chesnutt, "Brother Jukebox" (1990)
Jerry Reed, "East Bound And Down" (1977)

It's interesting that 2008 is beginning in much the same way that 2004 did, with the launch of gold-based, adult-leaning Modern Rockers. This time four years ago, you'll remember, existing Alternative stations were rushing to cover their bases, lest somebody come into the market and siphon their upper-demos, as KBZT San Diego had done to heritage XETRA-FM (91X) at the time.

Few markets, as it turned out, had the Alternative heritage or shares that justified the move. Most of those Pixies songs that PDs were so excited about playing again came back at the bottom of the music test -- a lot of today's Alternative listeners had just never heard them. And many of the stations in question either crept back to Mainstream Alternative or somehow evolved.

But 2007 wasn't a bad year for some of the holdouts, such as KNRK (94/7 FM) Portland, Ore., or for new launches like WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia. Not every market is going to have the same conditions as Philly (no current-based Hot AC or Modern AC, no other Alternative, and a history of female-friendly Alternative in the market), but by year's end, the building boom was on again -- particularly within Clear Channel. But it has now jumped the border as well.

In Canada, CHUMRadio switched to a similar format in November on its CKLC (98.9 The Drive) Kingston, Ontario, billed as "essential alternative." And Newcap's CFUL (Fuel 90.3) Calgary, which launched with Alternative last year has evolved to "Classic Alternative," emphasizing the late '70s through the late '90s, under PD Murray Brookshaw, known to most American industryites as the former PD of CIMX (89X) Detroit.

Canada is going to be an interesting market for gold-based Alternative. Only Toronto had a dedicated Modern Rocker in CFNY. But Modern Rock was always a bigger part of early '80s AOR radio and even Top 40. (Acts like Split Enz and XTC were much bigger radio presences at both formats than they were here.) And Canada has always been good at furnishing homegrown rock for the 35-40% Cancon that most stations have to deal with (suffice it to say I've heard a lot of Tragically Hip so far).

Here's Fuel around 1 p.m. on Sunday (30):

Red Hot Chili Peppers,"The Zephyr Song"
Pearl Jam, "Black"
Tragically Hip, "Blow At High Dough" (Canadian)
Sum 41, "Still Waiting" (Canadian)
David Bowie, "Let's Dance"
Matthew Good Band, "Everything Is Automatic" (Canadian)
Gin Blossoms, "Hey Jealousy"
Alien Ant Farm, "Smooth Criminal"
Cowboy Junkies, "Sweet Jane" (Canadian)
Live, "All Over You"
Theory of a Deadman, "Hello, Lonely (Walk Away From This)" (Canadian)
Lit, "My Own Worst Enemy"
Clash, "Train In Vain (Stand By Me)"
Barenaked Ladies, "The Old Apartment" (Canadian)

We're going to kick off 2008 with as many "First Listens" of new stations as we can. Check back here daily for more.

The slug line for KEGL (the Eagle) Dallas, which returned as an Active Rock station earlier this week, is "Rock is Back" and that's true in several ways. It's not just that we've seen three major Rock launches in less than a week's time. I also took a spin through the playlists of various major-market Alternative stations today and was reminded anew of the crunchier feel of that format these days. For every WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia (bookended on the true alternative end by indie act Band Of Horses and on the hard side by Linkin Park), there's a WKQX (Q101) Chicago that has started rocking harder again. In between, there are an increasing number of stations that will still play a White Stripes or Silversun Pickups here or there, but lean to the harder side of the Alternative chart.

What's interesting here is that one of the stations in the latter camp is KEGL's sister station, KDGE (the Edge). With the Eagle flying again, I took a look at a monitor of the Edge tonight to see if they'd changed their music, but there was still a strong dose of Korn, Chevelle, Avenged Sevenfold, and Atreyu, although it was cut by some of the station's '90s heritage titles from 311, Tripping Daisy, etc. In Cincinnati, it was interesting to see Clear Channel sign on a modern AC that wasn't all that far from Adult Modern WSWD. Here, they're short-spacing themselves a little. (Both stations have a '90s Alternative component, for instance, although Eagle's is more likely to be grunge.) And that again says something about the perceived new sexiness of Rock radio.

All that said, Eagle on its third night was very palatable, even to a 45-year-old whose own personal tastes run more toward the true-alt side, with some amusing imaging. Here's KEGL at 10 p.m. tonight:

Ozzy Osbourne, "Crazy Train"
Live, "I Alone"
Stone Sour, "Zzyzx Rd."
AC/DC, "Back In Black"
Puddle Of Mudd, "Famous"
Linkin Park, "Breaking The Habit"
Guns N' Roses, "Sweet Child O' Mine"
Godsmack, "Good Times, Bad Times"
Green Day, "Basket Case"
Three Days Grace, "Just Like You"
Pink Floyd, "Brain Damage"
Ozzy Osbourne, "I Don't Wanna Stop"
Staind, "For You"

In the course of yesterday's posting about WRKS (Kiss FM) New York, I realized how weird it was to be writing in this day and age about stations that don't stream. During 2007, most of the major-market and large-group holdouts finally became available on the Web. If I moved out of range of New York radio tomorrow, I'd lose Kiss and its Emmis sisters -- at least for now -- and the oddball Oldies/Standards mix on Long Island's WNYH. And that's it.

That got me thinking about what I'd like on The Infinite Dial that still isn't streaming. And it's a gratifyingly short list. I haven't been able to listen to any of the British stations that are running an all-Christmas format (with some Web-only exceptions, as previously noted). I haven't been able to check out some of the intriguing looking HD-2 multicast channels. I wasn't able to write about Adult Standards WNMX Charlotte, N.C., when I was at NAB because they neither streamed nor were audible in my downtown hotel room. And I never got to hear Saul Levine's Southern California Classic Country AM, which promised to be as iconoclastic as any of his other stations.

It's not like I don't already have more radio than I can possibly get around to listening to. But in a pefect on-demand world who else would be streaming?

* WTIX-FM New Orleans and WAKY Louisville, two quirky Oldies FMs that are reanimating some vintage call letters;

* The Emmis stations that are still MIA, particularly KBPA (Bob FM) Austin and KPWR (Power 106) L.A.;

* Adult Top 40 WBMX (Mix 98.5) Boston;

* The English/Spanish-language CHR hybrid on KSSE (Super Estrella) Los Angeles, and Bob Perry's American "Radio Digital" Spanish-language CHR clients;

* KRXY Olympia, Wash., the unusual Adult Top 40 that was my P1 station for several months from 3,000 miles away when it did stream around the early part of this decade.

And after that, the list gets even more eclectic. And a lot of the list above is likely to appear on the Web sometime during 2008. But you definitely take for granted having so much radio available: I went looking for KEGL (the Eagle) Dallas in its first day back as a Rock station yesterday and was surprised to find it not yet there.

So what's your list? What station would you listen to right now if it was streaming?

Don't know about you, but here are some of the songs I look forward to hearing around Christmas time:

Honey Cone, "One Monkey Don't Stop No Show";

Brothers Johnson, "Get The Funk Out Ma Face";

Chic, "My Forbidden Lover";

Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame, "Weak At The Knees";

Evelyn "Champagne" King, "Bet'cha She Don't Love You."

Those are a few of the songs that have played today on WRKS (98.7 Kiss FM) New York's "12 Days of Kissmas," a staple on the station since it segued to Urban AC in 1994 (with a few years' hiatus in the early part of the decade).

As noted in these pages recently, R&B Oldies have become harder to find on the radio. Most of the true R&B Oldies FMs have segued to Urban AC, while most Urban ACs have become a lot more contemporary -- there are definite parallels to what's happened in Oldies radio, except that you can add 10 years to the equation (e.g., stations that were '70s-based are more '80s and '90s now, or newer).

The other issue is that as Urban AC becomes more driven by syndicated personality, Steve Harvey or Tom Joyner in the morning, and Michael Baisden in the afternoon, very few Urban ACs actually have the same music through the day. These days, trying to do a programming special at the format would more likely yield, "The 12 Midday Shifts of Christmas." (WRKS has one of its jocks sitting in for Baisden this afternoon.)

WRKS isn't streaming yet, unfortunately. But for those of us who can hear it, "12 Days Of Kiss-mas" is always good radio. And an illustration of how one of the few things that can go toe-to-toe with all-Christmas is other music that people haven't heard on the radio in a while.

A few weeks ago, the comments in our series on the Ten Best Markets For Radio Listeners sidetracked into a discussion on the importance of imaging and whether it will matter to iPod-era listeners in a PPM world. Some thoughts on this matter -- and why "no hype" isn't the answer for everybody -- in this week's Ross On Radio.

Even the news that PPM is being pushed back in some markets hasn't been enough to slow the ongoing rebuilding boom in Rock radio. Yesterday, Clear Channel's new Alternative outlet Radio 106.7 went into Columbus, a market that already has an Active Rock,an adult-leaning Modern, a Heritage Rocker and a '80s-based Classic Rock. Today, Cumulus unveiled its new "Pure Rock" format on 96 Rock Cincinnati, the former Talk outlet WFTK.

Cincinnati has a lot of Rock radio, too, including a recently-minted Adult Modern vs. Modern AC battle, but there's no harder, more current based station, which is what 96 Rock has been in its first hours. Here's the station at 1:55 this afternoon:

Puddle Of Mudd, "Control"
Serj Tankian, "Empty Walls"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Otherside"
Foo Fighters, "Long Road To Ruin"
Rage Against the Machine, "Bulls on Parade"
Disturbed, "Stricken"
Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, "Face Down"
Stone Temple Pilots, "Sex-Type Thing"
White Stripes, "You Don't Know What Love Is (You Just Do What You're Told)
Metallica, "Sad But True"
Kid Rock, "So Hott"

To follow-up on our discussion of places where you can still hear the "Real Oldies" format from a month or so back, I only recently became aware of WLBW (the Wave) Ocean City, Md., a Clear Channel Oldies FM that differs sharply from the late '60s/early '70s-template that defines the format nationally.

Here's the station from around 10:15 this morning (pieced together from a combination of my listening and their "Last Ten Played" feature). Not a Fleetwood Mac, Eagles, or Billy Joel song anywhere.

Supremes, "You Can't Hurry Love"
Phil Phillips, "Sea Of Love"
Johnny & Hurricanes, "Red River Rock"
Ray Charles, "What'd I Say"
Little Anthony & Imperials, "Hurt So Bad"
Lovin' Spoonful, "Nashville Cats"
Cookies, "Chains"
Sam the Sham & Pharoahs, "Li'l Red Riding Hood"
Temptations, "My Girl"
Marvelettes, "Don't Mess With Bill"
David Seville, "Witch Doctor"
Mark Lindsay, "Arizona"
Castaways, "Liar Liar"
Human Beinz, "Nobody But Me"
Nino Tempo & April Stevens, "Deep Purple"
Honeycombs, "Have I The Right"
Box Tops, "The Letter"
Connie Francis, "Lipstick On Your Collar"
Drifters, "There Goes My Baby"
R. Dean Taylor, "Indiana Wants Me"

So who would do an Oldies station that is deeper and older than current radio law permits? That would be PD/morning man Kemosabi Joe, who was also PD of another unusual throwback station, WZYQ (Z104) Frederick, Md. That station, legend among aircheck collectors of the early '80s, did screaming early '70s style Top 40 a decade later, in that era right before Mike Joseph's "Hot Hits" when the format had been screwed down tight everywhere else. So why not Ocean City as the last bastion of '60s Oldies?

