John McDermott @mcdradio

Slow clap standing O for this article to which I link.  Great stuff on sports radio.

I hit all three students with a barrage of questions on their perceptions and interest in sports radio and I along with the rest of the room learned that they live in a different world where content is only king if it can be consumed quickly. If it requires sifting through your podcast to find it, waiting through a commercial break or needing to wait for a host to finish rambling off-topic, they’re gone. Even the big name guest means little if it doesn’t include a hook worth sticking around for.

via Is Sports Radio Ready For Its Future? | JASON BARRETTS MEDIA BLOG.

Some of the things that spoke to me –

Here is someone that understands that today’s 20 year old is going to turn 25 and 35.  As I have mentioned on this blog before, “these kids today” DO NOT CARE about your legacy transmitter and consume information differently.  Which bring em to …

Scoreboard updates/20-20/Sportscenter:  Why why why why why.  All it does it stop the show and add clutter.  Oh, it’s a 7 minute hole with no new content.  Do you really think people are getting scores from the radio in 2015?  Traffic from the sports station?

And this seems like a good time to promote my Alt Sports Talk station.  Is AST perfect?  No.  Not even close.  It’s one guy (me) begging and borrowing podcasts and running them on a server.  So it’s lean and not even mean.  However, when you start to hear long form sports conversations (I rave about The Bower Show and can’t believe Mike isn’t on somewhere every day), when you start to hear other conversations (Total Soccer Show as an example) it is so refreshing in a world where everything is LeBron, Manziel, Matt Harvey, Adrian Peterson all day every day over and over.  For what it is, it works.

As Jason points out, will anyone have the patience to let something build?  Do we need to automatically go into LeBron and Manziel, or can you let a guy like Bower make a connection with an audience.  Are you willing to give it 6 books?

But I didn’t write this to hawk AST, I just think it’s a great read, and hopefully some of these things can change in the world of modern AM/FM Sports Talk.

Good read…

Major listening growth and moderate increases in ad rates will produce an influx of streaming audio ad inventory. That’s the call from those working in the field. So who will gobble up all the new ad inventory? Streaming audio insiders expect three ad categories to increase their online radio spend: automotive, consumer goods and retail.

via Streaming Ad Inventory Set to Multiply. – Insideradio.com: Home.

Hi.  I hope you’ll check out Country Comedy on Slacker Radio.

Back in 2006, under the guidance of Jeff Foxworthy, I had the pleasure of putting together Blue Collar Radio.

As part of that process I attended a Blue Collar Comedy concert in Nashville and asked NOT to be VIP’d. There I sat with the regular folks, and what always stuck with me was three things that got an ovation. Wal-mart, Jimmy Buffett, and Elvis. That was my guide. Red, white and blue. Keep it simple. Don’t be too cool for school. Don’t curse for the sake of cursing.

It’s easy to sit in the big office tower on of the coasts and forget there is a lot of America out there. When I worked in Manhattan and had a commute that took me past the HQ of several TV networks, and I would encounter celebrities every day of the week, it could be easy to forget about America. If you follow the cool blogs and the cool media influencers it can be easy to forget about America.

It’s easy to read an article in the Times about Aziz Ansari at Madison Square Garden, or a blog about how funny Broad City is, and they are funny and they are great. But beyond the buzz is some below the radar popularity.

One of the top selling comedy albums of 2014, topping the charts for most of November? Rodney Carrington.

Check a list of the top earning comedians and you’ll see names like Larry the Cable Guy and Jeff Dunham.

Most comedy records sold (career)? Foxworthy.

Now in 2015 I have been blessed with an opportunity to create a modern version of the type of station I built in 2006. Taking my cue from the Slacker DNA concept, I was able to incorporate some storytellers like Gabriel Iglesias, John Mulaney and Chris Titus that at first glance may not be what you’d jot down on a list of “country comedians”, but in the mix they sound just right. That’s what we do as programmers. We pick the right records. A mix of familiarity and discovery. Play the hits and introduce folks to some new artists they might not know. I think by mixing the expected with some unexpected we’ve got something really cool here.

I hope you’ll check out Country Comedy.  It’s a modern cool take on an old favorite.  Just grab the Slacker Radio app, and it’s a free listen.

See this, this looks nice

A comedian (not Hannibal) asked me how to get his material played on “the radio” – I’ll use the broad definition of audio services for this discussion.  While I can’t speak for every programmer out there, I do have the most experience in the format (no like really, I do) so I thought I would repurpose my email reply into a blog post.

My list of suggestions from my personal experience and workflow:

Understand that every programmer has approximately 8 billion CDs on his or her desk. So packaging is tremendously important.  Your CD needs to look like a major label release not a home made CD.  That goes a long way into “which pile” and some CDs never make it out of the “someday” pile.  You want to be in the “load these” pile.  Also a major label release will likely be prioritized over a self-CD for all kinds of reasons including that the major labels have the most popular acts.

I have found that physical CDs are actually easier to deal with over digital releases.  I know that is counter-intuitive, but a digital file is easily ignored, and an email can get buried.  A CD makes me deal with it to get it off my desk.  Stick a CD under my nose along with the digital file.

