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  • New From Nielsen: The Replacements for Maximi$er and PD Advantage/Desktop

    • 04/21/2016
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: radio programming
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    Starting this week, many programmers will be breaking out their quarterly ratings for the first time without Maximi$er. Nielsen has just retired the legacy software along with PD Advantage Desktop and Data Express (ADE). Former Maximi$er clients will have access to PDA Light (the Max replacement) while former desktop PDA Advantage clients will have access to PDA Web. If you are a programmer

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  • How Political Analysts Can Help Coach Talent

    • 03/31/2016
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: coaching, radio, Talent
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    Fivethirtyeight.com is full of interesting content. There’s sports and politics of course, but also science, economics and culture (read about the Batman-Superman bro-mance here). And now, FiveThirtyEight has a coaching tip for radio. OK, not exactly. But their recent post about the most frequently used phrases by Presidential Candidates Hilary Clinton and Bernie Sanders got me thinking

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  • First January Nielsens Bring Holiday Hangover Relief

    • 02/16/2016
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: Uncategorized
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    The first ratings of 2016 are rolling out and – at least on the first day – it’s “thank goodness!” for Country. While a number of formats are no doubt looking forward to a ratings period that does not include Christmas music, probably no format is more excited to turn the page than country which

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  • Need Some New Motivation? Imagine Yourself at an NFL Team Meeting

    • 02/12/2016
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: Uncategorized
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     “Peer pressure is one of the greatest motivators in professional football,” former Dallas Cowboys and OU Sooners Coach Barry Switzer told the audience at the talent coaching session at this year’s Country Radio Seminar.   To make his point, Coach Switzer went on to tell the story of a particular Wednesday morning team meeting –

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  • Satisfaction and Switching – Listener Hot and Cold Buttons and the Impact of Switchers

    • 02/04/2016
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: country radio programming
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    Two of the many topics we track in Roadmap – A&O&B’s annual “state of country” online perceptual study – are country listeners’ 1) degree of station satisfaction and 2) switching behavior. As we shared last year in our Pre-CRS seminar, the three-year overall satisfaction level with the country stations in our survey has been consistently

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  • Rough Holiday? Nielsen and History Say You Weren’t Alone

    • 01/25/2016
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: holiday programming
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    Once again the trades have been awash with news about big Holiday books for stations that went all-Christmas.  Early on, Inside Radio reported on the impact of the over 500 stations that went all-Christmas this year:  The Christmas format supremacy in Nielsen’s holiday ratings survey cannot be overstated, with the format ranking first in 11 of

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  • 1957 Words of Inspiration from Dr. Martin Luther King

    • 01/18/2016
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: Uncategorized
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    This morning in “Now” Tom Taylor included one of Dr. Martin Luther King’s many great quotes:  If you can’t fly, then run. If you can’t run, then walk. If you can’t walk, then crawl. But whatever you do, you have to keep moving forward. Dr. King’s words from 1957 were part of a speech encouraging

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  • If You See Something, Say Something: Three Ways to Turn Your Life Into Awesome Content

    • 12/23/2015
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: DJs
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    Guest Blogger: Christie Maturo Your life is a rich source of content. That’s true year-round but especially this time of year. So if you haven’t mined your world for content in a while, there’s no better time than now to look at what’s around you. For example… This caught my eye in the grocery store.

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  • A&O&B’s Annual Top 10 for the Year: The Top Songs and Artists of 2015

    • 12/18/2015
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: country radio programming
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    If you need a break from your Christmas shopping list, try this list: A&O&B’s annual Top 10 Songs and Artists of the Year. Each December we compile our research-driven list from our online and call-out data and data rankings for every song we played and tested for at least six weeks during the previous 12

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  • 7 Components of Todays Radio: A Quick PD Checklist

    • 12/04/2015
    • Posted by: Mike O'Malley
    • Category: radio programming
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    As part of her “Radio Matters” presentation at the 2015 Nielsen Total Audio Conference, the RAB’s Erica Farber shared this slide about radio’s composition. While primarily part of a larger, advertiser-directed initiative, the PD in me also saw this slide as a quick programming checklist. How are you doing in each of these areas? Watch the

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