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Holland in for Jim Bohannon

I caught this one on All Access. Holland Cooke filled in for Jim Bonannon on Westwood One Monday & Tuesday. Guests included his old WTOP intern Robert McDowell (now FCC Commissioner), WTOP's Dave McConnell, KDWN Las Vegas morning host Heidi Harris, author Barbara Winter, and syndicated Money Pit host and AOL Home Improvement Editor Tom Kraeutler.

Holland, the FCC Commissioner used to be your intern?
 
Ya caught me!

za-rex said:
So that means Holland was on WHJJ, right?

Right after the PawSox!
(http://getonthenet.com/J-PROMO-COOKER.mp3)
Right after the Nats in Washington.
Uninterrupted on most-of-300+ other stations, Monday and Tuesday night.

Listen for MULTIPLE shout-outs to my peeps in Rhody:
http://jimbotalk.net/programhighlights;jsessionid=2B599BBB655C8B6CDE3CA5BC77C9B580?pid=32381

And, yes, future Commissioner McDowell WAS an intern in my WTOP newsroom, in 1985:
http://www.ntsmediaonline.com/?p=8408

And, yes, FCC commissioners really DO carry a badge:
http://getonthenet.com/badge.jpg

This was "my unfinished business."
I've got 10,000 on-air hours as a music DJ, but never hosted a talk show, until Monday.
("Those who can't DO, teach.")
So -- after years of Jimbo (a pal) teasing me -- I did two nights this week, out of CBS/Washington.
TON-O-FUN.

HC
www.HollandCooke.com
 
Stern/Powell exchange

I remember hearing that...which I think then-Chairman Powell handled pretty gracefully, under-the-circumstances. I heard Powell a couple times, at NAB conventions, and I was impressed with him.
 
Holland, heard a few minutes of your fill in. Would love to say, don't give up being a consultant, but actually you did a super professional job. Uh...would imagine Bohannon won't be so quick to take further days off. What's your take on the "Keg" party in Washington today. Would have been something if Crowley ordered a Malt...From my angle on TV, the beer has a better head on it that Obama and Biden. Your thoughts?
 
jimmyone said:
What's your take on the "Keg" party in Washington today. Would have been something if Crowley ordered a Malt...From my angle on TV, the beer has a better head on it that Obama and Biden. Your thoughts?

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is STILL The Funniest Guy I've Heard On The Radio.
 
Holland Cooke said:
jimmyone said:
What's your take on the "Keg" party in Washington today. Would have been something if Crowley ordered a Malt...From my angle on TV, the beer has a better head on it that Obama and Biden. Your thoughts?

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is STILL The Funniest Guy I've Heard On The Radio.


Yeah... unfortunately these days most radio stations are more concerned with hiring cheap talent rather than hiring good talent. It's not a fair world when Ryan Seacrest gets all the jobs. I've never heard that guy say one funny thing in my life. I also realize all these posts will come back to haunt me one day when I end up meeting or working with these people I call unfunny. Oh well.. Screw it. :D
 
Skynet74 said:
Holland Cooke said:
jimmyone said:
What's your take on the "Keg" party in Washington today. Would have been something if Crowley ordered a Malt...From my angle on TV, the beer has a better head on it that Obama and Biden. Your thoughts?

Ladies and Gentlemen, this is STILL The Funniest Guy I've Heard On The Radio.


Yeah... unfortunately these days most radio stations are more concerned with hiring cheap talent rather than hiring good talent. It's not a fair world when Ryan Seacrest gets all the jobs. I've never heard that guy say one funny thing in my life. I also realize all these posts will come back to haunt me one day when I end up meeting or working with these people I call unfunny. Oh well.. Screw it. :D

If I were in the room when he asked for $45 million I would have laughed so he can come up with some funny things when he's motivated.....or would that have been unintentional humor?
 
RE "Ryan Seacrest gets all the jobs"

It's tempting to substitute "Rush Limbaugh" for "Ryan Seacrest," but it's apples-and-oranges.

El Rushbo is often accused of COSTING-the-jobs-of local-hosts-who'd-otherwise-host.
Actually, he ENABLED local hosts, by helping lead the vaunted Talk Radio Revolution way-back-when.
Otherwise, lots of today's Talk AMs would've been out-of-business when music moved to FM>

Seacrest and other piped-in DJs are another matter, because these stations were already in-format.
He, and voicetracking, and these unobtrusive DJs Clear Channel is cramming-down, DO displace local DJs.

