Madville Times on KJAM AM 1390 Tonight!

Local radio gets a dose of real liberal media tonight: KJAM has invited the Madville Times to join its Election Night news team! I will be blogcasting live from the KJAM studio in beautiful downtown Madison tonight from 7 to 10. I will be tweeting election results and commentary at #sdvote2010 (and I invite the Twitter-inclined among you to do the same).

Best of all, at the :10's and :40's on each hour, Matt Groce may actually let me near the microphone! Think of it this way: Matt will be Al Michaels, news director Lauri Struve will be Dan Fouts... and I'll be Dennis Miller.

When I'm not at the mic, I'll be furiously clicking through the live election tallies streaming from Secretary of State Chris Nelson's awesome website. (Seriously, Republicans, you picked Noem over a guy this smart, who can do stuff this cool on the Web?) I'll also be taking and responding to comments here on the blog. If you've got questions or comments you'd like us to address on air, submit them in the Madville Times comment section, and Matt and I will try to work your comments into the program!

And who's making this electrifying nght of wall-to-wall election coverage and blog-radio synergy possible?

The Madville Times is going to sell a lot of beer tonight. Wisecracks are more than welcome in the comment section.

So get your local Election Night 2010 media overdose right here in Madison! Listen to Matt and me on KJAM, follow the tweets and blog feed, and contribute your two cents' worth here on the Madville Times!

KJAM Features District 8 Senate Candidate Video Interviews

I told you yesterday about KJAM's new District 8 House candidates YouTube interviews (now complete with Patricia Stricherz's turn at the webcam!). Now KJAM follows up with its District 8 Senate candidate profiles. Here's your daily Russ Olson fix:



Clark Schmidtke is sure to follow... as soon as KJAM finds a camera tall enough to capture him!

Now when will the Madison Daily Leader decide to go multimedia?
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Update: And here's Clark!

KJAM Offers Video Interviews with District 8 Candidates

Hey! KJAM Radio is going all TV on us! Our local radio station is putting candidate interviews up on their YouTube channel. Right now, they have interviews with three of our District 8 legislative candidates: incumbent Democrats Mitch Fargen and Gerry Lange and Independent challenger Jason Bjorklund. (Patricia Stricherz, get down to the radio station and record yours!)

The Fargen and Bjorklund interviews are just audio with a nice picture, but Lange gets full video. (Hey, Matt G., nice job walking into the shot!)

Give these interviews a listen—you can bet I will... with commentary to come!

Gerry Lange on KJAM:



Mitch Fargen on KJAM:



Jason Bjorklund on KJAM:



Update 2010.10.14: KJAM has now added Patricia Stricherz:

KJAM Picks up Blog Report on TransCanada Keystone Leaks

Update 2010.08.01: I was wrong! KJAM was repeating a story from WNAX, which has the full report mentioned below, complete with audio, on its website. Thanks to WNAX newsman Jerry Oster for the note!
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Kudos to KJAM news director Lauri Struve, who did high-quality journalism this morning on the TransCanada Keystone pump station leaks, publicized first here on the Madville Times. I can't find a link to the story on KJAM's website yet, but it was solid. Struve called DENR, talked to the officials involved, got more details, and gave the story a good few minutes of attention. The only thing missing: a hat tip to the blog that broke the story. ;-) But that won't stop me from offering a sincere hat tip back for good reporting... and, as far as I can tell, beating all the bigger radio and TV stations and newspapers (you know, places where the news staff is larger than one) to this important South Dakota story.

According to Struve's report, TransCanada did everything it was supposed to (other than installing valves and gaskets that don't leak). The leaks were entirely on their property and got all cleaned up to DENR's satisfaction, so there will be no penalties. Everything is fine, nothing to worry about, Big Oil is our friend....

KJAM Broadcasting Online

KJAM is now live-streaming its AM signal online. I don't imagine folks will be tuning in worldwide to listen to the same music they can get from a number of generic classic hits format stations in their own neck of the woods. But this new service may find an audience among traveling locals and Lake County ex-pats who want to keep up with Madison area news and sports.

Of course, they still have a long way to go to catch up with the cultural richness of South Dakota Public Radio, which gives us two online broadcasts or the sheer awesomeness of the best radio station in the world, CKUA. Note to Richard M.: CKUA is a public, non-profit organization, and it provides better music and cultural programming than any free-market radio station I've listened to. That's what I mean about private broadcasters providing the bland content that is a larger audience's second choice instead of the high-quality programming produced by the community effort of CKUA. (For more on that concept, read Yochai Benkler.)

KJAM Celebrates 50th Anniversary

Who is that man with the face too good for radio?



Guys used to wear neckties on the radio. Really! And they didn't even have webcams back then.

That's original KJAM broadcaster John Goeman, who was on the air on Day 1, December 3, 1959. Goeman was actually in the studio two months before that. He says he arrived with his degree from the Brown School of Broadcasting and thought he knew everything. He climbed up to the studio, dumped out a box of radio gear, and wondered, "What do I do with all this?"

Caption 1: Believe it or not, this is Goeman 50 years later.
Caption 2: Note the sweatshirt: Goeman never misses a chance
to boost the Highway 34 expansion project.