For that matter, why not the Wave as a national brand for Oldies fans when the Infinite Dial is finally available on every car radio?

Other than to note that I don't know Clear Channel's Regional VP of Programming Jim Richards, the following item from today's Radio & Records email struck me as an amazing commentary on the state of things:

Clear Channel regional VP of programming Jim Richards adds the 10 a.m.-1 p.m. shift at the company's classic rock KGB/San Diego.

While this likely means no more than 20 minutes out of his day for recording the breaks, it still says something.

It certainly was understandable in an overcrowded market, but it was still a shame to lose the Classic Hits format on WKLU Indianapolis, one of the truly idiosyncratic large-market radio stations. Then again, the new Oldies 101.9, as heard on its first morning still had a distinct Classic Hits lean (as does much of the format at this point). It also had some of the edginess of the old WKLU's liners (e.g., "Oldies 101.9 has just transported you to a simpler time ... before your first divorce").

Here's WKLU at 10 a.m. today:

Manfred Mann, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"
Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Have You Ever Seen the Rain"
Fleetwood Mac, "Go Your Own Way"
Steppenwolf, "Born To Be Wild"
Moody Blues, "Tuesday Afternoon"
John Lennon, "Imagine"
Association, "Along Comes Mary"
Bachman-Turner Overdrive, "Takin' Care of Business"
Ambrosia, "How Much I Feel"
Tony Orlando & Dawn, "Knock Three Times"
Kinks, "Tired Of Waiting for You"
Santana, "Oye Como Va"
Crosby Stills Nash & Young, "Teach Your Children"
Monkees, "Last Train to Clarksville"
Grand Funk, "Some Kind Of Wonderful"
Byrds, "Mr. Tambourine Man"

It was only a few minutes after the e-mail went out announcing that Chicago was No. 1 on our list of Top Ten Markets for Radio Listeners that WBGO (Jazz 88.3) New York's Cephas Bowles posted a comment.

"It seems to me that you have overlooked New York City," he wrote. "They have the format variety and talent of your Top 10 markets. Further, quantitatively, there are more radio stations offering outstanding programming than anywhere else in the country. You also have quality non-comms. What's up?"

Debra Grobman of Megatrax also dropped me a series of notes in support of the non-comms, citing in particular Triple-A WFUV and WBGO's R&B oldies host Felix Hernandez. So far, however, we haven't gotten quite the barrage of cards and letters asking why New York didn't make the Top 10 that we were bracing for.

If this article had been written a year ago, it would have been nearly impossible to make a case for New York in the Top 10. One of the key criteria was consumer choice and, at that moment, there was no Oldies FM audible in much of the metro, no Country station, and no young-end Rock station. The Hip-Hop battle betwen WQHT (Hot 97) and WWPR (Power 105) had bottomed out in a particularly distressing way. And if you were under 25, or looking for today's music, there weren't many choices.

This fall, WHTZ (Z100) sounds the best it has in years, and has the numbers to prove it. WCBS-FM is back and deserves its instant success. The WWFS (Fresh 102.7) vs. WLTW battle has shaken things up. WBLS, as noted earlier this year, has had a lot of impact on the Urban AC paradigm nationally. Hot and Power sound a lot better--if not fully recovered. WXRK (K-Rock) is back, if not yet flowering. And to Grobman's list of non-comms, you should add WFMU, WNYC, and WSOU for starters. In 2007, New York at least bore some consideration.

If I were still trying to make the brief, I would point out that this city still has two All-News AMs, still has Smooth Jazz, and has a Classic Rocker in WAXQ (Q104.3) that reflects the market in the same way that WMGK sounds like Philadelphia. I'd also call your attention to a number of unusual suburbans. And I would have no shortage of marquee talent to reel off.

That said, New York has rarely ever felt like the No. 1 market. It's never been a market where every station has the seven best possible jocks (okay, four best, these days) in its given format. There still aren't a lot of young-end choices. I live next to Newark, a city of nearly 300,000 people, that I hear mentioned regularly only on WBGO and on a pirate station. And even the guy who's going to do radio on the audio portion of a LP-TV station didn't go Country.

One clear lesson from the response to this series, it's that the people in a given market are often the ones that take their radio for granted. We're willing to allow that as a distinct possibility here--but it didn't stop us from citing Philadelphia, also in Edison's backyard, as the No. 2 market. The other recurring theme was that there weren't enough small-markets included. To some extent, that was precluded by our emphasis on both quantity and quality of choice, but we agree that smaller markets deserve some recognition, something we plan to address.

New York radio, meanwhile, is in rebuilding mode, and as somebody who depends on it on a daily basis, let's hope there's a great case for it in the Ten Best Markets For Radio Listeners: 2008.

1 - Chicago: A huge, eclectic variety and still the best morning-show slate anywhere (be sure to read our full brief for it below);

2 - Philadelphia: It's made a surprise recent comeback in the "best Rock radio market" sweepstakes, but we're proud to have all of its radio in our backyard, including at least two "best-in-class" stations;

3 - San Francisco: Only Boston rivals it as a News and Talk market. There's local character and a lot of choice, particularly when you add in the South Bay and Santa Rosa;

4 - Miami/Fort Lauderdale: Like radio nowhere else;

5 - New Orleans: Like radio nowhere else, an even more remarkable achievement post-Katrina;

6 - Los Angeles: A lot of undeniable stations and talent. Not quite the bench strength you would want in a market with so much radio;

7 - Washington, D.C.: Pushed into contention by the fiercest Urban competition anywhere, a monster News outlet on FM, and some surprising market entrants in recent years;

8 - Austin, Texas: Radio that matches the city's own eclecticism and appeal;

9 - Salt Lake City: Long the most crowded medium-market: frustrating perhaps for programmers and owners, but great for listeners;

10 - Louisville: A longtime great radio market where the past is still present ... in a good way.

A few days ago, we talked about some, but not all, of the markets that almost made the list: Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Kansas City, and Phoenix. In discussions here, we've also argued the case for Seattle, Denver, San Diego, and Portland, Ore. We've also worried if we were shortchanging some smaller markets that offered quality choices but what we were looking for was both quality and quantity of choice.

But we're hoping you'll now chime in and tell us that we're nuts. After all, if there are a lot of radio markets that people feel passionately about now, that says something good about the state of radio as we head into 2008. Only one caveat: you'll have to make the brief not just for your own station and cluster, but for everybody else's.

And to start the debate, here's KWJJ (the Wolf) PD Mike Moore, doing just that on behalf of Portland, Ore.:

"Hope you'll mention the on-going epic country battle, which by the way, The Wolf has been consistently winning. Heck, there's a legendary CHR with Z100, one America's top Classic Rock stations with KGON, KINK a station that truly embodies the personality of the marketplace, 94/7 KNRK one of the most unique alternative station's in America and now a great Hispanic station on FM with EL Rey, KRYP. Portland really does seem like a logical choice to make the list."

And now, we're ready to mix it up with anybody!

What are The Ten Best Markets For Radio Listeners? The markets that offer the best combination of quality and variety on free, over-the-air radio? The markets that lead listeners and radio people to say, "I know people complain about the radio around the country but we're pretty lucky here"?

That's something we've been discussing at length here at Edison Media Research. And on Monday, we're going to unveil our top 10 markets, announcing one a day (with a few days off for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend).

In an era with so many other audio choices, many industryites may have stopped thinking about "good" and "bad" radio markets. With hundreds of satellite radio channels and thousands of stations streaming on the Internet, the issue of whether there's a Triple-A station available in town might seem quaint. But until the day that wireless broadband brings The Infinite Dial to every car, most listeners are still much more impacted by what's available locally on AM and FM than we think. (And if you doubt this, we'd like to introduce you to several new Edison employees who moved to the New York area and asked, "So where's the Country station?" For most, the availability of Country on the Web doesn't make up for being able to punch it up in the car when you want it.)

So some radio markets are still very much better than others. And if you love radio and music, radio is very much part of the quality-of-life in a market.

Here's what we were looking for when we came up with our list.

* A broad choice of format options for a broad choice of tastes without having to subscribe to satellite radio, own an HD Radio, or stream an out-of-the-market station. A market didn't necessarily have to have every niche--but we were looking to have the basics covered. (Even with Oldies and Alternative back in the market, New York's lack of Country was still a major strike against it.) We were also looking for a decent quantity of stations; there aren't many truly "under-radioed" major-markets left, but they would be at a disadvantage here, even if the existing players were good.

* A unique station or two of the sort that could be in no other market. And radio that conveys a sense of place overall.

* A decent format battle or two, of the sort where competition really does benefit the listener.

* Great local personalities, although the presence of strong national morning shows wasn't a negative; (if you moved from a market that had Steve Harvey, you'd probably want to find him again).

Sometimes the best places to live for availability of radio is between the markets. Here in Somerville, N.J., we're lucky to be able to pick up much of New York, Philadelphia, Allentown, Pa., Monmouth/Ocean, N.J., and Trenton, N.J., as well as our locals. But our search here is for markets--judged on their own radio (except in a few cases where those out-of-market signals effectively become part of the market).

Over the next 10 days, we'll unveil each of our choices in the pages of The Infinite Dial. As they have in the hallways of Edison Media Research, our choices are meant to provoke a spirited dialogue among radio people and a lot of comments from you.

If you read this and feel strongly that your market should have been included, we'd love to hear why. If you read this and feel strongly that our kids should no longer play with your kids, then you're taking it a little too seriously. If, after reading this, there's industry consensus on far more than 10 great markets for radio nationwide, we can be proud of ourselves as an industry.

See market No. 10, Louisville, here:

See market No. 9, Salt Lake City, here:

See market No. 8, Austin, here:

See market No. 7, Washington D.C., here:

See market No. 6, Los Angeles here:

See market No. 5, New Orleans, here:

See market No. 4, Miami/Ft. Lauderdale, here:

See market No. 3, San Francisco, here:

See market No. 2, Philadelphia, here:

See market No. 1, Chicago, here:

Generations, the new '70s-based gold format from Guy Zapoleon's team, is on the air now at WSUH Charlottesville, Va., a former Clear Channel "Superhits" outlet that is now Generations 102.3 under new management.

As heard on its first day, Zapoleon's take was less eccentric than "Hippie Radio," the other recent effort to repackage the Oldies format without the trap/trappings of the "Oldies" name. As heard on WHPI Peoria, Hippie digs deeper overall and goes further into the '60s. Generations in its first day was about 80% '70s music.

What Generations and Hippie Radio have in common is the attempt to play Oldies without saying "oldies" (something that many Oldies stations seem to have worked through anyway, with the format's new emphasis on "greatest hits"). Hippie Radio has no problem evoking boomer nostalgia. Generations tries to approach it from two different directions, promising both "the music for your [unspecified] generation" and "music that transcends all generations." Another liner invokes vinyl, 8-Track tapes, CDs and the iPod.

