Whether you love Martha Stewart or hate her, you have to give her credit, the woman has been very successful. So I was intrigued by a recent Future Buzz article on lessons marketers can learn from her. Out of seven lessons, one that stood out to me had the headline, “Tap the Innovation Crowd” which focuses on how Stewart… [Read more…]
April 16, 2012
My long-time friend and one-time employee Erin O’Malley posted this photo last week of a plaque she received from CBS commemorating ten years with the company as midday host at WBMX in Boston. That’s a huge achievement in any industry and especially in radio. Congratulations Erin! I always knew, even way back when in Las Vegas,… [Read more…]
March 13, 2012
Last season new coach Jim Harbaugh brought the San Francisco 49′ers to within one game of the Super Bowl, a huge achievement for a team that had been one of the worst in the league for many years prior to his arrival. Harbaugh made it happen without a lot of big name stars. Instead his team took an unselfish, blue-collar,… [Read more…]
February 22, 2012
I see that NBA phenomenon Jeremy Lin has filed to trademark the phrase “Linsanity”. Smart move seeing as the article on CBS news says two other people, who clearly have less to do with the national mania that Lin himself does, have also filed for the trademark. This is a great example of two very important… [Read more…]
January 10, 2012
According to the Web site Frugal Dad there are six companies: GE, NewsCorp, Disney, Viacom, Time Warner and CBS that control 90% of what we read, watch or listen to. They control 70% of cable television. Their movie revenue amounts to $7 billion, two times the box office sales of the next 140 biggest studios combined. 232… [Read more…]
January 2, 2012
This post initially ran on October 27 just after Clear Channel made some pretty sweeping cuts in the programming departments of many smaller market stations. As more centralized programming will undoubtedly be a recurring theme in 2012 I thought it was worth revisiting. New posts will return to Free Estimates: the Talent Mechanic Blog tomorrow. Let’s… [Read more…]
December 19, 2011
My last post featured some great thoughts from Cumulus Senior VP of Programming Jan Jeffries about what hosts need to do to be effective. He was kind enough to forward the post to a large number of Cumulus PD’s which resulted in a nice traffic spike for my blog. Today, in hopes of there being… [Read more…]
October 27, 2011
Let’s take a second and put yesterday’s Clear Channel cutbacks and today’s National Programming Platforms Team announcement in historical perspective. It’s been 15 years since the Telecommunications Act of 1996 and we may finally be seeing the vision of deregulation being fully realized. Here’s a history lesson for those of you who don’t remember: The Telecommunications… [Read more…]
October 18, 2011
When I became the News/Talk/Sports Editor at Radio & Records I met a whole new group of radio folks and two of the best were at KGO in San Francisco; General Manager Mickey Luckoff and Program Director Jack Swanson. At the time KGO had an unbelievable streak of something like nine million straight books as the… [Read more…]
September 22, 2011
I think anyone who can convince other people to give him $500,000 to work on a radio show has to be pretty smart. So, while I don’t like to refer a whole lot to public radio in my blog, I think Jad Abumrad, the host of ”Radiolab” which originates from WNYC in New York, is worth talking about. Abumrad just received… [Read more…]
May 14, 2012
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