To all Superstar members

The time has come.  The "This Morning" daily e-mail will cease on March1st this year.  That will be the last edition of  "This Morning",  however,  New Radio Star and Radio Superstar on line will continue.

The first thing I have to address in this email to you is the profound and very deep gratefulness Pamela and I feel when we talk about Superstar.  We began our first edition on October 1st, 1987 and many of you were there at the beginning to support the idea with your contributions and your subscriptions.  We have been working on it every day since and existed only because you were there to be a part of it. To some of you, we are a "service" that you subscribed to.  But, to us, you were all people who we admired and felt honored to be able to work with. We consider many of you our close friends and part of our extended family.  That will never end.

To put together "This Morning" every night requires at least 20 hours a day between Pamela and me. We begin when we get up and work at it until 1:30 in the morning. 

When we began Radio Superstar there was no "This Morning". The total service was what is now called "Insiders", completely relying on your contributions.  About 18 years ago we began "This Morning" as an added part of the service.  We have never missed sending it out every night.

To some of you, "This Morning" is all we are...never visiting the "Star Live" website.  We are multiple times more than that.

There are two reasons we are stopping "This Morning".  The first is, we would like time to devote our energies and efforts to our New Radio concept and the New Radio Star information service. The second is the idea of sending out a "prep sheet" via email, that is, by it's very nature, out of date by the time you get it,  an idea born in the 90s and totally inadequate in today's nature of information sharing. In the 90's you did not have the Internet in the studio.  Today, every show has instant information at its' fingertips while they are on the air. 

Here is an example.  Yesterday morning we finished up a little early and sent it out about 1am our time.  As we do every night, we gave you what we considered the top four most important news stories of the day.  Two hours after we sent it out, the Pope decided to announce he was resigning.  So, we were out of date with what we sent you.  However, if you had gone to the Top News group on New Radio Star, that story, via RSS feeds update was all over the page with complete information. 

Five years ago we discovered the Sharetronix platform, which totally changed the concept of Radio Superstar.  This took the star "live" and made it a service you can use while you are on the air.  Not only are the pages constantly updating themselves, but, with the "search," "tag cloud" and "categories" features you have instant access to anything and everything you need. But, it was so much easier to just get it in email as you had done for years...even though it meant less of a service than the Star is on line.

New Radio Star's Superstar was an original idea here.  When we started it in October of 1987 we were the only people in the industry providing an on line service for shows.  At it's very basic, the concept was that each show would contribute at least one original idea a week.  That concept has not changed 26 years later.  I was sitting in a hotel room in Nashville early one morning when it hit me, that if I contributed one thing and there were a hundred members, I would get back 99 original ideas every week.  The invention of "on line" allowed that to happen.  Thank heavens, hundreds of you agreed and joined us ...the concept worked and has been copied many times by other "services" since. We did prove one thing.  No one can write for a morning show like a morning show.  Nothing we can create here at the Star office will ever be as good as what you, who actually are on the firing line of day to day radio can contribute.

We have saved every report since the Star began and we now have the largest radio show ideas library in the history of radio.  In doing "This Morning" every night, we constantly referred to that library.  A great idea 20 years ago, is very often, still a great idea today.  You have exactly the same access to most of that library and we are in the process of completely adding all of it on line for you to grab instantly..while you are getting ready for your show or even while you are on the air. 

So Radio Superstar and all of the groups will continue.  As a member of The Star you will have complete access to each of these groups.  If you contribute to Insiders you will also have real time access to the other members ideas on an ongoing basis as well.  If you are not now a member of Insiders I urge you to become a part of it. There is no extra cost other than your contributions at least once a week.

I have been in radio for over 52 years now...and my heart is melded to it. To me, it's not so much a transmitter and a studio as it is the people in it.  I am hoping, deeply, that this is the beginning of a new, better chapter.  I am as passionate about reaching that audience as I have ever been. I just want to use all the tools that 2013 has brought us to make it happen.  New Radio Star as an information source about all the "industry" will continue and hopefully, we will now have time to do a better job on The Star.  The future to me, is the "new radio" and I am sure you are making that trek along with us.  I am hopeful that we can be of even more help to you in the coming days as we step into a full commitment to that future.

We are hopeful you will continue with us...we think there is still more to be done.

Pamela and I thank you eternally for your fantastic friendship and support.

Ham
(Office 626-817-2346)
(personal cell 831-236-7992)