Here's Generations 102.3 at 9:05 on Monday morning:

Chicago, "I've Been Searching So Long"
Rolling Stones, "Brown Sugar"
Redbone, "Come And Get Your Love"
Doobie Brothers, "Black Water"
Aretha Franklin, "Respect"
Sanford-Townsend Band, "Smoke From A Distant Fire"
Eric Clapton, "Lay Down Sally"
Cars, "Shake It Up"
Billy Joel, "Piano Man"

And here's the station at 10:15 Monday night:

Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama"
Beatles, "Day Tripper"
Fleetwood Mac, "Say You Love Me"
Al Green, "You Ought To Be With Me"
America, "Sister Golden Hair'
Kenny Loggins, "I'm Alright"
Rolling Stones, "Beast Of Burden"
Blues Image, "Ride Captain Ride"
Elton John Band, "Philadelphia Freedom"
Bill Withers, "Lean On Me"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Here are some of the things that Z100 does right:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The big story in the radio trades today was the move of News/Talk legend WIBC in Indianapolis from the AM to the FM dial. And while I certainly agree with Walt Sabo who says today: "The band has little to do with it" and that there are "very bad" stations on both bands, who are we really fooling?

I happen to love the content that is available on AM radio in New York. I love WFAN, WABC, WCBS, WINS, ESPN Radio, and I regularly listen to Radio Disney when my daughter is in the car (and I like that too). But I'm almost always listening through endless noise, hiss, and worse. I live 43 miles from the Empire State Building, but well within the New York radio metro. My listening is a true labor of love - very often there is more noise than what I'm 'listening' to - but I keep listening anyhow.

Who else but someone like me would put up with that? No wonder many people never visit the AM band at all. Maybe it's not that they don't like non-music radio - maybe it's just too painful from a sound quality standpoint.

Perhaps HD Radio will re-invent AM Radio by eliminating all the noise. And what a revolution that really could be. The first time I listened to a football broadcast on FM I found it revelatory. And just a few minutes ago I put "Mike & the Mad Dog" from WFAN on the stream, after attempting to listen to them on a brief drive in my car, and I was stunned by the sound quality from my little computer speakers.

The bottom line being - moving our best AM radio brands to the FM might actually be the single most powerful thing we could do to revitalize this medium. It could truly remind an entire generation that there's more out there than 'more music less talk.'

A few weeks ago, heritage AC WBEB (B101) Philadelphia grabbed national headlines by licensing the word "fresh." It was not the radical change reported elsewhere--more of a pre-emptive move against anybody else doing a younger targeted AC with that name--although the word "fresh" is being filtered in a little more, usually in phrases like "fresh new music mix." B101, as we noted a few weeks back, uses a lot of different terminology.

And shortly after we last reported on them, B101 jumped on another piece of recently prominent industry terminology: "song tags." They've been in the news lately because of new HD Radios that can send song tags to one's iPod, but in B101's case, they're the low-key, pre-recorded backsells that first became common around 2003 on some Clear Channel stations (I first heard of them on KCDA Spokane, Wash., which still uses them, but then PD Sam Hill remembers that they began on KFNK Seattle), and some Citadel outlets.

The "tags," usually voiced by a female ("Susan Song Tag"?), came to prominence as a way to backsell currents on a jockless station, but eventually spread to hosted stations as a way of addressing a common peeve about radio (no backselling) without running afoul of another (too much talk).

What's interesting here is that B101 is imaging around this reasonably prominently on-air and on the Website. They're also continuing to talk about a recent on-air music test stunt (down to giving song rankings, as if it was the Memorial Day Top 300), which will variously be interpreted by readers as too "inside baseball," or a daring new level of transparency.

For his part, B101 PD Chuck Knight notes that "the reaction has been very positive." Listeners, he says, "even in the longer TSL work environment, can't wait around for four or five songs to find out who sings what . . . The voice work is filtered to be subtle on the end of every song. If you want the information, it's there. If not, it's so subtle is blows right by you."

It's so tough to evaluate a radio talk show early in its lifespan, especially when two co-hosts are asked to mesh with little time to do so. Thus, I've been giving the "Boomer & Carton" show, which replaced "Imus in the Morning" on WFAN New York several weeks ago, a lot of slack.

The hardest part of evaluating this show is the sentence I just wrote - that this show "replaced" Imus. Because in almost every way, this show is about as far from a substitute as one could get.

Lost in alll the discussion of Imus's comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team, and the subsequent reminders of the show at its crudest, we forget that the Imus show was, at other times, one of the few things in all of commercial radio that was legitimately competitive with NPR's "Morning Edition." Imus regularly had interviews with Doris Kearns Goodwin and Michael Beschloss. He talked heavy politics with Senators and White House correspondents. Of course, Imus's show stood out so dramatically from the other shows on "The Fan" - he seldom talked much sports, and he never took calls from listeners.

Boomer & Carton, by contrast, are essentially doing standard-issue "Sports Talk Radio", where they discuss the Sports news of the day and they seldom, at least when I have been listening, veer away from sports.

I am plenty familiar with Craig Carton from his time at WKXW (New Jersey 101.5) Trenton, N.J., and of course Boomer Esiason is a long-standing media presence. And I must say they are doing a particularly creditable job of sports talk for such a young show. Boomer is perhaps the best ex-jock I've ever heard in this role - he truly lets one know what is going through the mind of an athlete. He also is a legitimate sports fan and shows surprising knowledge of all sports, not just football. And Carton is a very humorous presence; a real radio pro who has transitioned nicely away from his "politics and pranks" themes at WKXW.

My biggest quibble with the program is, naturally, the callers. As is not uncommon in the world of Sports Talk radio, they usually add nothing, and often are simply complete morons. And Carton, perhaps because he is now in the fire-hot Imus chair, clearly is afraid to mock the dumb callers too relentlessly at this point, so that opportunity for entertainment is lost.

I wonder if the show would be improved, and stand out more distinctly from the rest of WFAN, if they just eliminated the callers and instead used "experts" to call in the way Imus did. But when there is a huge sports story available, like Sunday's Mets collapse, Boomer & Carton are scratching the Sports Talk itch in morning drive in a respectable fashion thus far.

One of my frustrations with Top 40 in the last few years is that there seem to be only two musical models for the format. The large-market stations lean heavily to the rhythmic side, with only one or two rock records--usually teen punk. The others are essentially Adult Top 40s, faster on rock but with almost no rhythm. It's hard to find a Top 40 station that emphasizes active/reaction records, but looks for them on both the Rock and Rhythmic side.

For that reason, I've always liked WZKL (Q92) Canton, Ohio. Q92 shares the "early on rock" distinction with WIXX Green Bay, Wis., and SIrius Hits 1. But it also goes futher on the rhythm side. Q92 definitely isn't in any danger of being mistaken for AC--it's playing Kid Rock's "So Hott" right now. It has also played Buckcherry's "Crazy Bitch" and Nickelback's "Animal." (It also played "Rockstar" when it was a Rock hit last year.) But it also plays Baby Bash and Soulja Boy.

It is, in short, another way of doing Top 40--perhaps the most venerable one. (The only other station they could possibly be compared to is WEZB [B97] New Orleans.) And for all the stations that bill themselves these days as "all the hits," here's one that definitely plays all the hits.

Q92 didn't stream until relatively recently, but they are streaming now and are worth checking out here.

And here's the station this afternoon at 2:45 p.m.

Kanye West, "Stronger"
Nickelback, "Far Away"
Britney Spears, "Gimme More"
Augustana, "Boston"
Rob Base & DJ EZ-Rock, "Joy & Pain"
Pink, "Who Knew"
Matchbox Twenty, "How Far We've Come"
Jordin Sparks, "Tattoo"
Timbaland, "The Way I Are"
Daughtry, "Home"
Paramore, "Misery Business"
Avril Lavigne, "Gone"
Three Days Grace, "Never Too Late"

A few more things I enjoyed in my NAB/R&R-week listening to Charlotte, N.C., radio:

* Urban AC WBAV (V101.9)'s late-night Quiet Storm-type program and its very smooth female host , C.C., who, as best I can tell, is actually the host for three nights a week;

* N/T powerhouse WBT's morning news magazine, particularly the news segments which had a distinct sense of the old CKLW Detroit 20/20 News punchiness to them.

* Oldies WTHZ (Majic 94.1), which has become a four-share Greensboro, N.C., station, since it took over that franchise from the old WMQX, but also shows in Charlotte as well. I've always liked morning co-host Bill Campbell and the station exuded some nice retro energy as well--and wasn't afraid to use the word "oldies."

In my four days of Charlotte radio listening, it wasn't until last night that I finally heard my first "welcome broadcasters" stager on Classic Hits WXRC (95.7 the Ride). (That station, by the way, in a throwback to the early days of WMMO Orlando, Fla., promises "no silly morning shows, no stupid contests, no hype" in a Website promo.)

This morning, however, I did hear syndicated morning hosts Bob & Sheri on flagship WLNK (the Link) do a local cutaway in which they first welcomed NAB attendees, then launched into this morning's Charlotte Observer NAB story, "Radio Industry Gets A Bad Signal." While the dire prediction that radio as we know it "would evaporate in 20 years" actually came from remarks by Talkers' Magazine's Mike Harrison, the duo noted that the Observer "just loves any bad news about radio and TV," followed by musings on print's equally problematic future.

Besides, the duo said, Harrison did note that high-profile personalities would be the ones who hung on the longest. "We have people listening to us on streams, we have people listening to us via podcast. We have one woman who listens on her cellphone."

The duo's advice to visiting broadcasters. "Don't forget we have a really cool new Home Depot. Don't just go to the strip club!"

As earlier noted, Charlotte radio has been doing a relatively good job of covering its stopsets on the Web. Modern rock WEND (the End) has now become the first station I've heard to run promos suggesting that listeners let their friends who have moved out of the market know that the station is available on the Web--one of the few stations I've heard actually try to cultivate that following.

It almost proved to be harder to listen to Charlotte, N.C., radio in Charlotte than on the Internet.

When I got in the cab at the airport, I asked the driver to turn on the radio. "Why would you want to do that?" he asked, clearly a little annoyed. Then he insisted there was no radio in the cab. "You don't need it; we'll be downtown in 15 minutes." I explained--as if I needed to--that listening to the radio was part of what I did for a living. Finally, he grudgingly turned on the radio, but warned that he didn't want to lose the station he was currently tuned to, which turned out to be NPR affiliate WFAE, which was running PRI's syndicated "Here And Now."

Also heard today, in between the NAB registration and the opening reception:

* Classic Rock WRFX (the Fox) -- At a time when many Classic Rock stations have gotten older and softer, they were relatively crunchy in middays: a Don Henley here or an Elton John/"Rocket Man" there, but also AC/DC/"Shoot To Thrill" into Styx/"Renegade," as well as the Southern Rock that you'd expect--Allman Brothers, ZZ Top, and a Charlie Daniels Band threefer!

* WIBT (the Beat) -- This Rhythmic Top 40 was doing a few interesting things. Although this market in particular has been doing a good job of filling the online stopsets, they were the first station to run promos welcoming Web listeners and/or soliciting Web advertisers. They ran a "new music" stager that read "96.1 The Beat, excited about ..." instead of "new music from." And their Website invites listeners to submit pictures of their cat under the headline, "Show us your big ol' kitties."

But here's something else interesting about the Beat: I also heard night jock Jojo do a crossplug for the morning show in which he mentioned that the morning show would be stunting from a soon-to-be unveiled (and seemingly polarizing) local sculpture. In doing so, it was the first mention I'd heard of any local news event in two days of market listening.

