I am at the office, preparing to monitor a webcast/teleconference by the Indiana Pork Producers Assn. It’s panel discussion on what swine producers need to know about Pocine Circovirus Type 2. An hour of this would never air on a radio station, but it’s important to those involved in the pork industry. This is an example of The Long (Curly) Tail.
I recently received an email from Ben Brogdon, a long-time radio guy (KLCN, Blytheville, AR) who stumbled across one of my websites:
“I Googled my old hometown radio station, KLCN, Blytheville, AR, and found a link to your Early Days At KBOA site. I sat and read every word of it, looked at every picture, and finally went to bed at 6am.”
Ben is a musician at Dollywood and played in a jazz band in college with Wendell Crow (Sheryl’s daddy). We bounced emails back and forth for a few days before he brought up “the Senath Light.” This is (was) a well-known paranormal phenomenon (that I never witnessed).
“Actually, I never saw the light. Oh, we’d drive up from Jonesboro when I was living there playing in bands, working at radio stations, and attending class on occasion, and we’d sit patiently, not making a sound, those who smoked wanting a cigarette REALLY bad, and wait, but it never came out while I was there.
Others told me they had seen it, though. One of my jazz mates at school, Hollie Farris, a trumpet player who has the distinction of being the only white musician James Brown has ever had, and who QUIT a gig with Steve Winwood to go back with JB after he got out of prison, DID stand under that tree in the middle of the road and supposedly got KNOCKED CLEAN OUT COLD by the light hitting him in the head, which most assuredly changed his life and his thinking process from that moment on.
I also worked with a piano player from Caruthersville who could talk to spirits, and was told that he had actually TALKED to the light, which surprised me, since we all knew if you made a sound, it would disappear. BUT, having him sit in my house and tell me it was inhabited by spirits, which I had suspected, and then say once when we were watching a storm that it would kill 35 people, and it DID kill 34, I somehow believe he may have talked to the light.”
Why do I blog? So I can “meet” people that played with Holly Farris, the only white musician to play with James Brown.
Radio Iowa News Queen O. Kay Henderson emailed this affiliate update:
“As you know, KICD news director Brent Palm left to take a job at Minnesota News Network. His replacement is Tim Torkildson. Mr. T worked in radio 12 to 15 years ago. He left radio to become a clown and ringmaster for a traveling circus. He’s now left that career, settled in Spencer and is starting his third week on the job.”
Welcome back, Tim. I’d surely love to interview you for smays.com.
Sirius might be a great satellite radio service but I think their website sucks. My plan was to record Trent Tomlinson’s appearance this morning by streaming the audio from the Sirius website. Couldn’t get their three-day-free-trial to work. Even borrowed a password from a subscriber and couldn’t get that to work. So, unless one of you recorded this, we won’t get to listen. It shouldn’t be this difficult to steal part of the guy’s radio show.
Quick Google search found an amazing website called MarksFriggin.com. It appears this guy posts a detailed description of each day’s show. I’ll add the archive link as soon as he puts it up (tomorrow?) but if you find the show for 7/24/06 and scroll down to 7:30 a.m., you’ll find his account of Trent’s segment. Here’s a portion:
Miss Howard Stern Performs With Trent Tomlinson. 07/24/06. 8:30am
After the break Howard said he was listening to country singer Trent Tomlinson warming up during the break and he was wondering why they were letting Andrea come in to ruin it. He said the song is a little more than country and he’s not sure how he missed the song. He’s not into country music so that’s how he missed it. Trent told Howard about how he came up with the lyrics for his song ”Drunker Than Me.” Howard told the guys to perform the song before Andrea came in since she was probably going to ruin it.Trent and his band performed the song ”Drunker Than Me” (from the album Country Is My Rock) which is the song that Andrea sang while drunk the last time she was up there at the Stern Show. Howard said he was amazed that Andrea could remember the lyrics to the song because they’re not easy to remember. Trent said he even has trouble with them sometimes.
Howard said that Trent has opened up for bands like Bon Jovi and John Mellencamp so it’s not strictly country fans that he’s performing for. Trent told Howard that one of his guys used to be in The Black Crows but he had a falling out with them. The guys said that he’s talking to the band now but he had to get out back then because they were playing too long for him. They turned into a jam band and would just keep going on and on while playing.
Howard spent some time talking to Trent about his career and how his father actually wanted him to be a basketball player. Trent said his father used to play himself so he tried to groom him for the same career. He said now his father is happy with what he does and calls radio stations trying to get them to play his songs.
I didn’t take a lot of pix on recent trip to Destin because Barb’s brother Chris is a damned fine photographer and snapped about 500 images. I added 20 or 30 to my flickr set.
Someone hired a professional beach photographer to get some family shots. For some reason, all beach photogs have a thing for khaki pants and white shirts. There’s a proof page here (very lo rez) but not for long. I like Chris’s images better.
These statistics –compiled by Dan Poynter– explain so much. I found these on a Buzz Machine post last week and have been haunted by them since.
I confess to being something of book pimp. I get really jazzed about a book (a la The Long Tail) and bore the shit out of the people around me about it. And I frequently “loan” books to people who really don’t want to “borrow” them (let alone read them) but they don’t want to hurt my feelings by telling me so. So they take the book and put it on a shelf or in a drawer and that’s as close to reading it as they get.
It isn’t their fault. If they wanted to read the book, they would have gone out an bought it. So no more loaning books unless I hear these words: “May I PLEASE borrow that book? I can’t find it anywhere and I’m dying to read it. I promise to get it back to you next week.”
