ROSS ON RECORDS
The Tenacity Of A Pitbull

IT’S A DISTANT MEMORY, but there was a time in the record business when labels would frequently try to cash in on the success of their former artists who had finally broken through, but on a different record label. In 1974, during the phenomenal Country hit streak of Epic’s Charlie Rich, RCA had its own hit with a 10-year-old album cut, “There Won’t Be Anymore.” A few years later, a relaunched Stax Records took an unreleased Bar-Kays song, “Holy Ghost,” and had a bigger R&B chart hit than the competing single on the group’s new label, Mercury.

Even in the mid-‘90s, successful movie soundtracks meant that labels sometimes ended up working singles on somebody else’s artist. RCA broke Lisa Loeb’s “Stay (I Missed You)” and Columbia did the same for Ini Kamoze’s “Here Comes The Hotstepper,” only to see those artists end up on Geffen and Elektra respectively after bidding wars. And the failure of the artists to ignite on those labels was probably cold comfort to the staffs that worked them before.

Eventually, however, the soundtrack/compilation business was diminished by the iPod. Additionally, the “cost of doing business” eventually reached the point where no label was going to pump money into a single if there wasn’t an album attached. So direct your attention to the CHR chart, please, where Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me (Calle Ocho)” on Ultra is No. 6 and up by more than 500 spins this week, even though the follow-up, “Hotel Room Service,” is on J/RMG.

In fact, the last four Pitbull singles have been on as many different labels. “The Anthem” was one of the last hits on TVT. “Krazy” was on his own Mr. 305 label through The Orchard. And now Ultra and J/RMG. To further complicate things, “The Anthem” was a take-off on and competed with Ultra’s dance hit, “Calabria 2008” by Enur f/Natasja. “I Know You Want Me” is a similar take on Ultra’s “75, Brazil Street” by Nicole Fasano vs. Pat Rich. So at least Ultra was competing with itself on this one.

In any event, Ultra’s Patrick Moxey and Phil Nieves deserve some credit for a top 10 hit on an indie label and for continuing to work a record on somebody else’s artist. It says a lot about the changing nature of the business that it could and would happen. Ultra has long been comfortable with making money off of compilations, but that was only supposed to be a model for “dance music,” while Pitbull was a Hip-Hop artist. But dance and Hip-Hop continue to melt into each other as well.

Can You Buy A Job In Today's Economy?

IT'S A DISARMING SIGN OF THE TIMES. About 10 days ago, former Saga/Ithaca, N.Y., PD (and longtime WPST Trenton, N.J., morning man) Mark Vanness sent a message to ten of his LinkedIn contacts. The names I recognized included some well-known consultants, a large-market program director, and a programmer turned record promotion person.

Vanness wrote, "I am offering a finder’s fee! If you are the individual responsible for setting in motion a chain of events that eventually leads me to full time employment in radio then I will officially thank you with a payment equal to 5 percent of my negotiated salary! That could pay for your vacation!"

And his was at least the second e-mail of this sort I've received since radio's ongoing bloodletting began.

And the first one I received was from somebody who is indeed now working again.

It's a far cry from the days when jocks got attention by sending an aircheck attached to a Swift's Butterball with a note that said, "You probably won't listen to this turkey." That sort of stunting isn’t entirely gone, but as far as I know, the large-market programmer who recently tried to auction himself off on eBay is still looking.

As Vanness says, "Times are tough and this calls for some creative personal marketing strategies." And 95% of a radio salary is still a lot more than unemployment. But while I am certainly rooting for Vanness and many others to find jobs, there's still something particularly discouraging, even by our current standards, about a radio landscape in which somebody would find this necessary.

So now that there's a vacation riding on it for you, do you have a job lead for Mark Vanness? (He did just add weekend duties at AC WZUN Syracuse, N.Y., but was still looking for full-time work at presstime.) Click here if you'd like to contact him.

FiNAL Listen
WAMO-FM Pittsburgh

OKAY, AS UPSET AS I WAS to hear the news a few weeks ago that longtime R&B outlet WAMO-FM Pittsburgh had been sold, with a format change imminent, I also had to admit that I hadn't checked them out for a while. So on Tuesday night (16), I gave the station a Final Listen.

There were definitely some signs of a station on its way out here. The songs in the music image promo were from about six months ago. For that matter, the “new music” stager played before a song was from about six months ago. And on the Website, which has no apparent homepage mention of the change, the station bio declares, “Several generations have grown up with WAMO and WAMO will continue to be an important part of Pittsburgh for generations to come” – if only in memory.

That said, I liked WAMO-FM’s stagers and other production, which had only a little of the sonic overload of most current R&B/Hip-Hop outlets. Otherwise, the “read” was a little lower-key than usual and the feel recalled an updated version of the two-voice production style of the format in the early ‘80s. Judging from the times I did hear it over the last six months, WAMO-FM never sounded like a pre-fabricated Hip-Hop station making its imminent departure that much more frustrating.

Here’s the station just after 10 p.m. on Tuesday:

Hurricane Chris f/Superstarr, “Halle Berry (She’s Fine)”
Jim Jones & Ron Browz, “Pop Champagne”
Dorrough, “Walk That Walk”
Young Money, “Every Girl”
Musiq Soulchild, “So Beautiful”
Trey Songz, “I Need A Girl”
Young Jeezy, “Put On”
Birdman f/Lil Wayne, “Always Strapped”
Pleasure P., “Boyfriend #2”
Jamie Foxx, “Just Like Me”

And check out the fourteen, yes, fourteen pages of comments that WAMO’s sale has generated on Radio-Info’s Pittsburgh message board.

Ross On Radio Issue #1: The Collectors’ Edition

RADIO-INFO.COM’S NEW, EXPANDED VERSION of Ross On Radio, which will now publish twice a week, arrived for the first time on Tuesday afternoon with the following stories:

A first listen to Hit Nation, the national CHR format on Clear Channel’s iHeart Radio that just happens to parallel the “Premium Choice” national CHR content on some of its stations;
A look at the “New Oldies” weekend on KRTH (K-Earth 101) Los Angeles and the ongoing incursion of the ‘80s at Oldies/Greatest Hits formats;
A Hip-Hop radio ratings success story from Austin, Texas, that bucks the national trend;
Why Blink-182 is like Journey, but 3Oh!3 is like the Human League.

If you registered after 4 p.m. on Tuesday afternoon, you may not have gotten the new issue, but you can read it now.

And if you’re not yet on the mailing list for the new Ross On Radio – even if you were already receiving the column – please sign up here. You can also sign up to receive Tom Taylor’s daily “Taylor On Radio-Info” newsletter.

Finally, some feedback on the Hit Nation column from WIFC Wausau, Wis., PD Tony Waitekus on searching for the right balance between national swagger and local character. He writes that longtime AM powerhouses WLS Chicago and CKLW Detroit “sounded big because they were great local stations, not national stations. WLS played a ton of local hits from the New Colony Six, Buckinghams, Cryin’ Shames, and many more. CKLW did the same thing with early Bob Seger records on Cameo, the Rationals and more. These were BIG stations because they were great local stations, not because they programmed to a national audience.”

Have a great weekend. More Ross On Radio arrives next Tuesday.