To be fair, I've been concentrating on music radio so far--and outside morning drive. I've heard plenty about local sponsors and upcoming station events. But I don't feel like I've heard a lot about the city yet. It's a safe bet that my three days at NAB/R&R will include a lot of speeches about the importance of localism. But will it include local content, too?

A few more notes from my advance listening to Charlotte radio:

* This is undoubtedly a problem that the CBS folks are glad happened yesterday. Both R&B WPEG (Power 98) and Country WSOC had their request lines go out yesterday. That left WPEG's fill-in middayer taking an e-mail to give away concert tickets, while the high-profile afternoon team on WSOC was audibly relieved when the phones (obviously a big part of the show) came back.

* Listening to the battle between WSOC and Clear Channel rival WKKT (the Kat) is a lot like the AC battle between the two companies referenced yesterday. WSOC has a personality-driven show in afternoons. You can hear cold segues on WKKT.

* And if you want to hear the market's newest station while you're in town, it's on 102.3, the new WGSP-FM (La Tremenda), the first large-market FM outpost of a regional network that extends from Knoxville, Tenn., to Jacksonville, Fla.

One of the things I've appreciated the most about WCBS-FM New York since it returned this summer is the care that has gone into the station's daily "Hall of Fame" feature--used not only to stage special weekends but also a different series of themed "oh wow" songs every day.

The "Hall of Fame" has allowed WCBS-FM to do a "Country Crossover" day (hey, New Yorkers watched the one "American Idol" did, didn't they?), a number of pre-Beatles themed weekends, and, last week, "Turntable Tuesday" with songs played from vinyl. (PD Brian Thomas says a turntable was installed in the studio for the occasion.)

At this writing, the plan was for today's Hall of Fame to be "b-sides." Hear it here.

When I'm headed to a convention, I try to do some of my local market listening ahead of time on the Internet. After all, one's listening time at the actual convention is limited to the hotel room at 6 a.m. and 1 a.m., as well as the cab ride in from the airport. And somehow, having heard the market makes me feel a little more acclimated when I get there.

So in preparation for NAB and R&R this week, I'm spending today with Charlotte radio, in honor of the newly annointed Arbitron market No. 25.

One of the highest compliments I can already give the market is that I've listened to four stations so far this morning and I've actually heard what sounds like local spots inserted in all of their stopsets. Nobody has had flawless web breaks--I've still heard a few truncated fill songs on most stations. But it does sound like some care went into what I heard. It wasn't until I got to my fifth station of the morning that I encountered McGruff the crime dog, whose PSAs are usually ubiquitous on such streams.

And now a few individual notes:

* It was interesting to hear AC WKQC (K104.7) appropriating the "always bright, always positive" liner that is more often used by Christian AC radio. And lest you think that was accidental, the song it was used over was LeAnn Rimes' Christian AC crossover song, "I Need You."

* There was another interesting piece of programming theory at rival AC WLYT (Lite 102.9) where the midday host began the Retro Lunch by asking, over the ID bed, "So when you hear a fun song [from your high school years] does it make you feel old or young? The key is not telling you what year it's from." That's a pretty key tenet of programming theory for most people, but hearing somebody announce it on the air is something else entirely.

* WKQC is one of those ACs that uses the call letters in some form between every song. WLYT, like many of its Clear Channel brethern, was doing a lot of cold segues. Which sounded better depends on where you fall on that issue, but one certainly hears the difference.

* Charlotte may be Market No. 25 now, but the promo for morning stars Ace & T.J. on WNKS (Kiss 95.1) was a phone call from a listener talking about driving behind a poultry truck when a chicken "splatted" into her windshield. Kiss, for its legendary musical conservatism--still very much in evidence here--was surprisingly edgy in some of its promos.

* On a far more serious topic, Clear Channel Urban AC WMKS (105.7 Kiss FM)--nominally a Greensboro station but with a signal halfway between the two markets--was inviting listeners to log on to its Website for pictures from last week's civil rights march in Jena, La. (WMKS had four galleries' worth of photos; sister WQUE New Orleans had many more.)

For the last few months, you've probably seen the trade ads for Hippie Radio, the syndicated format which bills itself as "Radio for Baby Boomers" and positions itself as Oldies without the baggage of the name.

Now, it's possible to hear "Hippie Radio," following WXMP (Mix 101.1) Peoria, Ill.'s switch to the format as WHPI from AC on Sept. 19.

Here's the station between 4:30-5p Peoria time on Friday (21):

Carly Simon, "You're So Vain"
Moody Blues, "Question"
Happenings, "See You In September"
Arlo Guthrie, "City Of New Orleans"
Beach Boys, "God Only Knows"
Aretha Franklin, "Think"
Three Dog Night, "Celebrate"
David Bowie, "Space Oddity"
Eagles, "Take It Easy"
Grass Roots, "Let's Live For Today"
Grateful Dead, "Truckin'"

Some interesting things about the station at first blush:

* It's more apparent if you look at the station's "just played" log, but there are definitely some songs that you haven't heard on Oldies radio on a regular basis recently, particularly from the early '70s Rhino compilation era: Billy Preston's "Space Race", the Sweet's "Little Willy," Sammy Johns' "Chevy Van,," Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show's "Cover Of The Rolling Stone," etc. In that regard, it recalls the early days of ABC/Scott Shannon's True Oldies Channel, without that network's emphasis on early '60s music. (The most recent song seen on the Website listing was Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop" from 1977.)

* As in the format's demo aircheck, there are a lot of attempts to be lifestyle oriented. When Aretha Franklin's "Think" played, the jock frontsold it with, "Remember this one from 'The Blues Brothers'?" A liner positions the station as "a brand new radio station for the generation that changed the world." Not all baby boomers think of themselves as hippies--the wisdom of Oldies radio for many years was that it was for the audience that was alienated by hippies and acid rock. But that was in an era when the Doors and CCR were not staples of the format. And who would deny having helped to change the world?

* And, yes, George Carlin fans, the weather is indeed courtesy of the "Hippy Dippy Weatherman." (No other references, however, to "Wonderful WINO.")

I'd been meaning to check out WBEW (Vocalo 89.5) Michigan City, Ind., the new younger targeted, more diverse offering from Chicago Public Radio since its June 4 launch, but I'm getting around to it this afternoon as the result of a recent story in suburban Chicago's Daily Herald.

Targeted to "audiences that have not traditionally listened to public radio," in the words of a station spokesman, Vocalo is a mix of eclectic music and listener-generated content.

In the last half-hour or so, I've heard a mix of progressive hip-hop and R&B (Brother Ali's "Uncle Sam," Blackalicious' "Powers" and the maybe-not-so-progressive-anymore "Mighty O" by Outkast) and eclectic rock (The Replacements' "Take Me Down To The Hospital" and Bobby Conn's "[I'm Through With] My Ego"). Those have been interspersed with spoken-word bits from listeners on such topics as dreaming about Mr. Spock and watching a dog kill a squirrel. There's also been a break in which the host discussed the making of the Mr. Spock piece in a way meant to encourage listeners to submit their own pieces.

In intent, it's a next-generation NPR and there's no shortage of agreement on the need for such a thing. In practice, Vocalo alternately recalls a lot of things--the college radio of 30 years ago, the earliest days of progressive radio, and the almost-completely-lost-to-history black progressive radio of the '70s. It is also very reminiscent of the "Open Source Radio" experiment on CBS' KYOU San Francisco.

Check out Vocalo here, I would be interested in your thoughts.

It says something about how our collective thinking on Rock radio has changed that the "everything that rocks" strategy--a paradigm that first took root in a world where there was going to be fewer rock stations--seems to be hanging in there, even now that PPM is making new Rock launches look attractive again. Check out this week's Ross On Radio for some thoughts on three recent launches: CBS' WXRK (K-Rock) New York and WYSP Philadelphia and Clear Channel's WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philly.

Until Howard Stern and Tom Joyner, the history of radio programming was essentially a history of streamlining--putting everything in the best, tightest, most codified package possible. The Drake format of the '60s gave way to the "Q" format of the '70s and the AOR-influenced presentation of the late '70s. Detractors accused each new paradigm of sterility, but it really depended on the PD and air talent involved and how well they worked within the new guidelines.

So it is with the new presentational tightness heard on many of the Clear Channel stations. WHTZ (Z100) New York, even with a cold segue here or there, still has a lot going on. But not every station does. Some thoughts on the larger issue of cutting clutter without sacrificing content here.

A few weeks ago, Clear Channel switched KPKL (Kool 105) Portland, Ore., from Smooth Jazz to a '60s/'70s-based Classic Hits format as Kool 105.9 and, in doing so, went almost head-on against CBS' KLTH (K-Hits 106.7). At that time, I remarked that Oldies fortunes had, with the help of PPM, reversed to the point where there were actually two stations in a market that doesn't yet have PPM competing for the Oldies/Classic Hits franchise.

It was equally surprising last Monday when Clear Channel switched longtime gold-based AC WVMX (Mix 94.1) Cincinnati to Modern AC as Radio 94.1. CC positioned the station to a local business journal as a "guitar and pop" format, but it's actually a slightly poppier variant on CC stations like WDVI Rochester, N.Y., KJMY (My 99.5) Salt Lake City and the recently launched WRFF (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia--very accessible, library-driven stations that stake out the area where Adult Modern and Modern AC meet.

What's so interesting about CC's choice here is that Bonneville's WSWD (the Sound) had already staked out similar territory. As the music monitors show, WSWD is a little more in the more male, more "legit rock tradition" of stations like KBZT (FM 94/9) San Diego, where WVMX will play Dido and Nelly Furtado. But they share an emphasis on library and stylistic breadth. And around 12:30 today, it was possible to punch from 311's "All Mixed Up" on the Sound into Toad the Wet Sprocket's "Something's Always Wrong" on Radio 94.1--two songs that might have played next to each other before Modern Rock radio hardened in the mid-'90s.

It's also a little interesting to see so much activity flowing back into the gold-based Modern area. As noted elsewhere on this page, that format didn't work out so well when all the KBZT imitators showed up in 2003-04. But this version of the format is less based in the '80s modern rock songs that few people heard with more emphasis on the '90s songs that more people did here. And some of those songs have been off the radio for a while now. (Unless you work for a station that plays 311's "All Mixed Up," you probably last heard it sung by Blake Lewis!) And the PPM-era momentum is also with Rock radio as well.

Here is The Sound at Noon yesterday:

Soundgarden, "Fell On Black Days"
Staind, "It's Been Awhile"
Flyleaf, "All Around Me"
Radiohead, "Karma Police"
311, "All Mixed Up"
Breaking Benjamin, "Breath"
O.A.R., "Crazy Game Of Poker"
All-American Rejects, "Move Along"
Switchfoot, "Meant To Live"
Papa Roach, "Time Is Running Out"
U2, "Pride (In The Name Of Love)"
AFI, "Miss Murder"
Clash, "Train In Vain (Stand By Me)"

And here is Radio 94.1 at the same time:

Chris Isaak, "Wicked Game"
Matchbox 20, "Back To Good"
Lifehouse, "First Time"
David Bowie, "Let's Dance"
Nelly Furtado, "Say It Right"
Toad the Wet Sprocket, "Something's Always Wrong"
Dido, "Thank You"
Cure, "Love Song"
James Blunt, "1973"
Coutning Crows, "Mr. Jones"
Stray Cats, "Stray Cat Strut"
Norah Jones, "Thinking About You"
Sugar Ray, "Every Morning"

It's one of the year's most interesting press releases. This morning, Vallie-Richards-Donovan consultant Greg Dunkin announced that heritage AC WBEB (B101) Philadelphia would "incorporate" the Fresh FM brand, which would now be "incorporated into the [station's] programming and marketing." In doing so, the heritage AC powerhouse becomes the second "official" user of the name, following WWFS (Fresh 102.7) New York's successful January debut.

