Ok, so I’ve been looking over the latest PPM results for my market for Holiday 09 ( I image an AC station and really want to program some day soon), The station that won did so with an unbelievable 7.something (we had a 6.3), and we launched our Christmas programming about 20 minutes after they did. Now, here’s the caveat, we only had 138 titles in rotation, and the comp had at least 300 if not more. Did that make a difference? Probably, does playing Christmas music on November 1 make a difference? You betcha, my wife ( a HUGE P1 of BOTH stations, was extremely annoyed that her favorite stations had flipped way too early, she turned them off and listened to either her Ipod or CD’s or another station until SHE was ready for Christmas music.
Perceptual indications told us that P1’s and P2’s were not going to be ready for Christmas music until AFTER Thanksgiving, but we didn’t “listen” to our primary demo, we followed the lemmings over the cliff and flipped when they did. In my opinion, I would have not followed the suits in corporates knee jerk response, I would have told them, “No, we’re gonna wait..”, let the chips fall where they may, so what the comp flipped to Christmas,, all my P1’s and P2’s that are just not ready have my regular programming to get them through their busy workdays, we’ll go when THEY want us to go, perceptually, after Thanksgiving.
Now, that being said, perhaps the way to program this is to trickle it in, like they did in the “old” days of radio, you know, the day after Halloween, you sneak in a classic holiday tune ONCE a daypart and then the next week a couple more and so on. Christmas music early in a market with more than one Soft AC can be a blessing or a curse, in our case (the station I work for) a curse. I would hope that next year, things will definitely be different, perhaps that instead of a knee jerk jump to Christmas on Nov 1, we’ll wait and let the LISTENER let us know when they are ready for Christmas Music, they’ll stay longer and that means an increase in the TSL, and the Cume will always be up in those 52 glorious days from Nov 1 to Dec 25th , plus the audio they’ll give you will be fabulous!. That’s my opinion, and I hope that it helps you make a great decision next year
I was taking a few days off to bond with my son, who is about to be 14 months old, and I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed our time together, bonding with a 1 year old is harder than it sounds, “why?”, well a couple of things
A)I’m not his mother
B)I’m not his mother
and
C)I’m not his mother,
that being said, he hung out, scratched, cried and watched baseball, football and golf with me while I took some days off, we both loved it, much to the chagrin of his mother, who only likes the playoffs, the super bowl and the Masters.. ahhh, this is going to be so cool, I can’t wait to introduce him to the world of Radio and Voice Over, maybe some imaging too..
Added new blog on kudl.com, you can visit it here…. http://blogs.kudl.com/taylor I’ve moved my smooth jazz show to sundays and rebranded it the Smooth Sunday Brunch, shortened by an hour and will focus on new music and the top 15 from Billboard Magazines Smooth Charts and SmoothJazz.com charts too. If you have a chance drop by the site, stream it on sunday mornings, or just leave a comment.
Somewhere between 1980 and 1993 I lost Steely Dan, but wait they were never really lost, they just took a break from each other. Fagen and Becker decided they had had enough of the touring, recording, touring, eating, touring, recording and I could go on and on but… Now they are back on tour, and after reading the article in today (7/31) USAToday about how they’re recreating entire albums in their new tour, I almost wish I had the funds to follow them as not a Groupie, but as a true connessouier of their music.
It mesmerized me as a young weed smokin kid of the 70’s and 80’s and their jazz infused classics “Aja” and “The Royal Scam” are mainstays in the in my vinyl library. You can learn alot about how we “image” radio just by listening to these guys make incredible music. If you are any where close to Chicago, LA, or NY you really must make it a point to see them live, your life will be better for it.
Summer is by far my favorite imaging season, people are out and doing things, eager to help out with almost anything. Case in point, I had to have some dental work done in an emergency, I went to a dentist I hadn’t been to in over 3 years and found that they were listening to a station I image, I called the on air personality and told him “Hey, they are listening at Barry Road Dental Group, give em a shout”, not only did HE call THEM, they were ecstatic about hearing their names on the radio as well as their business. Now how does that help you image your station?. Well it does a couple of things, first if you need some great tape, they would be one of the first places to look, second: they will tell their friends about how they got to be on the radio at KXXX. You’re always going to get great 1’s and 0’s here (or for my old school imagers.. great tape
I am in the process of re-producing imaging for the Heritage AC station KUDL and have a new voice talent to break in again. My previous voice talents Jon Carter/Buffy O”Neil -Megahertz Studios were an awesome addition to our station and for 6 years they dominated, you can hear them on a lot of Entercom AC properties. Our new talent is Sean Caldwell and I haven’t had the opportunity to speak with him yet, but at first listen, I think it will be a great partnership. We have taken the station out of a Hot AC and moved it back a few notches to more of a Smooth AC hybrid. (my opinion). These guys are the pros and I suggest you check our their demos for more enlightenment if you’re planning on changing your stations voices
LiveLeak.com – Rap Chop Slap Chop Remix.
You’ll enjoy this I’m sure
Ok, so I am not the defacto expert on anything, but I do know a little about mixing. I often get asked by clients who are trying to do quite frankly the impossible, they are trying (themselves) to either pull music or voice off of video or add music or voice to video using products that are not made for those applications. I am using two different versions of Audition 1.5 and 3.0. The 3.0 version will allow me to both remove audio and add audio to video files. I really want to tell them to “step away from the app slowly” and let a pro create or modify their projects. It will cost them less than they expected and more importantly it will be done right the first time. Something to think about isn’t it? I’d love to know what you think, or if you have a better tip,please share it so everyone can benefit.
I just signed a new client rooradio.com for imaging and was amazed by the amount of feedback I got concerning how well the imaging sounds online. If you image internet radio, the first things you should be concerned with is bit rate,stereo definitions and voice quality.
I send everything at 160kps stereo and depending on your clients (or your) streaming application this is probably the maximum you’ll want to set it at. Why? well anything more is a waste of bandwidth, anything less takes away the quality of production piece. You’re sweeps shouldn’t be more than 15 seconds anyway, and if they are, you should ask for a re-write. Music promos/sweeps on the other hand can be up to 30seconds but anything more takes away from the brand of the internet station.
So, I’ve become fascinated, allright addicted to FB, it’s like we took it over from the teenagers. I’ve connected with people I haven’t seen nor heard from in well over ## years (You didn’t really think I’d tell you how many did you?).
But as I cruise through the posts made from my old friends, I’ve come to the realization that we’ve really grown up. Although some still dwell in the past, that’s alright because that’s who they are and they don’t really know what the rest of the world is like because they never left the world we couldn’t wait to get out of.
Case in point, I have an dear old friend who still lives in the same small town we went to in high school. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it is like she is still stuck in 79′. I left that arena a long time ago and this summer I have the opportunity to re-visit that time period with some old friends, discuss life, liberty and our relentless pursuit of happiness. I can’t wait