American Idol never runs out of surprises, as usual the proclamation night packed in superstars like BEP, the biggest surprise though was Adam’s performance with classic rock band KISS.
Kris’s winning seemed to be unusual at first, but hey, he’s boy next door type, so no wonder. The performance of the final 2 seemed to give more favor to Adam, and I thought it was like giving more stage favor to Adam, who already knew for himself that he’s not getting it.
There have been a number of Christian American Idols who made it big on Idol and also who are vocal about their Christian faith, including Carry Underwood, Chris Daughtry, Ruben Studdard, Jordin Sparks, and Jenifer Hudson.
This time, another vocally proud Christian takes on the AI stage, as Season 8 winner.
Here is a couple of download for you, which includes Kris Allen’s rendition of a Chris Tomlin original – “God of this City”, and his winning piece “No Boundaries”.
A student reads a copy, part of the training that she and other AUP students get in their new Student FM facility
Candor FM is an internet/school station of TESDA-Accreditted CANDOR or Christian Academy of Davao Oriental. Candor FM is now streaming live via www.candorfm.com. Candor FM has recently announced its recent purchase of a transmitter, allowing them to broadcast via the airwaves this coming school year.
Sounds off topic? No, not what you think. I just thought that the release of the teaser trailer for the second installment of the Spielberg-Bay producer-director team up, is a good radio programming idea. I know a station who has cashed on in the Transformer fever, matter of fact, they even took the voice of Optimus Primal to do their station imaging. Of course, with a little, tweaking on Audition, it is easy to duplicate Optimus’ voice.
If you want to cash in though on the Transformer 2 fever, your station should better start now. Here is a quick idea. The teaser trailer has just been released yesterday. By posting a YouTube teaser trailer of the movie on your station’s website, can help draw in listeners to visit your online portal. Make sure you promote it on the air, or post a shoutout on your Facebook, Myspace or Friendster. These days, you need every way to draw visitors to your website.
The first time I was in Manila, the first radio station I tuned into was DWR-TFM, undoubtedly it was the Z100 or the KIIS FM of the Philippines. 99.5 had and always has the complete ingredients that makes a CHR station complete. Great jocks, cool contests, and four to floor radio imaging.
DWR-TFM surely has the best radio imaging in town. You name it, they got jingles from TM Century to Thompson Creative.
Their jingles really defined what CHR station should be in the Philippines. My friend here j5bata shared his airchecks and off air montage of DWR-TFM jingles. I didn’t know there were more of them.
One of the resings here, I recognize it coming from an original KIIS jingle package.
The rest, wow, some jingles are classic, that date back to the PAMS era. PAMS was the popular jingle company in the U.S. in the 50s. Check out the jingles here on his YouTube video.
Is your station sound the sound of the 21st century?
Hi, been a while since we updated this blog in here. Been really busy cranking up our sister site – RadioJingles.co.nr which is definitely making a huge makeover one of these days. And I’m also proud to unveil the all new RadioJinglesVIP.com – this was the old freewebs hosted site and finally we got a decent, .com domain, wow! It’s all because of you.
Go check out RadioJinglesVIP.com – it’s a free radio jingles, IDs, sweepers and liners site – so request all you want!
Now, in this post, I’m going to be talking about what is not HOT in today’s radio imaging scene.
Well, for most of us who have grown up with the cookie-cutter sweeper approach, laser+voiceover+bed+zaps = cool sweeper. These days, the trick no longer works. Even in imaging. You know the old PD usually wants a big guy doing the voice. You see, the good ole deep baritone voice was the usual thing. I can remember a time in my earlier days, when I got spanked by a friend pretending to sound like a Rick Dees, when in fact, my voice was like a Joe Cipriano.
Modern radio stations need to do away with the traditional, deep, low, baritone, thunder, voice of God, type of imaging. These days, in fact, even normal street vendors can do the voice for your station. These days, what is in is REAL!