That announcement, of course, set off buzz around the industry that B101 had "gone Fresh." As of today, anyway, B101 is still called B101 and very much sounds like B101--there are still at least two '70s titles an hour (and sometimes more) on the station, which still goes as far back as 1967's "Brown-Eyed Girl." The "fresh" word appears several places on the Website. On-air, Edison's Larry Rosin reports hearing it several times in one break. But I tuned in a few minutes later and went for a half-hour without hearing it. "Most music" and "soft rock" still remain the dominant images on the station with a mix of other images also present ("five in a row," "great songs to sing along to,").

We'll revisit B101 in a future blog post. But here's B101 from 2:50-3:25 p.m. this afternoon:

Billy Joel, "She's Got A Way"
Gloria Gaynor, "I Will Survive"
Cyndi Lauper, "Girls Just Want To Have Fun"
Del Amitri, "Roll To Me"
Kelly Clarkson, "Behind These Hazel Eyes"
U2, "With Or Without You"
Mariah Carey, "Hero"
America, "Sister Golden Hair"
TLC, "Waterfalls"
Elton John, "Your Song"

Okay, you knew from the beginning that WHAT (Skin Radio 1340) Philadelphia had its work cut out for it as an Alternative station on AM. And once Clear Channel's crosstown WRFF (Radio 104.5) switched to Alternative, it was no real surprise last Friday when WHAT changed format again to Adult Standards as Martini Lounge Radio. That said, in the notion of an Alternative-formatted Website that just happens to have a low-wattage AM attached as a terrestrial placeholder, Skin Radio was not totally offbase--just ahead of its time perhaps. And intentionally or not, WRFF's wide-playlist Alternative and low-key presentation doesn't sound all that different from what Skin Radio launched with. Skin Radio's alternative format continues as a stand-alone stream at www.skinradio.com.

It's no surprise now that stations are starting to trickle back into the Oldies format--or at least the '70s/Classic Hits-driven format that Oldies has become. But yesterday's switch from smooth jazz to "The Greatest Hits of All Time" at KPKL (Kool 105.9) Portland, Ore., is interesting for (kind of) giving Portland the first major-market Oldies battle in recent memory.

As heard this afternoon, Kool 105.9 is a '70s-driven Classic Hits outlet that falls somewhere between the Clear Channel "Superhits" outlets and the early days of its WOLL (Kool 105) West Palm Beach. It's mostly '70s with a few '60s (Beatles, "Do You Want To Know A Secret") and '80s on each side (Journey, "Any Way You Want It", Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing In The Dark"). That puts it in the same neighborhood with KLTH (K-Hits 106.7), which bills itself as "Portland's Home Of The '60s and '70s," and replaced one-time Oldies powerhouse KKSN. It also overlaps with KKSN's successor, KYCH (Charlie FM) and its '80s/'70s-based format.

If one had to make a fast characterization after a day on the air, it might be that KPKL is somewhat newer and more aggressively produced than KLTH, which has always had a little bit of a WDRV (the Drive) Chicago earnestness to it. But it's still two '70s-centered stations with similar functionality. It also says something about the evolution of AC that Clear Channel would launch a station that played some of these songs even with KKCW (K103) next door.

Here's some KPKL in middays today:

Journey, "Any Way You Want It"
Wild Cherry, "Play That Funky Music"
Carole King, "It's Too Late"
Manfred Mann, "Do Wah Diddy Diddy"
Bruce Springsteen, "Dancing In The Dark"
Ace, "How Long"
KC & the Sunshine Band, "That's The Way I Like It"
Romantics, "What I Like About You"
Hamilton Joe Frank & Reynolds, "Don't Pull Your Love"
Diana Ross, "Upside Down"
Fleetwood Mac, "Don't Stop"

One of the most remarkable challenges of putting on a new Talk radio station is that nobody seems to know how long it takes for new Talk stations to get entrenched.

Operators are disappointed if a new Talk station doesn't get traction in a year--even though the best case scenario is usually 3-to-5 years, unless you're lucky enough to steal every major franchise from a competitor.

Detractors, meanwhile, seem to need only a few months before they declare a station, or in the case of Air America, a network, to be a failure. And as with Air America, the detractors aren't only those people who disagree with the concept, but fans of an idea who were unhappy that it weren't being executed to their specifications.

That's why it's necessary to remind people again just how long it took WABC New York, WLS Chicago, and KFI Los Angeles to find their way at first. WABC, in particular, took at least five years to get traction. And all three of those stations were 50,000 watt blowtorches that had a history as viable signals within a market.

The hit shows on a Talk station are rarely what you expect them to be at the launch. At Air America, Randi Rhodes emerged as a bigger success than most of her bigger name co-workers and, with the departure of Al Franken, the most enduring success.

It's hard to say that another few years would have ultimately made a difference for GreenStone Media, the female-targeted talk network which closed its doors on Aug. 17. But I am willing to say that GreenStone was almost guaranteed not to get immediate traction, only if because nothing does. And it exacerbated its challenges by offering an entire daytime lineup--not a single show. In that regard, it was in a trick bag--had they offered a single show, some clients wouldn't have felt they had enough programming to change formats.

GreenStone's demise brought forth its critics both from within the industry and from the outside. In the New York Post, author Carrie Lukas declared that GreenStone's "brand of tepid liberalism didn't appeal to women," There was successful Talk radio for women, Lukas contended, but it was conservative talkers Laura Ingraham and Dr. Laura Schlessinger, as well as successful male conservative talkers.

It's tempting to make GreenStone a referendum on liberal talk, female-targeted talk or anything else a critic doesn't like. But with less than a year under its belt, the only thing it really proves is that launching new Talk formats is hard and particularly hard for entrepreneurs without an existing revenue stream, whether it's a hit syndicated show or another station in the cluster that already brings in billing.

But Lukas is indeed correct that "talk radio for women" was always more than GreenStone, and not always hosted by women. It is, in fact, a lot more than the conservative talkers as well. But it is rarely identifiable as "talk radio for women," which is, perhaps, a plus in a world where the audience is always wary of being patronized.

Successful talk radio for women exists in Bob & Sheri, Delilah, John Tesh, and now "Wake Up With Whoopi." It arguably includes the Kidd Kraddick Morning Show and, in fact, every CHR or Hot AC morning show that plays only a few records each hour, since women are those shows' sole target. In that regard, it parallels the rise of African-American talk in the guise of Tom Joyner, Steve Harvey, Michael Baisden, Wendy Williams, and other talk shows that run on music stations--not low-wattage AM outlets--and have the feel of music radio that just happens to talk a little more.

Was GreenStone's issue, as some contended, that it offered women the sort of soft topics that typified Talk radio four decades ago? Tesh successfully packaged that content as "intelligence for your life" and similar content is the central focus of Goldberg's show. Was GreenStone's problem its liberalism? Goldberg has hardly hidden her social consciousness over the last year. At times the show seems deadly earnest, but it has persevered and is only likely to get a boost from its host's new role on "The View."

The industry drive toward female-lifestyle talk won't end with GreenStone; the week of its demise, I got a call from a small-market PD looking to build something similar in his market. As with African-American Talk radio, it will likely be built one show at a time--Joyner was the only phenomenal success in the category for many years. As with WAMJ (Grown Folks Radio) Atlanta, the breakthrough will likely be a full-signal FM that can combine existing programming with a track record in music radio with more straight-ahead talk. The first challenge will be coming up with enough programming that radio station General Managers feel they can make an investment in the format. The breakthrough will hinge on having a show like Rush Limbaugh or Steve Harvey that GMs feel they must have if only to keep it away from their competitors.

Recently, Entravision's Spanish-language Top 40 KSSE (Super Estrella) Los Angeles became the latest in a handful of stations to try playing English-language pop music in the framework of a Spanish-language station. That format has worked everywhere in the Latin world, but was thought to be superfluous in the mainland U.S. (Most recently, the Bob Perry-consulted Radio Digital stations played some English-language music but have backed off in the last few years.) But with the Hispanic success of KIIS Los Angeles and the growth of the bilingual Rhythmic format, it was inevitable that Latin/English hybrids would re-emerge.

KSSE isn't streaming yet. But you can hear another fascinating Entravision experiment on the Web. KNVO (Super Estrella 101.1) McAllen/Brownsville, Texas, is doing a very different take on the format that can be best described as a cross between English-language Top 40, Latin pop, and Radio Disney. Like XHTO El Paso, Texas, or rival KBFM when it was Top 40 B104, KNVO is playing a significant amount of music that isn't on the radar of many of its Top 40 counterparts--which is as it should be. (In the last half hour, for instance, I've heard a new Jennifer Lopez that isn't the same single that was serviced last week.)

Here's a monitor of KNVO at 11:50 this morning:

Pink, "Just Like A Pill"
Maroon 5, "Makes Me Wonder"
Everlife, "Go Figure"
Ricky Martin, "Pegate"
Jennifer Lopez, "Hold It, Don't Drop It"
No Doubt, "It's My Life"
Raven Symone, "This Is My Time"
Fergie, "Big Girls Don't Cry"
Enrique Iglesias, "Dimelo (Do You Know)"
Pink, "Who Knew"
Rihanna, "S.O.S."
Gwen Stefani, "The Great Escape"
RBD, "Besame Sin Miedo"
Quietdrive, "Time After Time"
Mariah Carey, "Shake It Off"

Meanwhile, if you're interested in hearing Digital, here's its Mexico City flagship, which streams.

Last year, consultant/station owner/veteran programmer Jerry Clifton's new Top 40 outlet KSXE (Sexy 106.3) Fresno, Calif., generated national headlines for signing-on with a loop of sex-related music. Not much has been written about the station since, but this rated a mention. Sexy's current shtick is that its jocks all live in the station's "radio dorm" and can be viewed, "Big Brother"-style, on the station's Webcams. (The site offers you a choice of the living room, kitchen, or studio). That's a hard bit to keep going, however: when heard this afternoon, Sexy 106.3 middayer Cleveland was castigating the afternoon driver for stealing his pizza, which, as anybody who was forced to have a roomate in their early radio days can tell you, is about the least of what can happen among jocks at close quarters.