Clean(er) comedy rules. You will get more air play with less cursing because it opens you up to more sub-formats within comedy.  That motherfucker can jar the ears the way it did as you read this sentence.  I didn’t need the f-bomb and neither do you.  There are plenty of people being hilarious on Comedy Central specials without the cursing.  Saturday Night Live, Jimmy Fallon and Jeff Foxworthy all seem to do pretty well too!

Good audio. Seems obvious but man some stuff is awful.

Mike the crowd or you sound like you bombed.  Oh and don’t sweeten the record, that sounds awful.

5 minutes is the sweet spot of length.  Ideally each track is a self contained routine that ends on a good punch. That may be unnatural to a stage show but might be worth to do a custom show to press to CD. Anything under two minutes or over seven tends to get ignored.

Label the cuts. I hate playing Track 5.

Label the cuts on target. If you have a bit about Pumpkins put it in the title so you get lots of spins come October. If it’s called “Stupid Stuff” it’s harder for me to find the cut for themed sets.

Follow up. The occasional “hey I sent you a CD” is welcome but don’t call every day complaining about spins.

Be funny and be original.  The hacks go in the garbage.  Good luck!

Follow me on twitter at @mcdradio

Inside Radio has some interesting factoids about Millennials (the headline being that there are more Millennials listening to radio than Boomers)….

For Millennials the most listened to daypart is afternoon drive, while Gen X’s listening peaks in morning drive and Boomer listening tops out in middays.

via Inside Radio, The Most Trusted News in Radio.

But some questions I don’t know the answer to are….

– what happens if I split 18-34 at say 27?  Maybe college kids listen in the afternoon but the upper end of the demo is at work like the Gen Xers?  Could be? Could be I am a biased Gen Xer.  Just curious.

– while the headline might be exciting and a reason for AM/FM to be excited today, what about all those other pesky studies that show the Millennials listening to various things on their phones?

– the above being said, the ease of pushing FM2 on a dashboard cannot be ignored.  That’s where the battle will be won and lost.  The “walkman” battle is over, the cellphone battle is lost.  AM/FM needs to keep the dashboard.

Interesting progressive thinking!  The bold is mine.

But the 7-9am hours are only heard on the digital platforms ESPNLA.com and the ESPN Radio app — a first for the station.  On the air, KSPN carries the network-fed Colin Cowherd from 7am-10am. …

That philosophy has pushed the amount of local L.A. ESPN listening on digital platforms to as much as 20%-25% in certain hours.   Nationally, 25% of ESPN Audio’s audience tunes in only via digital platforms.  That’s fine by McCarthy. “Radio is a technology,” he says. “We’re in the audio business.”

via Inside Radio, The Most Trusted News in Radio.

I’m a big fan of the stuff Edison research does, and I am looking forward to the 2015 Infinite Dial study.

This graph is interesting, and you can read the research findings here.

I found myself thinking about random things at 4am again (my brain comes up with most of my programming ideas then) and found myself thinking how great the comedy scene on TV is.

What I like is that there are shows that are really out there right now.  I hate lame.  I hate the set-up/punch/laugh-track sitcom.  You know, fat husband, hot wife, someone calls him fat, everyone laughs.  Boring.

But right now we have….

Jack and Triumph.  Wonderful.  Absurd.  Doesn’t worry about the premise, and just goes for the jokes.

The Eric Andre Show.  How would I even explain this show to my wife?

Broad City.  Nice fast pacing.  And the second straight show I mentioned with Hannibal Buress.

Man Seeking Woman.  I’m still not over the Hitler scene and the scene with BSG’s Michael Hogan as a general in the SitRep room.  (And Eric Andre again!)

It’s Always Sunny.  After all these years the show somehow feels stronger than ever.  We are in the middle of a terrific season.

And on the old school broadcasts networks (does that matter to anyone under 30?)

The Odd Couple.  What?  Yeah, the writing is pretty crisp. It strays a little into formulaic hack, but it does go for the old Bob Hope six-jokes-a-minute so even if something doesn’t land you only have to wait ten seconds for the next attempt at a laugh.  However….OMG CBS PLEASE DIAL DOWN THE LAUGH TRACK.  I almost stopped watching the pilot because of the HAHAHAHAHAHAHA every two seconds.  Let the show breathe, both leads are fantastic.

Last Man On Earth.  I had no interest in this until I channel surfed last night and saw Kristen Schaal on the show.  I had no idea she would be on this one.  Now I’m in.

and on March 17th we’ll get the return of Community!  Six seasons and a movie!  

Click through the link (you may need to log in) for a good read about a new survey about what the actual humans are listening to in their cars.

Among the findings are that 99% of the humans like car radios to have actual AM/FM buttons rather than have radio be an app on some sort of interface thingy.  I agree, and I think if AM/FM ever becomes something you have to dig for (and thus on par with various audio services) it’s going to fade quickly.

We also learn that people are still using CDs!  Yay, I am not alone.

I don’t understand the math below (and don’t point that out to be a jerk, just to let you know I too find it confusing) but interesting on several levels including that AM/FM is down to 80%.  80 sounds like a great number until you remember it was 100.  Again, wait until all those apps are on equal footing with AM/FM and twenty minute spot loads.

80% of consumers chose AM/FM car radio as the top option for their car’s entertainment system, followed by the CD player at 68%, satellite radio at 45%, and a streaming music service at 34%.

via Latest Radio News, Talk Shows, Sports, Hosts, Personalities | AllAccess.com.