DOES THE LISTENER NOTICE?
In Seacrest's case, there's brand equity value. "A star" comes to the station.
As for those low-key, no-call-letters DJs you hear piped-into Clear Channel stations, stay tuned.
In PPM markets, it'll matter less.
In diary markets, the missing call letters and plain-vanilla DJ shtick let the station blend-into-the-background.

That said: TOM KENT ROCKS.
 
Sometimes I think No DJ is better than having a bad DJ. Lots of times when a station changes formats they will go jockless for a while. In my opinion as well as others I have heard, IT'S GREAT! People seem to love it! It makes me question how important DJ's really are when people seem to love a station more when there isn't even a jock to be heard. Oh.... wait.. is this off topic? I'll fix it.

Holland Cooke sat in for Jim Bohannon. I wonder how much that two night gig paid.

So anyway...... give me a station with no jock rather than a bad jock, I realize that it won't solve the unemployment problem in this business. But Seacrest.... $45 Million? Really? Where The F did I go wrong? I guess it was the part of my life where I decided to do something else instead of meeting Dick Clark.
 
John, you're neglecting the fact that there are no bad jocks in Providence. There may be some you're not interested in hearing, but there are no bad ones. You constantly equate humor & bits with personality. It isn't every jock's thing & it isn't every listener's thing. Do you choose friends by how often they make you laugh? No! You gravitate to people because of their personalities. If I were hiring a new jock capable of humor I'd have him blend it in gradually over a period of time. First the audience has to get to know him as a person, then comes the humor once the listeners know what to expect from him & how he reacts to things.

We're way off topic here but at least we're on a topic. When WCTK announced they were hiring Tim Leary for mornings, with a comedy background, some here felt a guy who has done stand-up might not work in radio. Obviously he has the radio experience too so it's not a case of a comedian being introduced to the world of radio. Still, the ones who felt comedy is the wrong background were wrong because he got the audience to know him first. Now when he barks at Brian Phillips for forgetting to bring his headphones to a remote & bans him from listening to the show, you just know what kinds of comebacks are going to be thrown out there before they even happen.
 
RE: "I wonder how much that two night gig paid."

Now, now...
I PROMISE: I'm not lighting any cigars with $100 bills.

On Tuesday night's show, our second hour guest was Barbara Winter (http://www.joyfullyjobless.com/), author of "Making A Living Without A Job," now in its 18th printing. She outlined 6 ways to become, as she calls it, "joyfully jobless." One of those 6 ways is to be a landlord...of ANYTHING, not just real estate. She told stories about people-renting-out-things like tools and sewing machines, things people need, but don't need to own.

I'd met Barbara in the 80s, in Washington, when I attended her daylong seminar. She recalled that (at the time) I was a landlord (apartment houses in RI and Texas, since sold). But, on-air, I did fess-up that "the only way I can afford to live on Block Island is to LEAVE," while truly rich people rent my house. She applauded me when I disclosed that I'm homeless from July 5 until Labor Day.

Another-of-her-6-tactics: do SEASONAL things. I told her about a school teacher I know who raises and sells Christmas trees. I asked him "what do you do in the summer?" He replied: "I sell little American flags at the Fourth of July parade."

Skynet74 said:
Sometimes I think No DJ is better than having a bad DJ.

PPM: Yes, because -- assuming that the playlist is right -- it'll track listening to uninterrupted music sets.
Diary: No, because uninterrupted music sets are undistinguished, and the diary is a memory test.
 
Runrigger said:
John, you're neglecting the fact that there are no bad jocks in Providence. There may be some you're not interested in hearing, but there are no bad ones. You constantly equate humor & bits with personality.


No. That's not what I'm saying. All I said is that lots of people I know (including me) seem to really enjoy a station that sounds a lot like an ipod. Do you have Satellite radio? Most of their music channels are jockless. I hear people all the time mention how they love it. I'm not trying to kick DJ's off the radio. Large radio corporations are doing a fine job of that all on their own. What I am saying is that it is a nice thing to hear music without the bad commentary from some jock who isn't the least bit interesting. I agree that humor and bits isn't EVERYTHING. But it sure doesn't hurt to have a jock who is mildly amusing while you are stuck in traffic.
 
Since you brought it up...

Skynet74 said:
Do you have Satellite radio? Most of their music channels are jockless. I hear people all the time mention how they love it.

I get Sirius XM channels on DirecTV, and think The Seventies on Seven would be LOTS better without the jocks.