Hard sell sweepers no longer sell. So cut the crap. The idea of getting ordinary people doing your station’s imaging makes your station authentic. Now, let me get this straight, I know you have the money to hire voice talents to sound like taxi drivers, or the by-standers, or the “Ale” in the “palengke”, but no, nothing beats the sound of real people.
So, a good advice for you PDs and imaging directors out there, keep digital recorders handy. While you’re on the street, inside malls, riding on a jeepney, or in any public place, grab a chance to interview people why they are listening to your station.
Now that is on the imaging side, on the production side as well, what is out is the use of movie drops, TV drops, or whatsoever, you can however, use recorded listener drops, taken by a recorder or through phone.
Yeah, you can turn heads by dropping in a famous line from a recently shown movie, but hey, it doesn’t usually print in the minds of the listeners. When they hear real people expressing their real thoughts, your listeners can easily identify with your station, and that makes your station imaging believable.
So, here they are again things that are out in today’s radio imaging and production.
OUT – LOW, DEEP, THUNDEROUS, VOICE OF GOD type of voice imaging is out
IN – Experiment with real people to voice your imaging
OUT – LASERS, ZAPS, ZOODADS, MOVIE DROPS AND VOICE DROPS
IN – Authentic sound, use the sound of jeepneys, the sound of tapping keyboards, the sound of everyday palengke scene.
Hot FM Dipolog used to be 89.7 way back the early 2000s. I’m glad that they are back now with a powerhouse DJ cast, a new studio, more power (5000 watts), a hot-spanking website, plus cool online streaming via http://www.eradioportal.com.
Hot FM 100.5 Dipolog is run by DMC Radio Broadcasting Network, under the wings of mother company, MBC. The stations dishes the freshest pop tunes from RNB, rock, ballad, to dance. Check out their website at http://www.hotfmdipolog.com or listen to their online streaming at http://www.eradioportal.com.
Air Time + Web Ads - Does it really increase revenue?
I’ve recently read a couple of articles regarding the revenue decrease of radio stations in the United States in the recent quarter. The New York Time reports, Radio advertising was down 10 percent last month from October 2007, according to the Radio Advertising Bureau, the 18th consecutive month of declines. And Audio Graphics says that it’s the eighteenth consecutive month of declining revenue.
In my comment to these articles, I have expressed my intent to share the current status of the Philippine radio market. Here’s the rest of that comment:
So far here in the Philippines the radio market is still very competitive. Some are not plagued by media competition like iPods and internet radio, and so with satellite radio.
Unfortunately though there are certain formats that were affected with this media diversity. Especially CHR or those high end radio formats.
CHR, smooth jazz, lite AC, and other English-speaking formats have been hit by this media diversity. This is because these formats target the upper classes who can afford to buy these mp3 gadgets, and have greater access to online radio streaming.
What is flourishing right now in our country is the MASA format (masa means mass). It’s a Hot AC format. It’s between CHR and lite AC, but unlike the HOT AC in the US, our HOT AC here plays rap and rhythmic songs.
What’s really distinctive about the Philippine Hot AC format is that the DJs converse in the local language or non-English exclusive. Listenership includes a fraction of the upperclasses, and a majority of the C-D-E market, which basically supports the “MASA” or mass format name.
Not that the majority of the audience in our country cannot afford mp3 players. It is just that these MASA stations have branded themselves as indispensable media. So, even if college students, plain housewives, taxi drivers, house maids, and ordinary employees have iPods, they still turn to radio for music, news, and information.
But then I agree with you that listeners have changed. And so far, radio stations have not yet fully embraced the potential of online advertising.
A handful of radio stations have websites but only less sell their space. While most stations are taking the first step by encouraging listeners to connect to their Myspace, Facebook, Friendster or other social networking account.
Online advertising is still in the conceptional stage in our country. And if our radio stations unintentionally abort this, our successful MASA stations might also experience the same revenue decline US stations are suffering from now.
