Idaho Radio News Etc.

Peak Broadcasting continues to drop people from its roster – this time letting go of long-time employee Tom Collins. Tommy is one of the nicest guys in the business — and this news frankly comes as a surprise. He worked in production for the group, made appearances with Mike & Kate on KCIX/Mix 106 and held down the mid-day fort with the station.

A note to employees says his layoff “was not a performance issue, but a necessity as we continue to work our way thru the changes that 2009 keeps hitting us with.” I guess that means the economy – but it could mean something else. More on that in a moment.

He has been part of the KCIX fabric for more than a decade – he’s been paired in the mornings with Russ Novacs, Steve & Steph and Mike & Kate. He gained the nickname “Tommy the Stunt Boy,” but his always genial attitude and positive outlook made him a fast friend to many. He even anchored weekend morning weather at KTVB for several years.

Just six months ago, KCIX was a fully staffed station – with live talent in the morning, Tommy mid-day, and live jocks in the afternoon and evening – six on-air employees. Now? Now the station is left with its live morning show and voicetrackers.

There’s more to this story. Just this week, Peak hired Miggy Santos from Citadel and KZMG/Magic 93.1. Rumors continue to swirl – and the official line is he is headed for the group’s Fresno stations. However, Santos was seen in the Peak Boise building yesterday, leaving lots of people to speculate. Peak does not own a CHR or urban station in the Fresno market — instead it has news/talk, oldies, country and a hot AC station. That station – Y101 – is currently well staffed… making you wonder…

This is in the Idaho Shakespeare Festival 2009 season program

KZMG/Magic 93.1 afternoon host Miggy Santos will be holding his PM party somewhere else from now on. Santos is no longer on the air, and told his Facebook friends about his departure:

Just to let everyone know ! I am moving on to the next chapter in my life and Leaving Magic 93.1 and Boise. It has been a great 3 years and I love everyone who I worked with and all of the Listeners of Magic 93.1 The Best Radio Station in Boise ! I will be moving to my new station in California really soon so get a hold of me so we can chill :) Thanks Boise for a great 3 Years Miggy

Miggy’s move leaves Magic with just two on-air staffers: MJ and DJ Dickman.

You’ve cut the field to five… now have your say:

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And it occurred to me… well after I posted the original poll — that KWYD/Wild 101 will by definition have the greatest gain, since the station was at 0 in the spring 2008 Arbitron, since it did not exist. So we’ll possibly have two winners here…

Boise stations KZMG/Magic 93.1, KSAS/103.3 Kiss FM and KWYD/Wild 101 are all paying tribute to Michael Jackson this afternoon — by playing a heavy diet of songs from the best-selling popstar.

• KZMG started the trend at 3:52pm – and has been non-stop Jackson since (as of 5:40pm).
• KSAS started at 4:07pm and played about half a dozen songs, and has talked about it quite a bit throughout the afternoon. Program director KeKe Luv tells Idaho Radio News “Michael Jackson was possibly the Elvis of our generation.”
• KWYD flipped into Michael mode at 4:41pm, and is still playing a heavy portion of his songs.
• KCIX/Mix 106, which promises “the best of the 80s, 90s and now” but is voicetracked in the afternoon — has not played a single Jackson track.

This echoes a similar trend decades ago when stations started playing non-stop John Lennon songs after that icon’s death.

UPDATE: About 20 minutes after this post, Mix 106 played a Jackson tune, according to Yes.com. At 7pm, when the station switches voicetrackers, it played “If Today Was Your Last Day” by Nickelback (basically a song about one’s last day on earth), followed by Beat It. Then, back to the music.

KZMG is running a series of promos – one of which is voiced and written as if the station is talking to Michael directly… ‘you will be missed Michael, from all of the Treasure Valley and the staff at Magic 93.1.’

KWYD laid off the all-Jacko all the time vibe, but in the 9pm hour has played several Jackson tracks.

A Facebook group sprang up in the last couple of months with a simple mission: bring back Jon Duane and Chris Kelly. Mission:

Jon and Chris have long been staples of our community, and it’s time they are back on the airwaves! Let’s help our friends get back to their mics, and report on our community, the nation and the world as only they can do!

Duane and Kelly have been off the air since November, when Peak Broadcasting let them go in a round of economy-driven layoffs.

After 90 days of well… a lot of Taylor Swift promotions… the spring 2009 Arbitron book will wrap up tomorrow in the Boise and TF/SV survey areas.

