"Live with the B" done kicked my ass!  Our Top 40 station, B94, just staged its own reality show called "Live with the B."  This was the second year for this event with our Morning Show, Midday, Afternoon and Night personalities all paired up with listeners and lived under one roof for five days.  The premise is like Big Brother meets the Real World meets the Biggest Loser: Couples.  Last year's videos were lacking in that the person charged with creating them wasn’t very efficient.  So armed with three Flip Video Cameras, a trio of Tripods, an MP3 recorder and my laptop, I took it upon myself to tell the story of "Live with the B" for those who weren’t following along either on the radio or via the four streaming webcams.

One of the problems with post-consolidation corporate radio is the abscence of innovation.  Just yesterday, a facebook friend posted a comment about radio's lack of creativity in programming.  My response to him was that the powers that be are so caught up with holding on to their jobs, they'd rather play it safe than risk failing at trying something new.  Then this morning I discovered something new, at least new compared to most of the crap that's out there.

WLGX in Louisville recently flipped to Gen X Radio.  It's an amalgum of grunge, hip-hop, hair bands, boy bands and everything else that we Gen Xer's grew up listening to: on the radio, on MTV, on mix tapes.  Clear Channel is often referred to as the "evil empire", but I applaud this concept.  This is a radio station I've craved for sometime now.  At my home station, we've featured 80s & 90s music in a feature called "Flashback Friday".  My suggestion has been to add in more of the songs my generation grew up with.  But I've been rebuffed by programming with the response that those songs "don't test well".  Generation X makes up roughly 85 million people, right in the middle of the 25-54 demographic.  And it's not about playing a bunch of  unfamilar crap either, we're talking about three decades of hits in multiple genres.  Now I know the typical response to that is because it was a hit once, doesn't guarantee that it will be a hit again.  But isn't it worth a shot to see if some of these songs could be.  It's called flavor.  Something today's radio formats desperately need.  In the meantime, I'm gonna be listening to this new station online and via iheartradio on my BlackBerry.  I'm just disappointed I didn't have a hand in it.

It’s a rare occasion when one gets to come face to face with a personal hero, idol, influence, etc.  I’ve been fortunate enough in the radio business to do that a couple of times.  But to be able to have a few seconds to speak with such a person and tell them why you admire them is an even rarer occurrence.