Jam 88.3 (DWJM FM) is KBP Golden Dove Awardee for Best FM Radio Station
Jam 88.3 is a Hot AC station in Metro Manila, Philippines. It ranks low in the survey. Yet, it recently received the prestigious KBP Golden Dove Awards following its position as finalist to the 2008 Philippine Web Awards. Jam 88.3 plays a variety of music from the last 2 decades, catering to young professionals and selected adult.
What sells HOT in the Philippines are what the media calls as the “MASA” (mass) format, which is also categorized as Hot AC. The name is such since the spectrum of music programs caters to the most of the
“masses”. Jam 88.3’s Hot AC approach is different than that of the conventional “MASA hot ac” format. Their DJs converse in English. And the programs, segments, promos, and contests are just very creative, which I personally think is way different than the over-COMMERCIALISMIC approach of most masa stations.
Not that I’m against the MASA format. As one radio friend told me recently, MASA is not about the music, it’s about the coverage and the number of listeners. Yet, with Jam’s recent winning in the KBP Golden Dove Awards, it made me concretize my principle that a radio station does not have to be the number 1 station in order to the BEST radio station. Kudos to DWJM FM!
Some songs from Rihanna, Chris Brown, Ne-Yo and Beyonce sound the same. Why?
What do Rihanna, Ne-Yo, Beyonce, and UK boyband Blue have in common? Well, they all got monster hits. But of course, behind those monster hits are the creative minds and among them are the producers. Ever heard of Max Martin? Well, if you are a huge 90s pop music fanatic who went gaga over songs like Get Down, Baby One More Time, and Bye Bye Bye to name few, then you should have heard the songs of Max Martin. He is the creative brain and hands, in short he is the producer who helped the earlier successes of Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, and NSYNC. Max Martin had even collaborated with Pink.
Max Martin doesn’t have anything to do with Rihanna, Ne-Yo, and Beyonce today. But all three have their own Max Martin version and theirs is called the Stargate Duo. These production team is composed of two guys from Norway. Stargate was responsible for the backing tracks behind the successful Irreplaceable (which also influenced a later hit song for Chris Brown titled With You). Stargate was also responsible for the backing tracks of Ne-Yo’s So Sick. And the latest is Rihanna’s Take A Bow.
Don’t you notice all of these tracks have the same sound design elements. All of the three songs have that noticeable clapping beat on the backing tracks, right? Well, of course they sound the same since they all come from the same producer.
But my point is, the same thing that happened during the Max Martin is starting to come out again. We are being served with the same stuff over and over again. I mean like yeah, we love Ne Yo, we love Rihanna, and we LOVE Beyonce way too much, but we need to be creative here. I know the Stargate Duo are making money out of their stuff. But I hope they don’t give us too much of a cookie cutter music.
One of Stargate’s latest projects is the song for Shontelle – it’s called T-Shirt. I remember one time, I made a post about Shontelle’s T-Shirt song, and a comment poster said the song sounded like a crossover between Chris Brown’s With You and Jordin Spark’s “Tattoo…”. Check out the post here.
Well, that’s what we call commercialism. When something is selling hot, the tendency is, people will likely to serve you the same stuff over and over again, until we consumers get lost in boredom and oblivion.
I didn’t know though that Stargate was also behind the songs for the Brit boyband Blue. You know, the songs like All Rise, If You Come Back To Me, and stuffs. Huh! And Stargate also did the backing tracks for a not-so-popular but one of my fave boybands in the 90s – 5IVE. Remember them? 5IVE – five bad boys with the power to rock, blowing your mind, so we gotta get into, five, what you waiting 4, if you want it, 3, 2, 1, let’s hit it. Huh, those were the days.
Anyway, please share your thoughts on this, just post up your comment. Thanchu!
Oh, just a minute, check out this video on Billboard about this Stargate thing!
Hot FM Dipolog used to be 89.7 way back the early 2000s. I’m glad that they are back now with a powerhouse DJ cast, a new studio, more power (5000 watts), a hot-spanking website, plus cool online streaming via 
Radio Online Now 