"The past is a bucket of ashes, so live not in your yesterdays, nor just for tomorrow, but in the here and now. Keep moving and forget the post-mortems. And remember, no one can get the jump on the future." Carl Sandburg

"The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions." Dave E. Smalley

"Basic research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." Wernher von Braun

Ground stop (GS), a part of life on the road. Two big ones this week. Missed one by hours, the other got me. O'Hare got hit with some summer rain Monday and Tuesday. The Monday event included hail. My flight was gone hours before. When the Tuesday rains rolled in I was on the ground in Louisville heading home. Once ground crews could not do their jobs in Chicago, O'Hare originated a GS. As a practical matter our flight from Louisville and others into O'Hare were "grounded." We waited for our "release" (i.e., "ok, release them, let em take off"). Them are the rules.

My advice is always bring a good book (or three) in the carry-on. My thanks to the United team in Louisville and at O'Hare for keeping us dialed-in. When I finally got to O'Hare, running from Term 1 to Term 2, my flight to Madison was "closed" meaning the last flight to Madtown had been missed. So much for my three hour layover pad. Experience has taught me, last flights out are, more often than not, a bad wager. Again, Mr. Murphy showed up to remind me - the last flight out odds are not so good, especially during the summer storm season. The temptation to keep the next morning auto-re-book and spend the night with friends in Chicago was strong but quashed by the press of affairs - that pesky day job again. Exhibit A - writing this post in the dead of night back home in Wisconsin.

The very cool thing about unexpected layovers is...the unexpected. Turns out Tom Asacker was in the room during my brief talk and he too was grounded, or somehow otherwise delayed, in Louisville. Kind enough to introduce himself, we had a fun chat. Thanks Tom! (p.s. sorry I missed your keynote - pesky day job, again).

Congrats & cheers: The first Broadcast Management Futures Summit was a fine first! French Lick is a very different venue. More in the coming daylight, including propers.

Thank you very much: Lindsay Wood Davis for his leadership of our session. The legendary Marv Dyson for his kindness in inviting me to join him and his family at one of the head tables for lunch - always a privilege Marv, always.

Hundreds of emails behind. Please standby. More later today.

Photo:

Capitol Bokeh

by

WisDoc

Wonderful shot!

Thank you very much.

"To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt." Susan Sontag

The earlier post about the ABCs of PDs - late 1970s has involved me in a number of interesting conversations these past days. The quest this round - name that rock radio programmer - wherein we search for the PD(s) of the ABC FM San Francisco O&O KSFX, circa late 1970s.

Jim Smith was the first to weigh in and while we have not yet connected live we have e and voice mailed. Sean Conrad says Jim was the most likely to have programmed KSFX in the late 1970s. The ever assiduous Mr. Smith adds "Bill Todd was replaced by Roger Skolnick in 1977. Gloria Johnson moved from WRIF to program KSFX at about the same time replacing Sean Conrad." The always resourceful rock ace Lee Arnold checked in after chatting up Ben Fong-Torres ("I dunno. The station was pretty much run out of ABC in New York...John Catchings became PD when it went Top 40") and John Catchings ("...believe it was Eric Christensen who recently retired after a long career as Sports Producer for KGO-TV"). Dan Kelley, one of rocks' young turks, was in touch to say Jeff Finch was "...more than just a newsman; he was very versatile - and also served as a jock on the station. And a very good one at that...he moved on...NBC's SOURCE....WDAI...was a great radio station." Dan would certainly know, during the station's best years in rock he was a local.

My sincere thanks to Jim, Lee, Dan and the many others who reached out with suggestions and comments. My sense is we should "go local" for the definitive answer. Perhaps the very best of men Ron Fell or the Duke, Dave Sholin can enlighten us further.

So what have we learned? Some lessons here.

The first tribe of wireless has done (and continues to do) a really poor job of preserving our history. As George Burns once said to me "the industry has failed to create any body of literature." In the main, he may well be right, however, I commend George for his excellent contributions of scholarship over the years.

The first tribe of wireless continues to do a really poor job of recognizing and celebrating the best and brightest, the real heroes. How is it possible that Bill Drake and Rick Sklar have not been inducted into the major Halls of Fame? Deaths in the family also need attention. As one programming rock star said to me yesterday "There is something seriously wrong...one example...when Thom O'Hair left us the trades failed to pay any tribute, did not show the proper honors Thom had earned and certainly deserved." Absolutely correct. No excuse good enough; one of the pioneers of rock radio, an icon, passes without a single feature story in any trade. It's a safe wager, as a group of professionals we will probably never be accused of doing an exemplary job in showing respect for our elders.

Enough!

