Idaho Radio News Etc.

The CC big wigs are in town. Staff meetings being held. Is a switch on the horizon?

All that speculation about the CC-Western Idaho Fair link comes to rest — for now at least.

The JoDee Messina show will be tied to Mix 106; Sawyer Brown will hook up with KFXD 580, as will the Cowboy Finals rodeo and Joe Nichols; The Monster Trucks will settle in with Kiss FM.

One interesting aside — a Spanish language band known as Grupo Control will have KWEI as their media partner.

And yes, every CC station is represented.

UPDATE: Of course KFXD is at 630 now — old habit :)

Over the next few months, we’ll take a look at some of the stations in the area, and what they’re doing — good and not as good.

KTPZ is based in the Twin Falls area. It’s primary license is in Mountain Home, with secondary listings for Boise and Twin Falls. The station has a repeater on Boise’s Table Rock, allowing it to transmit in to the Treasure Valley. The signal can also be heard in the Wood River Valley (and as far north as Cascade).

The station is about one year in to it’s “new” format — a mostly CHR mix. The current branding is “Music Monster 99.1, KTPZ.” The station is owned by FM Idaho, headed by Wendell Starke. It was purchased from American General Media — who purchased it from Horizon Broadcast Group. Starke sold the station to HBG, then bought it back in a firesale, and returned the station to the Monster brand. KTPZ used to have a high profile studio at the Boise Spectrum facility in Boise.

The station primarily focuses on the Twin Falls market. The majority of advertisers are from the TF market, with a few from Boise/Nampa.

The talent lineup is what you would expect from a market the size of Twin. We’ll stay away from name-calling and finger pointing; suffice it to say most of the jocks are trying — which is a good place to start.

The imaging is odd. After HBG sold the station — the former Monster format was revived — right down to some of the imaging elements. Instead of taking a good concept and evolving, the stations seems stuck in 1999.

The library is much larger then KSAS or KZMG — the Monster’s primary competition in the Boise market. The gold library is quite large — and varied. It’s that station on your presets that will usually be good for about one or two songs — before you encounter something out of left field. KTPZ seems to be trying to capture the CHR and Hot AC formats — but really doesn’t live in either world.

The station has an active morning show — but the rest of the day has that “voice tracked feel,” though it’s unclear to me if they are actually VT or not.

And as we’ve talked about here once before — weather is a big deal for KTPZ. The station features endless weather updates, many with a lengthy sponsor billboard. The sponsor mention often seems to be longer than the actual weather drop.

Learn more at KTPZ.com

You may have seen the news that Infinity will dump Arbitron in favor of the Media Audit. The switch will affect all 185 of Infinity’s stations.

In the Boise area, TMA contacts 700 or so folks by telephone — and conducts an extensive survey.

Learn more at themediaaudit.com

KSRV was never a part of Impact Radio Group — it was owned by Journal Broadcast Group before being sold to Horizon.

The famous KSKI is set to be in the hands of a new owner. The legendary mountain station will now be in the hands of Chaparral Broadcasting. Seller is Alpine broadcasting.

More details soon.

KZMG weekender Luis Beltran has landed at KUJ-FM in the Tri-Cities, WA. He picks up the moniker “Weezie” for the move.

KUJ is headed by Kirk Fredericks — aka former Magic-er Scooter B.

On a side note: Where have all KZMG’s weekenders go? The main string (Evan, Jayar, Baylie, Jim Allen, Valentine, Nate) are covering weekend shifts. The station used to employ Luis and David Silver to help fill the weekend gaps. Since the book began, they disappeared.

Our thoughts and prayers go to Kevin Mee, whose mother has passed away. Colleen passed away this past Saturday.

(Hat tip: AllAccess)

The Horizon Broadcast Group “era” is over. KSRV has been sold from HBG to FM Idaho, headed by Wendell Starke — the station’s former owner.

Starke got a great deal out of this — sold all the stations, HBG tanked them, then he bought them back on the cheap. Makes a chunk of change, and keeps control of the stations.

KTIK has been billing the new Spud Brothers morning show as a “pop culture margarita with sports as the salt on the rim.”

Now KTPZ is referring to itself in a similar manner — saying they are the salt on the rim of a margarita.

Coincidence? I think not.

I neglected to mention KTIK in the list of radio websites.

Lo and behold, KTIK.COM is actually the top ranked site, at 905,886. And with reason — KTIK.COM is the most topical site. It was always pretty good when under the Diamond Broadcasting helm, but has actually flourished since the Citadel move. Viewers will actually find more local content on KTIK than any other radio site in town. The Scott Slant (which they share with KTVB.COM) is a huge infusion of content each day.

If you build it…

Who has the most popular website of all?

Alexa.com gives all websites a numerical rank. For instance, Yahoo.com is #1, msn.com is #3, etc.

So where does your station’s website rank?

