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6 years ago
Radio Programming Ideas For Personalities and Programmers, Especially Country Radio Broadcasters.
As Inside Radio reports: "The average American aged 12+ spent 13 hours and 51 minutes listening to radio a week. While that’s a healthy number – nearly two hours a day – it’s down 28 minutes a week from one year earlier: 14 hours and 19 minutes in Arbitron’s RADAR 109, which covered April 1, 2010–March 30, 2011.
I'm a huge fan of the real-time improv style of The Colbert Report and ran across this quote from Stephen Colbert about the show:
Colbert said that to him, “the show” isn’t the performance in front of his audience. The “show” is really what he does all day with his staff. “There’s the joy in doing this hard thing,” he explained. “That hard work together IS the show…. I then have the responsibility and pleasure of SHARING what that joy was [with the audience].”
Colbert makes it look easy during the show, but if you're properly prepared, the payoff is in the performance.
- Buzz Jackson, PD, KIIM/ Cumulus, Tucson
"Come from an honest place and connect with the truth. (Speak in) color. I love idioms and old sayings, puns and humor. I love language. I'm one of those people who is really interested in the definition of a word and its synonyms. Every day I'm asking everybody I'm hanging out with what something means and what it means to them. Even if it's a word I've heard over and over. I'm a hoarder of words. I have a little recorder that I put everything on and have it transcribed by someone I trust because it can get very interesting on that recorder. I have lists of titles, whatever I'm feeling. There is kind of a math and science about a perfect pop song. But I would prefer doing math, science-and heart. Lyrics can end up on T-shirts, on the inside of wedding rings. They're important. Anyone who says beats are more important obviously doesn't have a heart. They are tin men [laughs]. I feel there's a stripped-down, 1970s vibe that's coming. How many more songs can we hear that sound like a monster truck rally? I enjoy some of it, but radio is starting to sound a bit the same. Like I'm excited for "Begin Again" by Taylor Swift. That's my song right now. It's so genius, so perfect. I feel there's going to be a bit more heart, hopefully. I don't mind the dubstep stuff but there's no emotional connection. I just want to actually hear a song that has no "swell" even for just one minute. Can you imagine?
Radio reaches people wherever they are: at home, at work, in the car— nearly everywhere.-- Arbitron, Radio Today 2011
Regardless of one’s age, the time of day or the listening location, Americans depend on radio as a reliable media companion for entertainment, news, information, community service and, increasingly, social networking.
Radio has always been and continues to be a vibrant and relevant part of our lives.
During the arrival and immediate aftermath of Hurricane Sandy last month, those with power looked to television, the Web and social media for information. But large numbers of people, particularly those in the hardest-hit areas, also turned to the radio.
Arbitron, the radio ratings service, will report on Monday that from 7 p.m. to midnight on Oct. 29, when the storm made landfall in New Jersey, an average of just more than a million people in the broader New York region were listening to the radio during any 15-minute period. That is up 70 percent from the same period the week before. (Besides the five boroughs of New York City, the metropolitan market includes five counties in New York, nine in New Jersey and part of one in Connecticut.)
The audience skyrocketed in coastal areas. Stamford and Norwalk, Conn., had a 367 percent increase during that period; in New Jersey, that figure was up 247 percent in Monmouth County, and up 195 percent in Middlesex, Somerset and Union counties. These numbers increased even though some stations, like WNYC and WINS, lost their AM frequencies yet continued to broadcast on FM.
"We know that radio consistently reaches 93% of all people aged 6+, but the storm-driven shift in listening only reinforces how well established our medium is in listeners’ minds. The data shows that listeners of all ages turn to radio when they need the latest information about their communities. When people living in the path of Sandy needed updates, they kept the radio on by tuning to their trusted sources, no matter what the format." - Jon Miller, Director of Programming Services at Arbitron
"I think Miranda Lambert is country music's most sensationalized artist. She is always pregnant (on blogs and tabloid sites). While at the CMA Awards I took a call from a station saying they heard she was drunk backstage. CRAZY!"
"Although AM/FM radio remains America’s favorite music-listening choice, the basket of Internet radio and streaming services that are available today have, on the whole, replaced CDs for second place."
First rule of being a badass. A badass does not talk about being a badass. Period.
Taylor Swift can work until she dies. She’s had that many hits.
But somehow, with the overhype and move to the middle, she’s torn away some of her underpinnings, she’s become unmoored, we’re no longer exactly sure who she is. And if we don’t know who you are, it’s hard to stay in love with you. The little girls may scream, ticket sales may be rampant. But if you don’t see it my way, if you don’t think her career now has more questions than answers, you’re not thinking at all.