Idaho Radio News Etc.

Friday’s cover story in USA Today features the Boise State Broncos, begining with a narrative threaded from Dr. Robert Kustra taking calls on KBOI/News Talk 670 recently.

Read it here.

Gemma Gaudette is joining Journal Broadcast Group’s KIVI as anchor of its new 6:30pm newscast — according to the rumor filled threads at TVSpy.com.

What does this do to her gig on KIDO?

Update: This is not nailed down – and only time will tell if the chattering class is on the money…

KBOI/News Talk 670 is helping raise cash for the Make a Wish Foundation. For each $5000 raised, a star will light up in the windows of the US Bank building in downtown Boise. Make a Wish helps grant wishes to ill children year-around. The station will feature one child’s story each Wednesday morning at 8am.

ALSO: KBOI is collecting holiday foodstuffs December 14th at the Albertsons in Eagle — to benefit the Idaho Food Bank

KKGL/96.9 The Eagle is helping its audience fulfill specific wishes for those involved in Idaho Youth Ranch programs. The station has put together a list of Christmas wishes from IYR residents and posted them online. You can pick out a child, add them to your own holiday list and do your karma some good!

The stations of the Journal Broadcast Group are again working with the US Marine Corps and Albertsons to help put smiles on the faces of children in need this year. KQXR, KRVB, KCID, KGEM, KJOT and KTHI, as well as KIVI-TV are telling folks to donate a toy at any Albertsons location this season.

It’s become cliché – but the choice between heat and toys is real for many families. This program helps make Christmas as bright as it should be.

Toys for Tots is also supported this year by the KTVB News Group, as well as KBCI-TV. There are more than 140 drop off locations valley-wide. I’ve put together an interactive map and list of all of them – find it here

One of Boise radio’s longest-running charitable promotions is back this year. KXLT/107.9 Lite FM has teamed with Home Federal and Jacksons to grant wishes to deserving families across the valley. The sponsors began granting a variety of wishes on November 24th, and will continue through this month.

The program began at KCIX/K-106 (several mergers ago) with Home Federal and Steve & Tracy Eddy Chevron. The sponsors have stayed remarkably stable – swapping KXLT for KCIX in the past few years, and Jacksons taking over the Eddy Chevron role after buying out the local gas station chain.

KRVB/94.9 The River spent the past few weeks asking for ideas on what organization should benefit from its holiday “Concert for Cause.” Now the voting is focused down to four groups – The Women’s & Children’s Alliance, CASA family advocate program, Terry Reily Health Service and the Idaho Youth Ranch.

You can vote for a cause here – through Friday. The winner, announced Monday, will benefit from a December 19th Curtis Stigers concert at the Big Easy.

All four finalists will get some value out of the promotion. Each is being featured on KRVB, informing the audience about the services they provide.

Last month, I noted that Mix 106 and a local pair of realtors were giving away a house.

This information was incorrect. The station spent the month of November giving away “a chance to win a house.” What’s the difference? All the qualifiers were actually just getting a shot to play a separate game of chance to win.

Don’t confuse this with the common “key game” that many stations play — where a set number of people are given a key to a car, and one person is guaranteed to win. This instead appears to be an insured game — with the party or parties involved taking out insurance against someone actually winning.

The game’s official rules are posted on the website of realtors Andi Yamamoto and Tracy Kasper (here) – however the document is missing an “appendix,” an apparently key part of the rules:

A Grand Prize may or may not be awarded in this Contest, see Appendix A for details.

The same rules sheet — sans the appendix — is available on Mix106radio.com — (here)

At the event, the station did not give away the house I’m told — but did award a number of other prizes – including a Simmons jewelry package, Tamarack pass and an “intelliBED.”

A comment left in an earlier post (which had to be removed for a rules violation) said this: “What nobody knew was the contestants had to enter the 4 digit code to the garage door opener to win.” By my math, that would put each individual’s chances of winning at one in 10,000 (assuming that 0000 was a playable code).

It’s of note that the two PDF files posted to the two separate websites are actually different files – indicating they were encoded and uploaded independently of each other. The one on the KCIX site has a tag reading “PDF created with FinePrint pdfFactory trial version http://www.pdffactory.com,” while the other does not. The file size of the documents is also different.