Anyone want to make a wager on the big winners? You can pick THREE answers below. We’ll let this run for a few days, then take the top 5 and vote again (since I know you’ll all just vote for your own station).

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UPDATE: I think I’m losing my mind. I posted this news EXACTLY one year ago… with the EXACT same headline. I could delete it, but instead you can laugh at what a spaz I am.

You likely have heard about KTHI/107.1 K Hits morning host Margo Vaughn, and her public (and winning) battle against breast cancer. But she’s not the only member of the K-Hits staff to stare down cancer. In a preview story for this week’s Main Street Mile, The Idaho Statesman talks to Larry Doss — who was diagnosed with prostate cancer. The MSM event is a way to promote awareness – and hopefully screenings for – prostate cancer. Doss has been cancer-free for two years now — which deserves a big CONGRATS!

Earlier this month, Boise State Radio was looking for opinions on its KBSX weekend programming. Today comes a memo from program director Ele Ellis outlining a bunch of changes – including new time slots for Car Talk with Click and Clack and Wait Don’t Tell Me. Idaho resident Diane Josephy Peavy’s essays are also on the move. You can read the whole memo by clicking down yonder…
Read the rest of this entry »

In March, we noted that Citadel Broadcasting’s stock scraped the bottom of the barrel — costing just $0.02. It popped up to about 4 cents a share later that week — which led me to ask if you’d take the bet and put $1,000 into the stock – taking home about 20,000 shares.

If you’d made that bet – you’d be… in the exact same position. The stock ended the day at $0.043 — just more than four cents per share. The stock has not traded higher than 13 cents.

Related: Journal Communications is currently trading at $1.10 – up quite a bit from the March low of $0.39.

KFTZ/Z103 host Dusty has fun with wind and cameras…

A single Boise mother of three had reached the end of her rope – unable to find a job in the face of high unemployment. At a loss for what to do next, she called into the KWYD/Wild 101 morning show. Host CK took action, and brought the woman in – put her on the air, and gave her a chance to tell her story.

As we’ve often seen — the Boise community stood up, and several job offers came in for the woman. One of the offers matched up – and she started work two weeks ago.

If you’ve walked around the neighborhoods of Boise in the past few days, you’ve probably seen this:

Little bundled up rolls of paper. If you unfurl it (which clearly very few people have done by the looks of it), you find an Albertsons ad, a bridge column and some crosswords. It is a product of the Idaho Daily Statesman, which inexplicably dropped them all over town Wednesday. Unsolicited. I happened to be outside at my home when the driver dropped them in my neighborhood and couldn’t figure out what the deal was.

The deal was this — the Statesman was littering.

Litter: trash, such as paper, cans, and bottles, that is left lying in an open or public place

Why? I don’t know. But the unsolicited papers are in gutters all over town. Hopefully this was a one time deal…

This popped into my inbox… not much detail.

Utah Hot AC/CHR needs P.D./Morning Host. Send resume and air check to: utahradiojob@gmail.com

As I write this, there is only one remaining full-power analog television signal pulsing over the treasures of the Treasure Valley. KIVI/6, KTRV/12, KNIN/9, and KBCI/2 all signed off earlier in the day. KAID/4 will cease analog broadcasts at 9pm, and KTVB/7 (my employer) will sign off at 10:35pm.

If you think you are tired of the endless DTV-education stories, try working in a newsroom. We’ll be all very happy when the transition is complete. But today – I actually pitched a story: today marks the by-and-large end of a technology invented in an unlikely place: here. Philo T. Farnsworth came up with the idea for those (now old-fashioned) TV signals in an Eastern Idaho corn field. He invented the system for transmission, decoding and display of this crazy visual medium – a sort of radio with pictures. His patents were evident in most TVs made until very recently.

Farnsworth was on hand for KTVB’s sign-on as the first television station in the state (Art Gregory will note that it was actually the second, but that other attempt never got traction, and didn’t last more than a few months). Also on hand in the station’s first years was an engineer by the name of Gene Tuttle. Tuttle will once again be a part of Idaho history, as he turns off the KTVB analog transmitter tonight. He helped bring the TV era to Idaho, so it’s fitting he will see its end.

TVWeek has a great blog about the end of TV – with some great writing from Greg DePrez. It’s worth a read.

