~ahem~
I should
say- it doesn’t take much to excite me.
For
instance this time of the year thinking about spending a day at the CNE excites
me.
It
means summer is moving along but I still look forward to going just the same.
If
someone were to purchase top price tickets for me to see Barbra Streisand at
the Air Canada Centre in October, I would be terribly, terribly excited.
That’s
not going to happen, however.
No,
small things in small categories are best at achieving some level of excitement
for me.
Like
seeing Hugh Jackman in the flesh and having him graciously sign an autograph across
the cover of a DVD I brought along. That was a year ago and I am still buzzing
with excitement!
Is
there more excitement in your life- you ask?
Just, a
few weeks back we retired our Surround Sound System in favour of a Polk Audio Sound Bar
with separate woofer.
Sound
exciting?
Let me
tell you, the sound is exciting!
No more
wires along the perimeter of the room- plus an absolutely amazing sound!
The box
said installation in minutes.
In
reality, it took a couple of hours
Then, a
week ago we purchased “Apple TV”.
Not a
television but a black square about the size of a small box of Black Magic
Chocolates. This would bring us You Tube Videos, Internet Radio Stations- like
Swisssh & Starlite, as well as Netflix- all on our big screen TV.
We
attempted to set it up by ourselves- Tom and I.
We got
pretty far along before we decided to call our good friend Steve Hall for help.
Steve
tried to get the job done over the phone at first but in the end he drove over
from Victoria Harbour to do it. We are glad he did!
He has
Apple TV and was able to get it going in an hour or so.
Good
Old Mr. Hall!
Quite
the product this Apple TV.
It
sells for about a hundred bucks but by the time we bought an HDMI splitter box-
because our TV is three years old don’t you know, it set us back an additional 200
dollars. A rather inexpensive toy turns out to be a little more expensive- yet
exciting!
Anything
else exciting Rob?...I hear you say.
Oh Yes!
I just
ordered new “singing jingles”- for both Swisssh Radio and Starlite Radio, from
the Granddaddy of Jingledom- PAMS/JAMS in Dallas Texas!
Yee-Haw!
I’ve
been to Texas and they say that- and y’all too.
The
cowboys say that in Alberta as well.
Yee-Haw,
I mean
Y’all…not
so much.
PAMS
and JAMS is famous the world over. The original PAMS Jingles were the jingles
you heard on stations like CHUM in Toronto and CKLW in Windsor. When I listened
to the packages, many were familiar. The JAMS division which I believe started
in the mid 1970’s are more up to date. Jingles from both packages however, are
still being recorded today.
The
Jingles I chose are from such a package.
The
Swisssh Jingles are from a package called “Totally Cool” The Starlite Jingles
from “Great Memories”.
They
are- no doubt, being used on other stations too but for Swisssh and Starlite
they will sing Swisssh Radio or Starlite instead of call letters such as CSIR
or CROB.
It’s
not a cheap process but I hope to be able to add more jingles in the coming
months.
Why
didn’t I get a Canadian company to sing and produce my Jingles?
Try to
find one and if you do find one- which I kind of did, they never mention
prices.
PAMS/JAMS
and another US-based company I contacted, all have prices displayed on their
websites. So that likely means the Canadian produced Jingles would be “terribly
expensive”.
I am
excited and with the Canadian Buck at par- I get a fair deal!
Finally,
I have to talk about Swisssh and Starlite once more. Another friend in Internet
Radio- Don Andrews, had a Terrestrial radio person fill him in on the details regarding
ratings and how they are achieved.
I used
to work for BBM, so I know a bit.
A
little bit.
Most ratings
are done in ¼ segments.
It’s
all based on the number of listeners who tune in and out in a ¼ hour.
In an
hour.
A day.
A week.
A
month.
From
ratings, Rate Cards are printed and clients are charged accordingly. The most
costly spots are in the morning “drive time” as we radio folks call it.
I know
that up to 15,000 hours are tuned to Swisssh Radio each month- about half that
for Starlite.
The
past few days I have been manually counting tune INS during some hourly periods
of the broadcast day.
Figuring
out an average of ¼ hours over 24 hours and translating that into a week, I
found than “on average” more than 2000 people tune in to Swisssh Radio during
the week. Probably closer to 3000 but I want to err on the side of less- not
more.
In a
month those figures would mean there’s upwards of 10 thousand listeners!
That’s
pretty decent for an Internet Station from Orillia, Ontario Canada. Starlite
would be about half that- but growing.
That’s exciting-
isn’t it?
Now, if
web advertisers would only jump on the Internet Airwaves.
~sigh~
These “things”
are all small things- but exiting small things- don’t you think?
