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Time to Leave the Bitter Barn

July 24, 2012

The panel I moderated at The Conclave last week in Minneapolis was supposed to be about maximizing local radio: how to make local radio the best in can be. Despite my best efforts it still contained an element of complaining about how syndication and voice-tracking are ruining our industry. I’m so tired of this! First […]

A Lesson From Martha Stewart About Your Show

May 14, 2012

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 […]

Celebrate Your Victories

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, […]

Randy Moss and the 49’ers: Opportunity or Chemistry

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, […]

Lessons From Lin: Be Agressive, Protect Yourself

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 […]

Why Your Show Matters

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 […]

New Year, New Vision: Revisiting Clear Channel’s DeRegulation Dreams

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 […]

You Want Me to Blog? Tweet You Pal!

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 […]

Clear Channel’s New Vision: Deregulation Dreams Realized

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 […]

Messages From Jack Swanson and Alec Baldwin: Occupy Radio Anyone?

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 […]