I'm particularly put-off by Terry Motormouth Young ripping-off the late, great Jack Armstrong's act. But, generally, these oldies channels make the same mistake some oldies radio stations make: they're a period piece. 70s-on-7 seems to be trying to re-enact an early 70s multi-tower high-band AM. Often oldies stations play vintage jingles and historic sound bites. BIG MISTAKE.

Why? It struck me in the late 90s, when I was on WBIG Oldies100 in Washington. WE figure we're targeting Baby Boomers, which we are. To the station's credit, it did NOT play "old" jingles, and none of the DJs on-air (including yours truly) had ever done Oldies before. Only one of us was a heritage market voice, and he was only a part-timer. The station was contemporary, the personalities were high-profile, and it was about TODAY...but happened to play oldies music.

For me, the-whack-on-the-side-of-the-head was all the pre-teens on the request line. And why not? ALL THESE SONGS WERE WRITTEN FOR PRE-TEENS...US, when we were young. "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..."

Oldies-station-as-period-piece is aiming only-for-a-fraction-of the people these timeless, proven songs will resonate with.
 
Re: Since you brought it up...

Holland Cooke said:
But, generally, these oldies channels make the same mistake some oldies radio stations make: they're a period piece. 70s-on-7 seems to be trying to re-enact an early 70s multi-tower high-band AM. Often oldies stations play vintage jingles and historic sound bites. BIG MISTAKE.

Why? It struck me in the late 90s, when I was on WBIG Oldies100 in Washington. WE figure we're targeting Baby Boomers, which we are. To the station's credit, it did NOT play "old" jingles, and none of the DJs on-air (including yours truly) had ever done Oldies before. Only one of us was a heritage market voice, and he was only a part-timer. The station was contemporary, the personalities were high-profile, and it was about TODAY...but happened to play oldies music.

Oldies-station-as-period-piece is aiming only-for-a-fraction-of the people these timeless, proven songs will resonate with.

THIS is exactly the approach I'd like to see tried with an "American Popular Standards" format......a station playing songs from "The Great American Songbook" that doesn't sound "old-fogey".

In essence......a crisp modern 21st. Century version of the Late Great WQEW-1560, in New York, and the station it's decended from......WNEW-1130, in New York.
 
Re: Since you brought it up...

Holland Cooke said:
Why? It struck me in the late 90s, when I was on WBIG Oldies100 in Washington. WE figure we're targeting Baby Boomers, which we are.

For me, the-whack-on-the-side-of-the-head was all the pre-teens on the request line. And why not? ALL THESE SONGS WERE WRITTEN FOR PRE-TEENS...US, when we were young. "It's my party and I'll cry if I want to..."

Oldies-station-as-period-piece is aiming only-for-a-fraction-of the people these timeless, proven songs will resonate with.

Fast forward 10 years... Same station, WBIG (now we're a classic hits/classic rock hybrid called BIG 100.3)... Target demo is Persons 25-54, but we see the same thing Holland talks about... Our request lines callers, contest winners, Facebook fans, and Twitter followers have a hefty dose of teens and early twenty-somethings... I term it the "Guitar Hero Effect"... Many of the tracks and artists in our playlist can be found in some version of Guitar Hero or Rock Band on store shelves...

Hell, there was one point for a few weeks earlier this year, in PPM mind you, that middays on BIG beat middays on our sister Top 40 station in the 18-34 demo... Our midday jock - Lisa Berigan - happens to also be doing PM drive on stations like B101... You want to hear some amazing airwork - check her out when she's live weekdays 10a-3p here in Washington (http://www.idigbig.com/mediaplayer)

Just like Holland, the younger demo was a smack upside the head for us too... Same station, different format, a decade later... History repeats itself, I guess...

Tim
 
"now we're a classic hits/classic rock hybrid called BIG 100.3"

Tim!

'Heard WBIG earlier this week in Washington!
Not surprised Lisa's doing well there.

www.idigbig.com looks good.
www.wtop.com sets-the-bar-pretty-high for online content, eh?

RE streaming: Let me guess: Your big hours are a plateau, that, on weekdays, begins about 8A and ends about 4P?
That's what I'm seeing almost-everywhere-else. It's "listen-at-work," right?

HC
 
So do we think Clear Channel's sterile programming after morning drive on B101 and Coast is in anticipation of PPM next year where nothing but the music sets matter? Seems to me if you have a good jock on who is unobtrusive or even one with enough personality to keep people listening then that would help when we're a PPM market. No offense but sometimes I think there are about two or three people only on this board who even respect the jocking profession and don't discount the contribution the guy behind the mike makes and it's no surprise they're jocks or ex-jocks themselves.
 
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