Read more about my friend Thom O'Hair thanks to Ben Fong-Torres here. Learn about the radio station that dared to call itself the Jive 95 here. Read a memo from a legend to his air staff here. Want to learn more about the legends of wireless? If you are not a regular reader of Bob Shannon @ Joel Denver's AllAccess may I recommend you become one. Read Bob's column - All Them Big Dogs - free reg here. Now on offer, part two of his Fred Winston profile. One you do not want to miss.

Congrats & cheers: Marv Dyson, a rock star and the best dressed gentleman in wireless, on being named Broadcaster of the Year by the Illinois Broadcasters. Well deserved! More here.

Someone sent me this link yesterday. It's a post by Jaye Albright. Laura Ellen Hopper, I Wish I Had Told You Something. Thanks Jaye. Know how you feel, I wanted to say some things to Laura Ellen too. My mistake was thinking it would keep, it could wait.

It's a damn design flaw, no one gets out of here alive. Moreover, there's a very serious and ongoing shortage of good Hollywood endings in this deal.

In response to the question "How are you", Dwight Case would always say "I got up this morning, a lot of guys didn't, how bad can it be. I'm great, how are you?" On the occasion of accepting his honor as a Broadcast Pioneer in 2006, Dwight said "I've never had a bad day in this business." Want to know the truth? He never did. The gentleman is an inspiration. I love Dwight Case and appreciate all he has done for me, my family and my career.

Take a moment today to make a list.

Your wish I had told you list.

Pick up the phone and make the call.

Send an email.

Walk down the hall or across the office.

Make it the last thing you do before leaving work today. Make it the first thing you do when you get home tonight.

Do it.

One day, a day sooner than you can now image, you will not be able to tell someone how you feel.

Don't put it off.

No, it can't wait another day.

Today is all you have.

Today.

Photo: Snowy Bike by DrStarbuck
Cool shot, thank you!


"Better three hours too soon, than one minute too late." Shakespeare

"Johnson well says, 'He who waits to do a great deal of good at once will never do anything.' Life is made up of little things. It is very rarely that an occasion is offered for doing a great deal at once. True greatness consists in being great in little things." Charles Simmons

Congrats & cheers: Brian Kelly, the way-dialed-in programmer who first turned me on to the Gym Class Heroes and Cupid's Chokehold last summer - yesterday it was Top Ten on Rhapsody's All Genres List. Brian Lamb, the C-SPAN CEO, and all-around good guy, who told Sirius to forget it - the pay radio guys wanted rights to preempt C-SPAN for sports (FYI - C-SPAN remains on XM). Bravo Brian! Mel and his subs would be better served retaining Lamb's excellent PA product and preempting one of the Sirius music channels. Not too late to fix (might need a friend or two on the hill someday, someday soon).

Legend of legends: Gary LaPierre inducted into the WBZ Hall of Fame. Well deserved! Congrats Gary. Boston Herald item here.

Legend of legends 2: Marv Dyson is, arguably, the best dressed man in broadcasting, a mensch, and certainly A Great General Manager. CBS2 pays tribute to my pal Marv, the Chicago legend here.

Safe in Sydney: Ron Fell offers up the last post in his blog series - The Queen Mary 2 adventure here. Bravo Ron, well done! Hi to Kathy. Missed one or more of Ron's posts? You may find an index of Ron's posts from the Pacific here.

John Battelle: John posted a brief interview with Michael Wesch the KSU prof who did the killer Web 2.0 video. Video, via YouTube, here, interview, with comments, here. Kudos John, excellent post, thanks for sharing.

High-tech collides with low-tech: Elinor Mills of CNET News writes...

Google, which has a "significant sales force" that works with Fortune 500 advertisers on display and pay-per-click ads, has been hiring more sales staff and has account managers specifically allocated to radio stations, said Josh McFarland, a product manager for Google's Audio Ads business. The company has "a very high respect for what we call the direct (sales) side of the business," he said. "At the same time, we are committed to the self-service model."

Read Elinor's article, Google hears static on radio bid, here. Seems to me there have been seven changes in broadcast sales since 1965: fax, email, cell phones, traffic software, laptops, ppt and pdf, otherwise, just about everything else is pretty much the same. (Closed circuit to Josh: You don't need the major shops to get your product off the ground. Think "local" and "small retail." Consider "pairings" example: with coupons. One of the radio guys you should be talking to is Chuck Tweedle, he's in the bay area at KOIT)

Bonus: Infinite Thinking Machine, a blog devoted to teachers and students here. Which reminds me, perhaps because of the words thinking and machine, of a PBS series - The Great American Dream Machine. Killer satire on TV first brought to us by public television. If you want to know where the inspiration for SNL came from - look no further. Whatever did happen to Marshall Efron? (LATER - Marshall is doing just fine, still acting, more here. I love the internet!)

Video bonus: IT department "help desk" Middle Ages era. Great waste of bandwidth. Introducing "the book" via YouTube, here