KZMG: 1,026,554
KRVB: 3,234,919
KSAS: 1,682,164
KCIX: 2,838,928
KTHI: 3,646,783
KQXR: —
KIZN: 1,604,461
KQFC: 3,219,070
KKGL: 2,230,665
KJOT: 4,608,559
KLTB: 3,116,572
KXLT: —
KIDO: 1,904,367
KBOI: 1,723,053

For reference:
KTVB.COM: 40,021
IdahoStatesman.com: 40,768

Learn more at Alexa.com

Also From NetNews:

JOURNAL Alternative KQXR (THE X)/BOISE, ID PD ERIC KRISTENSEN tells ALL ACCESS the station received TV coverage after NEW MORNING X WITH BYL & BIG J had a listener call-in and identify who stole an 18-year old high school senior’s wheelchair at the KID ROCK concert. The tip helped authorities pin down the thief and return the wheelchair in time for the kid’s graduation.

Just for the record, the only station I saw cover the story was co-owned KIVI. This shouldn’t degrade the overall story though — it really was a remarkable thing for KQXR to do — and really used the power of radio for good. Maybe this cleans the “Lucky Peak Dam Break” karma…

Don’t you just love AllAccess? I would SO LOVE to link to their “Morning Probe” on Jayar, Big Boy and Baylie, but, alas, I can’t.

I’d copy and paste it here, but it’s insanely long.

Go to AllAccess.com, then to Morning Show Prep, then to Morning Probe… you get the drill.

It’s an, uh, interesting read.

Want a free G-mail account? It’s the new mail service from Google (the one you can’t sign up for yet). You get a meg of storage, and few ads — it’s pretty amazing.

So here’s the deal, send a note to idahoradio@gmail.com — I’ll pick three from all the entries received by midnight Monday. No strings, no spam — just wrapping up the book with a contest of my own.

Word.

Punched KCIX this afternoon on the ol’ car presets. They were playing a Dixie Chicks song. One of those crossover songs that are so annoying, but a country song none-the-less. I spent the next 60 seconds wondering about the ramifications of finally taking Mix country.

Then they segued in to Maroon 5, and the wondering ended.

As another ratings period gets ready to sail in to the record books — who do you think did the best job? Who was most promotionaly active? Who had the best contests? Who gave away the most money? Who had the best talent lineup? Who WILL WIN?

Ewwww.

OK, the note last week about our buddy Danny boy generated quite a bit of buzz. And because even a mere whiff of buzz gives me a — uh — well, a, um… buzz, I just had to see what DK (the ‘writer,’ not the donut) was up to this week:

Here it is.

Dan talks about his trip to the Barebackers club (for work, or so he says). I find it sort of funny that he’s telling a story that he picked up while on the job for the Boise Weekly. I wonder if BW can claim that his story in Thr!ve is their intellectual property (though intellectual wouldn’t be quite the right word).

Oh, and I heard BW was going to add a “most gratuitous use of a ! in the middle of a word” category to their Best of Treasure Valley issue.

Safe money is on the Statesman scion.

After getting bounced from KQXR and the Journal Broadcast Group, Rena Marie has landed at IdaWest Broadcast Services — doing traffic hits for the Citadel group.

If you listened to KZMG for 8 seconds this morning, you know that the morning trio can’t a) record phone calls; b) had to work weekends; c) and are tired.

Now they are asking listeners to e-mail PD Jim Allen to complain on their behalf… funny.

From IdahoRadioNews.us:

KGEM-AM is hosting a local talk show. Dr. Ralph Smith and David Snedd are on from 8 to 10 pm Monday through Friday. The team reports they have a variety of talk topics, but focus on political material.

Interesting… think I’ll give it a listen tonight…

Since this site really was an extension of the original IdahoRadioNews.us site, I’m sad to see it go. They did a great job of covering the Eastern Idaho side of things — which is next to impossible for me. I’ve extended an invitation to Ben (the site’s owner) to contribute directly to this site — so we’ll see what happens. One side note — obviously this site takes a modest amount of money to operate. The only thing I ask (and this is likely against Google’s rules, but screw ‘em), is that if one of the ads to the left grabs your interest, you give it a click. This site is obviously just a hobby — and your continued support is much appreciated. And yes, I make a few typos — forgive me?

I got a tip several weeks ago that sent me “fishing” hoping the “Something’s Brewing” post would shake something lose. It hasn’t. And the tip isn’t really something I’m confident in… so in a more direct fashion: anyone know anything? An e-mail to the link at left will be held in the strictest confidence…

Today’s R&R website reports Pacific Empire Radio Corp. owner Mark Bolland (of Lewiston) will buy four stations in Oregon:<

KBKR-AM Baker City
KKBC-FM Baker City
KLBM-AM LaGrande
KUBQ-FM LaGrande

KKBC is at 95.3 FM, not much more info available, KBKR is at 1490 AM — and appears to be Country. Not much info on the LaGrande pair either. (Thanks for the tip!)

Cory, Debi & afternoon guy Jim Miller of Citadel-owned KQFC made an appearance on Journal-owned KIVI-TV Sunday. The trio were manning the phones for the Children’s Miracle Network Telethon, benefiting St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital. They also presented a check (the amount they raised escapes me) for the KQFC Radiothon they hosted earlier this spring. This used to be a KCIX/KXLT event — but made the transition to Citadel this year.