KFOG iPod EP Breaks Ground.

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Author: Schiffman, MarcTeitelman, Bram

Tuned In: Radio

With so many radio stations releasing CD compilations of artist visits, it was bound to happen that one station would embrace the mp3 world.

Triple-A KFOG San Francisco partnered with Apple's iTunes Music Store and Virgin for an exclusive EP. "From KFOG to iPod" is a five-song EP from Virgin act the Thrills, which was recorded at the station's Emerging Artists concert series. It went on sale at the iTunes Music Store less than two days after the show was recorded.

"We swore to ourselves as a staff that we weren't going to be afraid of the new technologies," KFOG PD Dave Benson says. The promotion was "more about being proactive and using these technologies the way our listeners use them."

Benson says feedback from his listeners has been great so far, although many listeners were initially shocked, since it is unprecedented for a radio station concert to be available through iTunes. "When we announced it at the Emerging Artists concert, there was an audible gasp from the audience," he says.

Many San Francisco residents and KFOG listeners are technologically savvy. "We're looking for other opportunities to hook the radio station and the iTunes technologies together. The Bay Area is a very Apple-friendly environment," Benson says.

Virgin is looking forward to working on future endeavors with music download services. "It's the first time that anybody's been able to pull something off this quickly," Virgin director of new-media marketing Lars Murray says.

"From KFOG to iPod" will be available for four weeks. It is on sale for $4.95.

ALL X-MAS OK: Flipping to all-Christmas music around the holidays has been a silver bullet in the AC programming arsenal for several years.

But with stations flipping to the format as early as November last year, some questioned whether there was a law of diminishing returns lurking around the corner.

Not so, according to Edison Media Research. VP of programming Sean Ross crunched the Arbitron numbers from that period and found that 72% of FM stations that went all-Christmas earned a ratings boost. On average, an FM station that gave itself over to holiday fare saw an increase of seven-tenths of a share.

Ross also looked at 25 markets where two FMs each took on the Christmas mantle. In 10 markets, both stations had an increase. Fourteen markets showed mixed results. There was only one market where both stations lost audience.

XM IS AD-FREE: As of Feb. 1, XM Satellite Radio is dropping commercials from its music channels. One of the big differences between XM and rival Sirius was that the former had brief commercial sets in its programming.

Along with the new policy comes five new music streams: the Blend (AC), Highway 16 (top country hits), Fungus (punk, ska, hardcore), Lucy (modern rock hits) and Musiclab (jam bands, progressive rock).

SCIAKY REMEMBERED: Growing up in the suburbs of Philadelphia, it's fair to say I got my radio education listening to Ed Sciaky.

He was one of a handful of people that I grew up listening to that fired me up about radio simply from my hearing them do their job. Those people charged me with the magic of radio in a time when radio could still hold that magic.

Ed Sciaky died Jan. 29 in New York. He was 55. With his departure, Ed takes one more spark from FM rock radio's golden age.

PHOTO (COLOR): BENSON: PROACTIVE WITH MP3

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By Marc Schiffman

Additional reporting from Airplay Monitors Bram Teitelman, in New York