A few odds and ends from this week's listening that didn't prompt a separate post:

* 4KQ Brisbane, Australia: This Australian Classic Hits station's "Friday Night Fever" has become appointment listening for me (on Friday morning, since its 6p-Midnight running time is 4-10 a.m. here). 80% of what 4KQ plays could be on any gold-based AC here, but the remaining 20% is pretty intriguing for Oldies fans. Here's the last hour of this week's show:

Lipps Inc., "Funkytown"
John Travolta & Olivia Newton-John, "Summer Nights"
Billy Thorpe, "Most People I Know Think I'm Crazy" (early '70s Country rocker from the guy known here for the harder-rocking "Children Of The Sun", Keith Urban has covered it)
B.A. Robertson, "Bang Bang" (unusual 1979 U.K. hit from the eventual author of "The Living Years")
Irene Cara, "Fame"
Eagles, "Already Gone"
Go-Go's, "Our Lips Are Sealed"
Lynyrd Skynyrd, "Sweet Home Alabama"
Diana Ross, "Upside Down"
Christie Allen, "Goose Bumps" (early '80s pop that would be sorta like hearing Sheena Easton's "Telephone" here)
BTO/You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet
Billy Ocean/Caribbean Queen
Marcia Hines/Your Love Still Brings Me To My Knees (R&B vocalist with a string of '70s/'80s hits)
Rolling Stones/She's So Cold
Blondie/Denis
Vicki Sue Robinson/Turn The Beat Around
Eric Burden & War/Spill The Wine

* KPLV (the Party) Las Vegas: With the devastating success of "Pick Your Purse" at female-targeted radio stations in recent years, it was inevitable that shoes would be next, as seen in this Rhythmic AC's "Heel or No Heel."

* CIDC (Z103.5) Toronto: I've already brought them up this week, but two other things stood out during my listening this week. One is that Z103.5 actually frontsold a record by noting that it had been a No. 1 record in the U.K.--something that I haven't heard any American station do in years. The other was an ad for Trojans--something you hear a lot more on Canadian CHR radio--that I won't quote here but which seemed a little explicit, no matter how many American morning shows one listens to. And elsewhere in Toronto...

* CHWO (AM740): Broadcasters always talk about going more aggressively against print, but this Adult Standards' on-air promos aimed at selling advertising time end with, "Don't leave your advertising on the curb with yesterday's crash." Wonder how sales departments are going to retool this one as on-line advertising becomes the competition.

We suggested a few months ago that WCRR (Country 107.3) Rochester, N.Y.--the commercial-free market rimshotter that Clear Channel recently launched to flank format leader WBEE--would probably end up doing some sort of sponsorship deal along the lines of sister KZPS (Lone Star 92.5) Dallas.

Last week, that idea came to fruition as the station rebranded itself as Labatt Blue Country 107.3. Seems like you could have a lot of fun with that idea, but so far the Labatt mentions are minimal, both on the station's Website and on-the-air. As heard Friday and today, Labatt is getting a mention in roughly every other produced drop on the station (and in keeping with the formatics heard on many Clear Channel stations) that works out to roughly every fourth song. In most cases, the mentions are as simple as "Labatt Blue Country 107.3."

Also interesting to note that the station--at least as heard on line this morning--is not commercial free anymore. At 12:26, a spot for a local lawyer's office was heard.

It's early days, so far. But the station recalls the early days of the now-defunct WWZZ (Z104) Washington, D.C.'s McDonald's Morning Show, another concept that was never taken quite as far as it could have been--perhaps because of the negative publicity that accompanied it in the industry. One wouldn't want every station to be an advertorial, but this one is a natural--so why not do more with it?

Don't know if I've burned anybody out yet on the return of WCBS-FM New York, but here's one interesting sidenote:

An on-line posting of what songs have and have not made the cut since CBS-FM came back, the latter based on the station's former playlist as an Oldies station pre-2005:

One caveat here: I've actually heard a few of the songs in the latter group on the air already. There are also a number of songs on the not-playing list that are reliably hits for most Oldies and Classic Hits stations that might have been left off for lack of tempo during the sign-on, but will probably find their way on to the station before too long. Others might have been on the station during its last year, but had disappeared from CBS-FM (and many other Oldies stations) by the time Jack came along in summer 2005.

It's the most heavily covered format change of the year so far--tons of stories not only in the local press but as far afield as the Los Angeles Times. But for anybody who wasn't near a radio or the Internet at 1:01 this afternoon when WCBS-FM returned to Oldies after two years as "Jack-FM," or anybody who listened to the format change, then moved on before the station went into its regular format, here are some notes from the 2 p.m. hour and throughout the afternoon and early evening to give you a quick sense of what the new/old station sounds like so far.

1) If you're not happy with how Oldies has evolved over the years, you will indeed have some issues with this station. Even before the sign-on, it was announced that the new CBS-FM would play some music from the '80s, and would bring back station veterans Bob Shannon and Dan Taylor, but not Cousin Brucie or any of the WABC/WMCA icons who had become the public face of the station. And there was at least one moment this afternoon where WCBS-FM was playing "Jack And Diane" while WLTW was playing Diana Ross' version of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," a song that was 12 years older.

2) That said, it DOES sound like WCBS-FM, even when it's playing "Glory Days" or "Let's Hear It For The Boy." Some of that is the power of the jingles and presentation. Some of that is that Joe McCoy's WCBS-FM would, for much of its existence, have played "Let's Hear It For The Boy" anyway. And I've already heard from a few people this afternoon who didn't much like the station that left in 2005 who are just fine with this one, even with Huey Lewis & the News in the mix. Just shows what two years away will do to make a station more appreciated.

3) There's not a strict 1964 (or 1966) cutoff of the sort that some Oldies stations have imposed over the years--there's still "Do You Love Me" by the Contours (unless you count that song as 1987) and even "Summertime Blues" in the mix. (There's also a summer songs stager that has given the station license to play "Summer Rain," "Under The Boardwalk" and even the Cowsills' "Indian Lake" as well.) That, along with the '70s and '80s titles does keep the station from feeling as claustrophobic as some of the Oldies stations that superserve 1968-1972 and a very thin sliver of everything else. There's also a decent representation of songs that used to be part of the overplayed Top 300 of all time, but had gotten harder to find in recent years--"Wooly Bully," "Incense and Peppermints," etc.

4) If you were a Jack partisan, this will be listenable for you, but it won't be entirely satisfying. The true Pat Benatar/John Mellencamp/Prince/Boston person will listen to the new WCBS-FM, but the hole still remains for WPLJ or somebody else to reclaim the '80s. (Or for Jack's new HD-2 incarnation to become the most successful HD-2 station ever.) That said, I did hear "Little Red Corvette" into "Magic Man" tonight, which would have been a very good Jack segue.

And here's one aspect of the change that has gotten little publicity: So far, the station has had no commercials--just sponsorship billboards at the top of each hour. Presumably, if this were going to be a permanent development, we'd have heard about it by now. And the jocks are stopping to talk in those usual stopset places--suggesting that there will be something there eventually. But if the station was able to maintain sponsorships only, that would be bigger news than any format change.

Here's the second hour of WCBS-FM at 2 p.m. today:

Tommy James & Shondells, "Mony Mony" (1968)
Donna Summer, "Last Dance" (1978)
Sam the Sham & Pharaohs, "Wooly Bully" (1965)
Bruce Springsteen, "Pink Cadillac" (1984)
Earth Wind & Fire, "Sing A Song" (1975)
Mungo Jerry, "In The Summertime" (1970)
Elvis Presley, "Suspicious Minds" (1969)
KC & Sunshine Band, "That's The Way (I Like It)" (1975)
Doors, "Light My Fire" (1967)
Elton John, "Philadelphia Freedom" (1975)
Blondie, "Heart Of Glass" (1979)
Righteous Brothers, "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'" (1965)
Steve Miller Band, "Take The Money And Run" (1976)
Sam & Dave, "Soul Man" (1967)
Boz Scaggs, "Lowdown" (1976)
Temptations, "My Girl" (1965)
Steve Winwood, "Roll With It" (1988)
Spinners, "The Rubberband Man" (1976)

Just as the first year of the Bob- and Jack-FM format went without much notice from the U.S. radio industry, so did the fifth anniversary of the first Bob-FM, CFWM (99.9 Bob FM) Winnipeg. But I was motivated to check them out this afternoon--almost exactly five years after I first encountered the station. (Count on a longer look at the format in an upcoming Ross On Radio.)

This was my first visit to Bob in a year or so (which, I suppose, says something in itself), and my first long stretch of the station since original programmer Howard Kroeger left. If I was coming upon the station for the first time today, I would still think it was nicely uptempo, well-focused, well-executed, and surprisingly cohesive for a station that goes from Green Day into Grand Funk, certainly more cohesive than many of the subsequent Adult Hits stations managed to be.

What's different now? For better or worse, it felt like there were fewer well-calculated surprises, even though this Bob never went as crazy with variety for its own sake as many imitators did. (Setting aside the government-mandated Cancon, I can't identify more than one song in the music monitor below that wouldn't test well for somebody.) Then again, that may just be a function of losing the shock of the new, and it's hard for anybody to keep that going for five years. It's been hard for a lot of the subsequent Bob- and Jack-FMs to keep it going for more than a year or two.

Here's Bob in middays today:

Green Day, "Holiday"
Grand Funk, "Some Kind Of Wonderful"
Nick Gilder & Sweeney Todd, "Roxy Roller" (Canadian)
Billy Joel, "You May Be Right"
Elton John, "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting"
Crash Test Dummies, "Superman's Song" (Canadian)
Robert Plant, "Tall Cool One"
Bryan Adams, "When You're Gone" (Canadian)
Wings, "Live And Let Die"
Stevie Nicks & Don Henley, "Leather And Lace"
Tragically Hip, "Courage" (Canadian)
Pretenders, "Brass In Pocket (I'm Special)"

However it may do long term, and my colleague Tom Webster certainly has some strong feelings about it, the change from Tropical to an Adult Modern format at WUBA (Radio 104.5) Philadelphia will go down as the first format change prompted by PPM ratings. Even if Philly's one Spanish-language FM was flat, not diminished in the way its Clear Channel Urban sisters WUSL and WDAS were, the first PPM quarterly made a bigger, more tempting target out of stations with AC and Adult Rock functionality.

The new Radio 104.5 has elements of both. It's along the lines of recent Clear Channel launches like KJMY Salt Lake City and WDVI (the Drive) Rochester, N.Y.--stations that straddle the line between Modern AC, Modern Rock, and Triple-A. That, not surprisingly, was the turf occupied by WPLY (Y100) during its most successful period in the mid-to-late '90s, and while triple-A WXPN has moved in that direction, the hole for a female-friendly Rock station had never been exactly filled.

Here's WUBA at 8:20 this morning:

Green Day, "American Idiot"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Aeroplane"
Evanescence, "Call Me When You're Sober"
Bob Marley & Wailers, "Three Little Birds"
Barenaked Ladies, "Brian Wilson"
Midnight Oil, "Beds Are Burning"
Modest Mouse, "Float On"
R.E.M., "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?"
Semisonic, "Closing Time"
Killers, "Mr. Brightside"
Republica, "Ready To Go"
Foo Fighters, "All My Life"

Musically, CHUMGroup's new Adult Top 40 CKCE (Energy 101.5) Calgary is very close to sister CHUM-FM Toronto. Presentationally, PD Rob Mise has given the just-launched station has a lot of nice little touches that rate a listen, including the positioning of its jockless early days as "the free test drive." The station is also referring to itself as "your new best friend" and promising "always a bigger hit." Energy is also positioning some of its oh-wow oldies as "guilty pleasures" (although it's hard to imagine any stager that can help you get away with "I'm Too Sexy" more than once). I also appreciated that the station begins playing the minute you open the homepage.