Received this email from my brother: “I have been in Yogyakarta, Central Java (Indonesia), doing earthquake relief. Just got to an internet cafe tonight. Over 100,000 homeless after the quake here. Not as many deaths as Aceh (7,500), but lots of homes destroyed. Crazy what is happening here. Volcano active as well (Mount Merapi).”
A reminder for Kennett readers that hometown boy Trent Tomlinson will be on Howard Stern’s show on Monday monring. I think I’m all set to record the segment and will post it here until the Sirius lawyers make me take it down.
I wanted to play the Drunker Than Me video for some neighbors last night and did a google search (drunker than me video). It still amazes me that smays.com is number five in the search results. Power to the bloggers!
Recorded July 22, 2006
I’ve been intrigued (anxious?) by Google’s plans for taking AdSense to radio but can’t seem to find out much about it. A Technorati search this morning took me to the Google Operating System blog (pretty sure it’s not connected to Google), and a post featuring excerpts from Google’s Q2 2006 earnings conference call, during which Google CEO Eric Schmidt said this about AdSense for radio:
“We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc Console and management tools into our advertising network. The dMarc team itself is fully integrated. We’re expanding it both in engineering and sales. We’re also doing it worldwide, not just in the U.S. There’s a number of very, very interesting deals being negotiated. They’re on an integration schedule of about three months from now, so every week there are more milestones, and they’re working very hard.”
From that post I jumped to an earlier one:
“Schmidt thinks that “when he is listening to the radio in his car, radio ads should personally address him about his needs. For example, while driving past a clothing store, a radio ad should remind Eric that he needs a pair of pants and instruct him to turn left at the upcoming clothing store.”
The GPS system should help radios deliver targeted ads based on information about the person. Google Maps could provide details about local businesses, the ads would be audio AdSense ads, while the information about user’s needs could be obtained from the searches or from his ToDo lists (a gadget for Google Desktop and Personalized Homepage).
dMarc Broadasting, recently acquired by Google, “connects advertisers and agencies directly to radio stations with a robust advertising platform that automates everything from sales to scheduling, delivery and report”. So this company is the first brick in the development of a new breed of radio advertising.”
Here’s what the dMarc website promises advertisers:
“dMarc Media Networks brings unprecedented immediacy to radio buys. Imagine the difference. In minutes instead of days or weeks, you can now build your own custom networks, selecting from 100’s of stations in virtually any market, through a single, source.
* Real time reports generated without human intervention
* Buy individual or multiple stations in one market or many
* Buy only those stations you really want
* Monitor feedback in real time
* Be notified instantly when ads play
* Upload spots anytime, in seconds, 24/7I have no idea if dMarc can do all of that. Or, if radio station would want them to be able to do all of that. But I’m damned sure these are the things advertisers want and –increasingly– are insisting on.
The big question would seem to be, what’s the incentive for radio stations to participate in such a “network?” Station owners must be convinced they can make more money (or more profit) with Google AdSense than they can make on their own. IF …and it’s a big if… Google could find a way to sell EVERY ONE OF MY AVAILS…EVERY DAY… at a rate that didn’t jam me up with my local sales effort… then I might try it.
I confess it’s difficult for me to imagine that. But if Google (and others) can condition advertisers to expect measurable results and accountability — and that seems to be happening — who knows. Newspapers probably could not imagine a time when some oneline service could take away their classified ad revenue.
And during the 17 years I called on radio station managers, the #1 problem (at least in the small and medium markets) was finding good sales people. Owners have automated everything else at the radio station, why not sales?
Can any of you radio guys out there educate me on the dMarc thing?
Update: I received this explanation from a small market PD here in Missouri. Name and some particulars withheld by request.
“We operate Scott Studio’s for on-air. All hard drive audio music, liners, jingles, and commercials…with touch-screen operator computers. dMarc bought Scott Studios, and the primary commercial scheduling software Scott recommended for their system. Then Google bought dMarc.
We build our logs with our local commercials, then they can fill unused avails with their commercials. They fill the avails and upload spots all from their end, we never touch them….other than play them. I believe we have some controll over what hours they can fill, I know they don’t fill in 7a, 8a, 9a, 4p or 5p. They are :60’s and for refinancing, insurance, music collections (surfin USA the best of the beach, and stuff). Right now the clients aren’t any major chains or local businesses.
At the end of the month they send us a check for what they have run. How much I’m not sure per spots but I’ve been told the monthly check is around $X,000.
They run a lot of them in the evenings when we don’t usually have a lot of commercials scheduled. We carry Royals baseball. The 4 hour broadcast has 20 minutes available, they will fill several minutes of that and we get paid. When logs are lighter there are more in midday and afternoon.
The commercial content is not terribly exciting, it’s more spots, but it’s income that comes from unsold inventory mostly in evenings. Not a lot different than the ad’s that used to run where you are paid if someone calls and 800 number and buys Hooked on Phonics or something. I know I should probably understand this better as PD but this comes from a small station where the owner is here and does mornings/logs, etc.”
No, I think you understand (and explain) it just fine. Easy for the station. Easy for the advertiser. And I suspect the Google influence has yet to kick in. Classic Long Tail example. And I’m betting there are thousands of advertisers that will buy this time (if it’s easy enough and the price is right) without ever treading on local sales. If there’s a loser in this equation, I fear it might be programming vendors that operate on a barter basis.