Goeman figured out what to do pretty quickly. He rose from the broadcast booth to own and operate the station for years. He dropped by the station to share some old photos and stories with current general manager Loren Larsen at KJAM's 50th anniversary open house yesterday. The station, now owned by Lincoln Nebraska-based* Three Eagles Communications (darned media consolidation!), must be doing well: they had free punch and cookies. Loren even urged me to take an extra cookie home—the Divine Miss K was suitably pleased when I got home.

The station is making some technical progress. Their new website does more than the old one. The news team is also using the site to include audio clips with stories (serious improvement!) plus some extended interviews à la NPR and other fancy-pants broadcasters. They're also catching with technology on remote broadcasts: where broadcasting a ball game or other event outside the studio used to require hauling a big forty-pound box around, Matt and Matt and Brian (the new guy... and what accent, Brian? :-) ) can each do live play-by-play with nothing but a one-pound netbook, a headset, and a cell phone signal (small is beautiful!). Plus, if the AM and FM stations are already occupied with DSU and MHS games, they can broadcast more games from Dell Rapids, Chester, Howard, and other exotic locales live over the website. (When-oh-when will the Madison Daily Leader figure out how to add value like that with its website?)

When I was little, KJAM was my ticket to free ice cream cones, tacos, and movies on QuizBiz. Now, they're my competition... and a source of a fair chunk of local blog fodder.

Thanks, KJAM, and happy anniversary! I look forward to another 50 years of local news and links!

Update 2009.12.05 09:43 CST: Learn more about KJAM's history—and the origin of those jammin' call letters!—from sports director Matt Hendrickson at the Jackrabbit's Den. [And note the correction: Three Eagles Communications—my apologies to corporate!]

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*Grammar note: I really struggled with the punctuation there. Suggestions?

• Lincoln Nebraska-based Three Eagles...?
• Lincoln, Nebraska-based, Three Eagles...?
• Lincoln, Nebraska,-based Three Eagles...?
• Three Eagles Communication (based in Lincoln, Nebraska—darned media consolidation!),... ?
  

KJAM Launches New "Community" Website

KJAM is unveiling a new community website, AmazingMadison.com. Lots of pix, lots of ads... we'll see how much "community" ends up in this new venture. Hmmm... I wonder where they got that idea. ;-)

I also wonder when, as a community website, AmazingMadison.com will be adding links to other local media. Better call Corporate on that one!

Informed Electorate Key to Democracy... KJAM Says We're Toast

KJAM Headline of the Week:

About 25 People Informed

Feel free to supply your own Jeffersonian punchlines about the other 796,000 South Dakotans.

But come on, KJAM: the Madville Times has more than 25 regular readers!

Sea Kitten Quote of the Day

Addressing PETA's letter to the Spearfish School District, requesting the school change its name to the Sea Kitten School District:

But then what are you gonna call fish sticks? The kids aren't going to like that answer.

—Matt Groce, KJAM Radio, noon newscast with Al Lunde.

All I can say to PETA is that we have bigger fish to fry....

Once More Unto the Breach: Parsley vs. Olson on KJAM!

Sound the trumpets, Parsley partisans! Lorin Larsen must have seen the Madville Times Senate poll (up there in the right-hand corner—vote now!) and decided he needed to counter by rerunning KJAM's poll on the District 8 Senate race between Democrat Scott Parsley and Republican Russell Olson. Back in September, after a hard-fought online battle, Parsley and Olson came out about even (anyone remember the final numbers?). Now we see the numbers flipping back and forth: Parsley had a commanding 62-38 lead yesterday afternoon, but then CreditSoup must have sent the kids home to do some Web-surfing and flip the numbers: Russ is back on top 64-36.

My friends, there is but one appropriate response: Charge!!! Get over to KJAM, cast your vote, and show the world that District 8 is all about truth, justice, and online citizen activism... or at least having fun with online polls!

(By the way, Lorin, I'm still waiting for my commission on all the extra hits you got last time... ;-) )

KJAM Promotes Downtown

Sheer coincidence? Psychic link with the KJAM marketing department? Who cares! After my question this weekend about the mountain in KJAM's website banner, I click on the KJAM homepage and find this lovely image of our hometown, complete with anti-corporate rallying cry:


Looks like the very handsome and very single Matt Hendrickson must have scrambled up the National Guard's portable climbing tower Friday afternoon and captured this vertiginous view of our very verdant Egan Avenue. (Notice: no mountains.) Nice work, KJAM!

Now if we could get a full aerial shot and do a hyperlinked image map so folks could click on each building and go straight to each business's website....

KJAM Banner: Where's That Mountain?

I've been meaning to ask about the KJAM web banner:

I'm o.k. with James Taylor and those nice country boys (though the stoned-looking kid in the t-shirt makes me feel a little ooky). But in that nice sunset background, where's that mountain? It looks a little tall for Philosophizing Peak at Lake Herman State Park.

As I just learned in my multimedia class at DSU, stock photos are bad, bad, bad (something you'd think the marketing experts at the LAIC requesting $140,000 of our tax dollars would understand). The more connection of the image to the product/service you're selling, the better. How about something like...

Draft layout for new all-local KJAM logo
(Sorry about the digital black eye, Matt!)

Now that's Lake Herman. Very pretty, very local. Using the music stars is fine for promoting the station (although Matt Hendrickson is getting cuter by the day, thanks to those daily miles on the treadmill!) Play with that draft design, pass it on to Three Eagles corporate....