Many of the posts on individual stations have been geared toward the exotic--Internet or HD stations or terrestrial stations with unusual formats, e.g., '80s-based Christian Rock. But The Infinite Dial is devoted to great radio in all its forms and that includes actual mainstream formats on FM.

I've always been aware of heritage Country KJUG Visalia, Calif., but I wouldn't have checked them out if it hadn't been for a chance meeting with Capitol Nashville's Mike Krinik and the station's Jenna Jackson at Country Radio Seminar. Krinik is the former PD of WGGY (Froggy 101) Wilkes-Barre, Pa., a scorching hot CHR-style Country during his tenure. So when Krinik told me what a great station KJUG was, I had to take it very seriously.

So now I've streamed it and KJUG deserves a listen. It's heavily produced, high-energy Country that would hold its own in a much larger market. And middayer Jackson spent a lot of time relating various currents to artist appearances at CRS without ever sounding too inside. She also managed to get a lot of mileage out of treating the new George Strait single--the third from his current album--as if it was a brand new Strait that had never been heard anywhere.

For the station stream, click here.

I was intrigued by today's news that Jim McGuinn, former PD of WPLY (Y100) Philadelphia, who now oversees an Alternative rock bloc on Triple-A WXPN Philly called "Y-Rock On XPN" was planning a salute to another former employer, Philly's former modern rocker 103.9 WDRE, commemorating the 10th anniversary of that station's demise.

McGuinn told AllAccess.com, "I still hear from 'DRE listeners who thought the station was incredibly special and loved it passionately. Even after all these years people still say, 'I miss WDRE.' I think that's a testament to the music we played, the DJs who worked there, and our 'little station that could' mentality. Plus, our signal was terrible, so you really were special if you could listen to WDRE."

WDRE was, as it happens, one of the last of the entrepeneur-owned market rimshotters that typified Modern Rock radio before Nirvana and Pearl Jam got the group owners interested and ushered in the new rock revolution of the mid-'90s. Increasingly, as the footprint of all of Rock radio dwindles, many alternative stations are becoming what they were in most places in the late '80s/early '90s, lower-rated stations that specialize in a body of music not heard elsewhere.

What's missing now is the cachet. You'd like to think that somewhere an 18-year-old is raptly attentive to this great station that plays the Shins, the Kaiser Chiefs, and the Raconteurs when nobody else in the market does. But today's Alternative stations are in a trick bag. Listeners already think of them as part of the radio establishment. And broadcasters think of them as failures because they have only a 2-3 share instead of the 5-6 share they had a decade ago.

Every winter, we use our sister Ross On Radio column to look at some of the most intriguing stations of the year just ended--stations that brought something new to the dial, represented the resurgence of a format, or sometimes just didn't get the memo about their format's travails elsewhere. This year's highlights: a breakthrough (finally) for Rhythmic music at AC, some attempts (but not enough) to repatriate younger listening, and a surprise resurgence for Latin pop radio. For the full list of stations, click here.

Okay, many people believe that "An Inconvenient Truth" helped make Al Gore a rock star again. But is the environment now a rock radio niche? That's what longtime Classic Rock WARW Washington, D.C., is hoping for with its segue yesterday to "94.7, the Globe."

Musically, the new WARW is similar to WZGC Atlanta, which made a similar transition from Classic Rock to a slightly more contemporary-leaning Triple-A several years ago, but branded itself as the Jack/Bob-like "Dave FM." But Washington has had two Hot AC/Classic Hits hybrids, including the just-launched WGMS (George 104), so WARW is instead calling itself "The Globe" and doing something that few rock stations have done in the past 30 years--promoting itself as "eco-friendly" in addition to the more traditional Triple-A "World Class Rock" positioning.

As that might suggest, there's a lot going on at once. Various promos on the first day included market veteran Cerphe talking about how "radio has changed over the years, and honestly, not always for the better" and promising to "be part of the solution, rather than the problem," there were also swipes at WGMS (promises not to play "Madonna and Boy George"--the latter is probably not a core artist anyway); there were liners evoking the spirit of progressive WHFS in the mid-'80s, and certainly if you liked that station, you will hear some of its greatest hits--Elvis Costello's "Pump It Up," the Smithereens' "A Girl Like You," and the Jam's "A Town Called Malice" all played in the first few hours.

Okay, so now you have to ask yourself how many people were listening to WHFS in the mid-'80s. One of the problems with both the Gold-based Hip-Hop format tried at KDAY Los Angeles a few years ago and the library-based Modern Gold stations of recent years is that they're invoking an adolescence that not that many people lived through. And, as one friend pointed out, "What if you like Triple-A but don't buy into the whole environmental thing?"

That said, this is a different and ambitious radio station--and the second different radio station that CBS has launched since the beginning of the year. And like KCBS (Jack FM) Los Angeles, it has the advantage of being friendly to the cume it's starting out with, which didn't need three stations doing some form of Classic Rock.

Here's an hour or so of WARW from 3:30 p.m. on Friday (2).

Coldplay, "The Scientist"
Talking Heads, "And She Was"
Neil Young, "Southern Man"
The Fray, "How To Save A Life"
Mighty Lemon Drops, "Inside Out" (may have been Web only)
Pete Townshend, "Rough Boys"
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Suck My Kiss"
Bob Marley, "One Love/People Get Ready"
INXS, "New Sensation"
Rod Stewart, "Every Picture Tells A Story"
Snow Patrol, "Chasing Cars"
R.E.M., "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?"

Veteran programmer/consultant Jerry Clifton has always been one of a handful of broadcasters who managed to take the basics of '70s Q-era Top 40 and apply them to todays' current-based formats. But it's always been interesting to contemplate how he would do a '70s-based oldies station. That question has now been answered by KAZZ (Z107) Spokane, Wash., which Clifton co-owns. That station was recently described in R&R as "Classic Hits," but that descriptor doesn't do justice to a station that plays Cheap Trick/"Surrender," Jackson 5/"I Want You Back," and Sonny & Cher/"I Got You Babe" in the same 20 minutes.

KCDX Florence, Ariz., the Phoenix-area deep-cuts Classic Rocker operated as an apparent labor of love by owner Ted Tucker has taken on cult status in recent years for its eclecticism. Over the past six months, I think I've found its Oldies equivalent. Unfortunately, though, you'll have to go to Long Island to hear it, since the station doesn't have an audio stream or even, as best I can tell, a Website.

WNYH (AM 740) Huntington, N.Y., is doing an eclectic, mostly jockless and mostly commercial free mix comprised mostly of pre-Beatles Oldies, Adult Standards, and '60s/'70s MOR, but with occasional forays into Country, more recent Oldies and, well, everything else. While there are frequent promos aimed at potential advertisers, most of what I've heard has been brokered time in mornings and on Sunday.

WNYH also has a tendency to program its music in mood-sweeps, so here's a sample from this morning that is typical in its eclecticism, but not much else:

Jo Stafford, "Shrimp Boats"
Webb Pierce, "In The Jailhouse Now"
Patsy Cline, "Crazy"
Lefty Frizzell, "Always Late With Your Kisses"
Wilbert Harrison, "Kansas City"
Vaughn Monroe, "Black Denim Trousers and Motorcycle Boots"
Perry Como, "Papa Loves Mambo"
Doris Day, "The Black Hills Of Dakota"
Bob Dylan, "Blowin' In The Wind"
Bob Dylan, "Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35"

This has always been a dangerous thing to admit to in a room full of people, but at age 44, I have much greater emotional ties to the corporate rock of the late '70s and early '80s, the era that began with Boston and ended when contemporary rock was upstaged by the Top 40 resurgence of 1983-84. In my iPod, there are 10 songs by Pat Benatar, six by Billy Squier, and only two by Led Zeppelin. I know how most of you are going to respond to this, and I'm okay with that.

So one of the great things about the ascent of Bob- and Jack-FM, particularly in its early Canadian era (2002-03) was the realization that I wasn't alone: there was a new generation of Classic Rock listener that cared about early '80s rock and late '80s hair bands and cared less about Jethro Tull or early Pink Floyd. Unlike the early Canadian listeners, I also had the joy of discovery. Canada did Classic Rock right in the '70s and '80s, and I was always happy to discover another Prism or April Wine song that hadn't made it down to the States.

I'm having the same reaction now to the new KWOF (850 The Prodigal) Waterloo/Cedar Falls, Iowa, which launched a Classic Christian Rock format in October, with core acts that include Petra, White Heart, Keith Green, and DeGarmo & Key. Having heard only a little of that music during its mid-'80s heyday, when Contemporary Christian was much less available on the radio than it is now, I remember thinking that it sounded several years behind the curve of secular music. At a 20 years remove, however, hearing that music again (and more like it) is like discovering a Christian Jack FM--melodic rock with a similar appeal as Jack- and Bob-FM and some of the energy not always found on today's Christian AC.

KWOF is streaming. It was also the subject of a profile in yesterday's Waterloo/Cedar Falls Courier.

A few weeks ago, we published an article on the Edison Media Research website about KMBY (X103.9) Monterey, Calif., the latest station to attempt a young male lifestyle format that combines Modern Rock and Hip-Hop. After several months on the air, the station is now streaming as well. You can also see PD Byron Cooke's thoughts on the format in the San-Jose Mercury News.

There's no question that the changing new media landscape and radio's need to repatriate (or claim in the first place) 12-24 listening has changed the language of Top 40 radio. Got a request? Text it to the jock. Want another clue on the station's contest? It's on the jock's blog. Or the jock's MySpace page.

All of which is oddly reminiscent of the Top 40 radio of the early '70s and its attempts to couch itself in youth culture--much of which manifested itself as vocabulary. The weather forecast was recast as the local "environment" and caller No. 9 got to "rip-off" concert tickets.

That was hardly enough to stem the rise of Album Rock radio. Or keep the Top 40 guys from looking like, well, jive turkeys. There was, of course, the rise of a new body of music that Top 40 couldn't pre-empt, although it did make an equally ill-fated attempt to acknowledge it in some markets by throwing on a lot of album cuts at night around 1971-72.

Patronizing the kids by talking to them in what you think is their own language never gets them back on the radio. But finding out if there's a body of music that radio isn't adequately serving might. For many programmers, that now seems to take the form of surfing MySpace pages looking for mentions of music. And, gee, if you were a record label, wouldn't you have your street team now seeding those?

So maybe it's time to have 13-17-year-olds back in callout in some meaningful way at some format other than Rhythmic. Or represented in the next market study. As became clear at this year's NAB and R&R conventions, there are a lot of people who would like to be your intermediary in this "what younger listeners want" question. But there's something to be said for asking them yourself.

For more than a year after the runaway success of CFWM (Bob 99.9) Winnipeg, and CKLG (Jack FM) Vancouver, it was hard to even get an American programmer's attention about the Classic Hits/Hot AC hybrid that had proven so effective up there. It took about 18 months for the first American Bob-FMs to show up and another six months after that for the first Jack-FM success story.

By contrast, the Rhythmic AC bandwagon is definitely moving, or MOViN as Alan Burns would have it. Less than two months after the first good trend for KQMV Seattle, Burns' format has new outlets at KZLA Los Angeles, WVRV St. Louis and KFRC San Francisco. And Clear Channel has been signing on its own Rhythmic ACs at an equally brisk clip--the most recent addition at press time being Denver. And if the sign of any format rush is that a market ends up with two of something, consider KZLA's switch when rival KBIG was already playing many of the same songs.