How did he go? With a brief and impassive pop, at one minute past midnight, as planned. He was busy to the end, conveying the image of a late night comedian in smooth analog modulation, just as he’d always done. On the audio track the audience was laughing at a joke, when suddenly – picture and sound vanished. The TV, startled, examined the resulting snow for a few seconds, trying to find some pattern, then gave up and reverted to a blue screen. Of death.

Footnote: Analog broadcasting is not entirely over. Several low-power stations will continue pumping out analog signals. Also, a variety of translator stations will continue to broadcast in analog. So if you really want to return to the era of analog TV, drive up the road to McCall and dial up your nearest translator station.

Journal Broadcast Group once streamed four of its six Boise stations on the Interwebs – but now the only station to provide its audio over the Internet is KRVB/94.9 The River. KJOT, KQXR and KTHI are now only available for those people with one of those old-school radios.

Mudvayne is the headliner for the annual X Fest event – this year set for August 18th at the Idaho Center. KQXR/100.3 The X puts on the yearly show – and in addition to Mudvayne, Bury Your Dead, Dope, Static X and Black Label Society.

Impact Radio continues to find unique ways to use its digital billboard deal with Lamar.

This board is posted on the rotating Connector sign:

On my viewing, the data was synced up with the on-air song. Great idea.

One advantage of listener-supported radio over advertiser-supported fare is the engagement with the audience. While commercial stations do listen to their fans, that group isn’t usually as vocal – nor as important. If you cheese off your audience at a commercial broadcaster, your ratings may suffer for a time – but overtime you’ll probably survive (depending on degree of course). But if you are Boise State Radio and you don’t heed your audience, they can vote with their pocketbook. To that end, BSR has a survey up on its site right now gauging opinion to see what it should do with programming in coming months.

Conservative leader Bryan Fischer is leaving Idaho to helm a two-hour talk show on American Family Radio in Tupelo, MS. Despite the Valley’s heavy dose of Christian broadcasters, AFR doesn’t have a Boise affiliate – or one anywhere in Idaho for that matter.

Former voice of the Idaho Steelheads Joe O’Donnell is enjoying his stint in Houston, TX with the Aeros, according to the Houston Chronicle. “I didn’t want to leave Boise for the sake of leaving Boise,” he told the paper. “I wanted to be sure it was the right job with an organization that is well-run in a city that you want to spend time.” O’Donnell, 29, says his goal is to announce for an NHL team.

My reasons for closing the site are many, and the observation by one person that I’d been “phoning it in” lately, while not entirely accurate, is not all wrong, either. And so it’s time for me to stop. I am hoping to find someone qualified to take over the site. In any event, nature abhors a vacuum, and media folks love their gossip; it’s why we’re media folks, no? Someone will start something to take this site’s place, whether it’s OMI or something else.

That’s part of the swan-song for a site I just noted here a few weeks ago – Oregon Media Insiders. OMI is no longer, shut down suddenly by its site owner. (This is post three about something shutting down… yeesh).

Mapleton’s KJRB in Spokane (which also covers Northern Idaho) is revamping its agreement with The Spokesman-Review newspaper – effective July 3rd. The paper had been producing newscasts for KJRB – but it appears that arrangement will largely end. Huckelberries Online says the arrangement will be “modified,” and the current four-person on-air news team will be let go. The S-R built a radio studio in its newsroom and has put a ton of push towards this project – but with so many other things going by the wayside, this is probably a predictable side-effect of the worsening picture for newspapers.

Radio and Records magazine died today. It was 36.

The industry publication was purchased by Nielsen recently, and got hit with a set of staff cuts earlier this year. Today, the company announced an abrupt shutdown. It is the second media industry trade to die this week – Television Week was turned into a web only journal on June 1st. R&R goes away completely however. No magazine, no website – nothing.

I’ve always been around media, but in junior high I joined my dad at KFXD each Sunday night while he hosted the Blues Highway. While I learned a ton by osmosis, I really keyed in on R&R, reading each week’s issue (and all the back issues I could find) cover to cover.

I’ll miss R&R for another reason: original reporting. The major online alternative runs a news page, but too often it is filled with one sided prattle pushed on it from someone with an agenda. No analysis and no desire to rock any boats. What little “original” reporting on that site (and some others) is borrowed from elsewhere – sometimes with credit, but often not.

R&R was not perfect, but it provided what this (and every) industry needs: a journalistic eye. But being a print publication covering a shrinking industry in a bad economy is no easy way to make a buck.