Loose Ends

Mental folders I opened recently, which deserve at least a mini-post to tie them up:

1. The 2009 Radio Mercury Award winners are indeed very impressive uses of the creative potential of the audio medium, worth listening to and learning from. Let's bury them in great radio entries next year.

2. Watch and listen to Taylor Swift to understand how Gen Y is changing country music and radio. What kid doesn't want to date her?

3. Krash Bassett's clever blog on an iPhone app for country imaging poses an only slightly terrifying question: why do we all use the same voices and stationality techniques? Resolve to challenge yourself to be different. I'd love to come into a market, scan across the dial, recognize all the usual suspects .. until I get to your station. Can we please stop leaning on "professional voices" so much and put the job of branding our stations into the hands of real people, our listeners?