So why is Rhythmic AC happening so much faster?

1) Because broadcasters now realize that they let the Bob- and Jack-FM concept sit around too long last time;

2) Because it's not coming from Canada, or anywhere else in the world, and unfortunately that has a lot to do with how to get a U.S. broadcaster's attention. While Bob- and Jack-FM were a pretty good way to deal with a 35% Canadian Content mandate, there was somehow the belief down here that Cancon helped Jack- and Bob-FM, often repeated verbatim by broadcasters who knew little else about Canadian radio.

3) Because it's easier to understand than Jack and Bob: less deliberate broadness;

4) Because, Los Angeles notwithstanding, there's nothing similar in the space. Jack- and Bob-FM did better if you had a weak Hot AC or an older/harder Classic Rock in the market. Movin' and its brethern deal with music that's been entirely missing from the radio;

5) Because it may be the "female Jack" that broadcasters have been looking for ever since the first Jacks and Bobs materialized down here. Citadel took a swing at it with its Diva-FMs in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La. Now they're coming at it from a less rhythmic standpoint with their WKIM (98.9 Kim FM) Memphis. Part of the beauty of a Classic Hits/Hot AC-hybrid is, of course, that it's equally male and female. But that doesn't stop broadcasters from trying to pull off something similar with less available audience.

Normally, you'd also have to add, "Because this new format allows group heads and PDs to play the music of their life." But that's a better explanation for the eventual traction of Jack and Bob. Somebody who was a teenager during the early '90s heyday of Rhythmic CHR is only in their early 30s now. So a PD might be motivated--but the group heads and owners are still well clear of the Bell BivDevoe/Neneh Cherry years of CHR.

Okay, it's been a long time since the carefully staged trainwrecks of the Bob- and Jack-FMs were noteworthy to a radio person. The format did, after all, start out in a careful Hot AC/Classic Hits groove, then added some deliberately provocative segues in some cases. But even listeners seemed to understand that "we play everything" didn't mean sea shanties, brand new songs, or Country--other than an occasional "Friends In Low Places."

So I had to pass along this four song set recently encountered on Great Scott's WKHI/WJHI (Joe FM) Salisbury/Ocean City, Md., last Thursday (17):

Fleetwood Mac, "Don't Stop"
Right Said Fred, "I'm Too Sexy"
Jo Dee Messina, "I'm Alright"
Adam Ant, "Strip"

"i'm Too Sexy" and "Strip" by themselves would give that set a higher than usual "oh wow" quotient. But a country recurrent?

Well, why not? In Ocean City/Salisbury, country stations are No. 2 and No. 4 and control 14.6 shares of listening between them. While a mainstream AC is No. 1, there's no highly rated Mainstream CHR or Hot AC and there hasn't been for some time. So why wouldn't one of the biggest Country recurrents of the last few years be safer and more familiar than filling up the '90s and now category with songs that achieved far less traction?

Dealing with the '90s has been an issue for Bob, Jack and their pals. It's the era with the fewest consensus hits--particularly if your'e not ready to play "Macarena" and "Freak Like Me" next to "Don't Stop." And it's an era where, in hundreds of markets like Ocean City, Country music was a shared experience and pop music wasn't, at least in 1990-94.

As expected, soft AC WSNI (Sunny 104.5) and WJJZ (Smooth Jazz 106.1) Philadelphia both went away at Noon today, replaced by a shadowcast of a new rhythmic AC format that will eventually take up permanent residence at 106.1 with the syndicated Whoopi Goldberg in the morning.

The speculation was that the new station, now called Philly's 106.1, would be similar to KQMV (Movin' 92.5) Seattle. But it's older and more AC-flavored than Movin' with some pure pop records (KT Tunstall, James Blunt, Daniel Powter), some '60s Motown, and more '70s disco than Movin' 92.5 would play. There's also less of the late '80s/early '90s rhythmic pop than KQMV has used, although the station does get as recent/edgy as Nina Sky's "Move Ya Body." That actually led one industry observer to suggest that the most accurate comparison was to Clear Channel sister KBIG Los Angeles.

Here's today's 2 p.m. hour of Philly's 106.1:

Abba, "Dancing Queen"
Nelly Furtado, "I'm Like A Bird"
DHT, "Listen To Your Heart"
Barry White, "I'm Gonna Love You Just A Little More Baby"
Frankie Smith, "Double Dutch Bus"
Temptations, "The Way You Do The Things You Do"
Cher, "Song For The Lonely"
Chic, "Good Times"
Technotronic, "Pump Up The Jam"
Madonna, "Borderline"
Will Smith, "Switch"
Gloria Gaynor, "I Will Survive"

Of all the stories emerging from the recently released spring Arbitron ratings, the most interesting is probably that of KBON, the eclectic "Louisiana Music" station. Last October, the New York Times reported on the number of New Orleans musicians, displaced by Hurricane Katrina, who had relocated to Lafayette, La., already the cradle of Cajun and zydeco music. When the Lafayette book came out late last month, KBON was suddenly No. 3 12-plus in the market, up 5.0 - 6.2 - 7.5 since spring '05 (and up from a 3.1 in fall '04).

KBON's rise gave roots music fans another standard bearer, since the equally eclectic KPIG Monterey, Calif., was off 5.6 - 3.7 (and beset by some recent bad publicity about going jockless in overnights). According to market sources, the station managed an amazing average TSL of 13 hours a week and 14 hours in 25-54.

New Orleans and Lafayette are, of course, very different markets. The music that made the pre-Katrina New Orleans one of the few markets in America with a sustained body of enduring local hits was as just likely to be Hip-Hop or '80s "Euro" (from artists like Depeche Mode and New Order) or '80s corporate rockers Zebra or the '70s R&B anthem "Groove City" by Chocolate Milk as it was the music that folklorists associate with the region. And one broadcaster familiar with the market believes KBON's numbers could as easily reflect post-Hurricane Rita population shifts as post-Katrina relocations.

But whatever drove it, it's always great to see a local music scene power a radio station, whether it's "Texas Music" at KPLX (the Wolf) Dallas in the late '90s or "snap music" at WHTA (Hot 97.5) Atlanta. KBON's success with features like "All-Louisiana Friday" is a nice little coda to a year that was particularly unlikely to offer one.

The success of News/Talk on a full FM signal at WTOP Washington is doubtless going to further convince programmers of successful AMs that they need a storefront in the big mall, particularly given the modest launch of WTWP (Washington Post Radio) on WTOP's old frequency. And WTWP was a station that was starting life with a 50,000 watt signal, a lot of publicity, and cume that should have been amenable in an extra N/T choice.

So that's why the publicity surrounding N/T KFI Los Angeles' recent No. 1 book is important as well. Robert Unmacht, a media consultant with iN3 Partners (whose clients include the radio site Radio-Info.Com), was one of those contacted for the recent Los Angeles Times story on KFI. After the story ran, he sent the following additional comments:

Unmacht says the Times reporter "told me he was surprised AM was still used much, an interesting look at how people think of AM. It took KFI going to the top to make a lot of people in L.A. think AM still rated at all, even with KFI being a successful station book in and out. There have been a lot of AM stories after the KFI book. This was just one of them.

"I have thought that radio should take into account how easy it is to get great programming from an AM station. Promote the station and how to tune it in--be it telling people it is on AM or adding FM to a billboard. With HD and Podcasts I think it is more important than ever not to assume people know 101.5 is an FM station or that 570 is an AM station. And who knows what they think of '101.5 HD-2'? I think he might have hung out with R2-D2 at the bar."

The Infinite Dial" is all about what we hear on the radio. (And when I say "we," I definitely mean it as "all of us" in the way that you're meant to intuit from "Playing What We Want.") So it's a natural place to talk about the best and most interesting things heard on the radio in this past week. And here's what I heard this week that bears a mention. All quotes and sweeper language are recreated to the best of the multi-tasking author's ability:

• Most Provocative CHR Phone Topic: A few days ago, I heard a well-known Top 40 doing a bit on whether parents should give their daughters breast enlargement surgery. And if you're now saying, "Hey, that's not an unusual Top 40 topic at all these days," well, there you go. And the next day, when I told that story to another programmer, who told me that his night jock had done the same bit, thanks to a shared show-prep service, that point was reinforced even further. Also telling: the bit I heard was the second of three topics in about 30 minutes. One caller, herself proudly enhanced, responded to a story about a mother who had opened a savings account so her toddler could have surgery when she grew up by declaring that mother to be unfit. "What do you think?" asked the jock. "Is she unfit?" and he was off to topic No. 3. Such now is today's caller-driven Top 40.

• Lest you think I have standards or anything, one of the funniest things I heard this week was the timely promo on Modern WHTG (G-Rock) Monmouth/Ocean, N.J., where the cue to win was the sound of a seagull crapping on Superman's pizza. I wasn't the only one who noticed--I heard at least one break where the caller and jock were talking about it.

• Summer goes so fast . . . The 40-day promotional tie-in between Modern WFNX Boston and Snapple is over already. And how do you follow 40 days of commercial-free programming? "We couldn't go commercial-free all the time," the promos explain. So what's on the air now is "the Commercial-Few Summer," which, when I listened, meant an hour commercial free. It's a great name. But it's not being used as the over-arching theme of the radio station in the way that the Snapple promotion was, meaning that it feels more like business-as-usual.

• And here's a reason you really hate to see the end of summer on the horizon: WEZB (B97) New Orleans is running spots for N/T sister WWL that ask, "Who do you trust to get you through this hurricane season? The same people who got you through Katrina." It would have been a spooky reminder of last year's tragedy, and the potential for more to come, even if I hadn't seen "An Inconvenient Truth" the night before. B97 also runs a great sweeper featuring syndicated morning man Kidd Kraddock that promises, "We're rebuilding New Orleans one hit at a time," which is about how you'd have to look at it when you're programming a format that thrives on good times in a market where they're few and far between these days. And one more promo-writing plug for PD Mike Kaplan and staff: I also liked the promo that listed famous Teddys (Roosevelt, Ruxpin, etc.), before declaring that "none of them pierce the heart like Teddy Geiger," whose tickets the station was giving away.

• Remember WNOU (Radio Now) Indianapolis' No. 1 song of the hour? It still exists on the barely transposed Christian CHR WONU (Shine FM) Kankakee/Chicago. The song in question, by the way, was "Bittersweet" by Plumb, when I listened.

• It was inevitable that Oldies KLDE Houston would follow the lead of its Cox brethren and evolve to something else. That turned out to be "K-Hits 107.5, the greatest hits of the '60s and '70s," taking a cue not from some of Cox's more sedate Classic Hits outlets but from KLTH Portland, Ore. In certain ways, it made more sense to hear Houston CHR veteran Paul Christy's high-energy presentation over "You're No Good" and "Kodachrome" than on a traditional Oldies station. Christy is always great to hear and it was nice to know that the "good times" didn't go anywhere, even if the "great oldies" half of that equation did.

Best commercial: Only about once a year do I hear a commercial that I like enough to try and track down a dub. Recently, it was an add for Frontier Airlines where two animals, definitely in the spirit of the old Budweiser lizards, debate the merits of more non-stop flights with one trying to make a case for long layovers that include all the great things you can eat at the airport food court. The sensible one eventually concludes that direct flights are indeed better than hot pretzels or cinnamon buns.