[BC] Radio's Influence on Music Sales

[Rich Wood]

------ At 11:02 PM 9/16/2008, Dan Kelley wrote: -------

>I don't doubt that at all; however, there is a vast difference in the
>attention given to stations that report or are monitored by R&R for the
>charts and those that are not.  I was fortunate, even in market 121 (now
>125) to be a reporter...and therefore had the attention of the promo
>people.

I don't mean to upstage you but I was an AC reporting station at 
WPIX-FM for R&R in Market #1, New York. I would get appointment 
requests for as many as five promo people a day. Others would just 
show up and expect to rearrange my day. Liz Kiley at KOST, Los 
Angeles, and I could guarantee a song would make the AC chart if we 
played it, just by virtue of the size of our markets. Since that made 
the charts useless to us I suggested to Mike Kinosian that he greatly 
increase the number of reporting stations. He did it and made the 
chart much more representative of all size markets.

I started to play Smooth Jazz on WPIX mixed with AC and established 
the relationships with Jazz labels. This was before they did what I 
suggested and made a format out of it as WQCD. Jazz labels were so 
desperate for airplay that even more promo people came out of the 
woodwork. It's interesting that my utterly useless consultant who 
fought playing Jazz on the station is now taking credit for it. A 
friend of mine worked at a station in Connecticut consulted by this 
guy and was told he was the genius who started it. My friend 
confronted him in front of management. When he mentioned my name the 
consultant turned white. He was caught in a lie. That's not relevant 
to promo people but it's a heartwaming story for me.

I'm sure only the largest markets get record company attention today.

Rich

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