RAMP (Radio and Music Pros) LAUNCHES NOW
I had two tours of duty in radio and one tour of duty in the record business in the daze before working at MTV/VH1 and launching My Damn Channel.
There's never a doubt that the music you first heard through the radio played as much a part of creating who you are as the food you ate. In some fashion, you are what you hear.
But radio and the music business has been taking it on the chin for years. Layoffs have been brutal. When the legendary industry trade Radio & Records was shut down after 36 years, more of our friends hit the beach. It was time to put some of the bitching and moaning aside (not all of it) and launch RAMP.
Kevin Carter, Keith Berman & Steve Resnik are the artists formerly known as Street Talk Daily. Their unique brand of accurate reporting - laced with snark and laffs - covers every hot story inside radio and music.
Weekday mornings - before the crack of dawn - RAMP delivers an e-mail blast with news breaking now. If you're a Radio and Music Pro, sign up for a free subscription now at RAMP@MyDamnChannel.com.
RAMP is ad supported by our friends in the music business dedicating to getting new sounds into the ears of radioheads who bring new music to humankind.
The RAMP website is an extra shot in the arm to give My Damn Channel fans access to music videos and to videos made by the best air talent in radio. Videos will promote and link back to bands and radio stations. Find the kitty now at www.MyDamnChannel.com/RAMP
Senior Editor Kevin Carter, his "Evil Minion" Keith Berman, Sales Pro Steve Resnik, and scantilly-clad operators are standing by to take your submissions: RAMP@MyDamnChannel.com.
Posted in
Radio with tags
WBCN,
radio,
My Damn Channel,
Boston on 7/18/2009 5:34:21 AM by Rob Barnett
Famous deaths surround us these past few weeks. The nature of heat and fame create imagined personal connections to a legendary news oracle, to a Pop King, or a Pin-up angel. But this time, it's personal.
The death of WBCN is a painful loss felt deeply by everyone of us directly influenced by its greatness.
Every music fan whose ears and taste were shaped by the artists, songs and albums heard on 104.1 lost a friend.
Don't believe everything you hear from Spinal Tap. Boston IS a college town. If you've ever called this city "home," you owe respect and appreciation for the fun, the spirit and the sounds that BCN put into Boston.
My first college internship was at BCN. I remember the intense electric feeling as my heart beat way too fast on the first night inside that studio. That internship was the first step onto a path chasing dreams. I'll always be grateful.
If you're a fellow mourner, do you accept all the nice nice talk about change being inevitable, or can you imagine a new kind of radio powerful enough to make hearts beat way too fast?
Seth Godin once said that one of the problems with radio in the modern age is that it should no longer be called "radio."
What would we call it?
How could we forge a new model for "radio" with the honesty, passion, brains and balls to a co-create a business too powerfully protected by its fans and artists to be stopped?
Where would you launch such a thing?
Just asking.
Happy Jack tells the Wall Street Journal: The "good thing about Howard Stern leaving our station is that it already happened to us," he says.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120535527639031299.html
Posted in
Coolio,
My Damn Channel,
Radio with tags
Coolio,
My Damn Channel,
Radio on 2/12/2008 9:35:00 PM by Rob Barnett
Episode 2 of "Cookin' with Coolio" will debut next Wednesday, Feb. 20.
Our newest My Damn Channel man will be on your dial that morning across the land. Details on the way.
If you're a radio pal & want him on the air email me or Gary@MyDamnChannel.com.
Merry Christmas to all. A few more days of relative calm before we return to battle.
Our band of merry rebels won't take anything away from the mega success of the self-help phenom: "The Secret." But an obvious lesson learned in old media fuels our web war machine for '08: Corporate secrets are poisonous.
When I started in rock radio, the first wave of FM freedom fighters were under attack by a small handful of wolves dressed in corporate clothing. A few ex-disc jockeys and program directors cut their long hair, dressed up in fancy new suits, and jumped up on a new pedestal as self-appointed "consultants." These bad boys devised plans to rake in megabucks by convincing radio owners and general managers they possessed secret formulas for ratings success. Veteran radio warriors earned scars and stripes as we watched these wise guys disappear behind the closed doors of power and suck the spirit out of an industry built on innovation and creativity. Originality was replaced by cookie-cutter formats with identical playlists making stations separated by thousands of miles sound exactly the same.
A number of these same consultants invaded other bastions of cool and followed some of radio's best & brightest to new fronts fighting for mindshare of the pop culture planet. It was surprising and sad to see these wise guys show up in the hallways of MTV. More secret meetings, more secret memos, more secret sauce to romance executives into dishing out fat retainer fees to the con-sultans.
We have a few important rules in our rebel army. "Dirty Hands" means anyone who works with us has to produce actual work. We can't afford the luxury of paying people to navel gaze and dispense wisdom. The new world moves too fast and our gang is too skeptical to be sucked in by snake oil.
We've got another pretty old-fashioned rule for My Damn Channel.
"No secrets." Everyone in our community has direct unfiltered access to our people and our site. Everyone who works with us - our artists - staff - interns - co-conspirators - and backers - get the buck naked truth. It's easier. We're unafraid of what lies ahead and too psyched to be bogged down by bullshit.
