Editor: David Tanny
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San Diego Radio News' Sixth Anniversary (February 5, 2005)February 5, 1999, was the official launch of something so big, the local mainstream newspapers and radio folks just didn't get it, in fact, many still don't have a clue.Dave's Radio Waves, now known as San Diego Radio News, was officially launched as a section on davesfunstuff.com, and like dfsxradio, it spun off onto its own website in 2002. The aim of the news was to report on news items that the local paper in town just won't acknowledge as important such as the rise of satellite radio, cutting-edge Internet technology in the works to bring wireless Internet radio wherever you are, interesing out-of-town radio stations to listen to, Dave's Radio Waves also reported on things that the local paper didn't care to cover such as comedy music made famous by Dr. Demento, what new electronica and dance radio stations to listen to, the rise of All Comedy Radio, and the fall of contemporary hit radio thanks to corporate radio meddling that made it all but irrelevant to today's tastes for diversity in music. When was the last time Preston Turegano gave us a weekly recap on the Dr. Demento Show? In the past ten years, San Diego has been exposed as a town that's full of bandwagon-loving sports team winners who care about the Padres and Chargers only when they're winning and not when they're losing. Where's the loyalty to these teams while they lose? San Diego music fans have a lot to learn about music diversity, and they're not learning a damn thing about it thanks to the public school system teached by ignorant overpaid teachers who don't care about exposing the teenagers to better genres of music, as well as local radio's reluctance to play what sounds good as opposed to what the teenagers are buying. Thanks to satellite and Internet radio, as SDN has shown you, the listeners can discover exciting comedy and dance music programming to listen to and leave the monotonous rap and pop alternative stations far behind. The past ten years on San Diego radio has been very stagnant as far as introducing new music genres and subgenres on a regular basis, and very reluctant to let go of playing those tired old oldies in favor of programming something interesting such as those heard on radioparadise.com, dfsxradio.com, grooveradio.com, energyarizonafm.com, and kozt.com, five of the stations I listen to at home. With monotonous talk shows on the dial saying basically the same things over and over again everyday, shows such as Rush, Roger, Al, Rick, Howard, and even Tom have gotten a bit boring as far as I'm concerned and I don't bother to listen to talk shows unless something occasionally big like that idiot President's plan to destroy Social Security for the working poor (yes, George Dubya Bush is a stupid moron for suggesting that I have to have an education on playing the stock market with money I don't have), I have gotten more active in seeking out new life and new civilizations originating in finer cities than San Diego (even Los Angeles now sucks as far as radio is concerned) such as Chicago, Henrietta, Phoenix, Ft. Bragg, Miami, and other places where the listeners support the kind of music I enjoy but the locals don't bother to program here. Perhaps if the buffoon radio reporters at the Union-Tribune could do likewise, or hire me and I'll see what I can do at the U-T. While indie-controlled playlists shut out independent artists from getting played on corporate radio, the Internet made stars out of fringe talents that never get any radio airplay, but sold me on music that's far more interesting than whatever playlist Diana Laird could ever come up with. Names such as the Throwing Toasters, Ken Turetzky, Tony Goldmark, Worm Quartet, Arrogant Worms, Four Postmen, and many hundreds more musicians populate my CD rack collection while I ignore the pop clones that all sound like Jay-Z, Avril Lavigne, and Good Charlotte that get tons of airplay on KIIS and Channel 933. Where are some of the pop artists that got hugely popular thanks to indie payola today? Anyone care?
Anyway, here's some of the stories I first reported on the first edition of
Dave's Radio Waves, dates also noted:
John Mammoser has done such demented hits as "9 Coronas", "Jagermeister", "My Girlfriend Is Inflatable" and "Yabba Dabba Do Ahh". He has also just completed a CD-R unofficial album of his best stuff and is unofficially selling it. The Dr. Demento Show will be playing 3 bits off of it the week of 2-13 / 2-14.
Just after the winner of the usual Showcase Showdown ended with the winner being declared, John stormed the stage trying to pass as the friend of the guy that just won the car. Bob Barker figured John knew the guy, and the models didn't know what was going on anyway, so John was able to high-five "Jason" (the winner), shake Bob Barker's hand, hug one of the models, jump into the back of Jason's new car, do three somersaults, and as the camera panned in for the close-up, he mouthed the words "I don't know these people"... which was...absolutely true.
There, web users, except the fans using Web TV (which doesn't have JavaScript) can click on the link asking listeners to take a survey of songs played on Star and ask them to rate the songs in a survey. I took the survey, and sure enough, I marked all the sleepy song artists like Jewel, Alanis, Sarah, and others with a "1", meaning, worst song, and selected the radio button, saying "Tired of It". In the final message text box at the end of the survey, I asked them to add more adult dance music and perish any thought of ever exploiting its listeners with stunts to publicize its station. Hope Star gets the message to have no more dangerous roller coaster marathons ever again.
Crazy Jay is launching a new two-hour comedy radio show similar to Dr. Demento's 25-year
syndicated radio show this month.
This show, like Dr. Demento's, is hard to market because it does not fit into most formats, but it makes many people laugh such as Yours Truly.
A radio station at 88.2 FM in Auckland, New Zealand is putting the show on the air on February 14th and is also asking the listeners to help them decide
if it stays on the air.
Crazy Jay is offering his show for any radio station for free just to get the show on the air, and also to gauge the audience response to the show.
Now, Magic has lost its luster since Jacor bought it from Nationwide and trashed most of its original music mix and deejay lineup.
First, Magic dropped the current soul hits of today, resulting in a 300 song playlist of R&B songs from the 60s through the early 80's.
Now I get to hear Evelyn King's "Love Come Down" every four hours.
Then they decided to drop Kelly Marshall, a disc jockey who brought a touch of magic to the local airwaves in the middays.
Randy Dotinga, the radio columnist of the North County Times, reports that Kelly Marshall, who brought true class to her 9 a.m.-2 p.m. shift at Magic 92.5, is a victim of the station's effort to produce a younger, hipper soul/R&B sound.
Let me tell you something about getting a hipper soul/R&B sound: Magic is going about it in the wrong way. If you want a hipper sound, why are you playing songs from the 60's-early 80's? All you're getting is an older-skewing audience. Though the black music is mature in nature, why exclude today's soul music altogether, especially from the mid-80's through today? That's no way to get a hipper sound if all you're playing is old school 24/7 everyday!
Randy also says in his news article that "In her two years on the air locally, Marshall has shown her mastery at occupying the elusive middle ground between radio hosts who can't shut up and those who just announce the time and the weather between songs."
"Ironically, Marshall was named 'Best Midday Personality' at a San Diego AIR radio awards ceremony last week. The contest's out-of-town judges obviously know good radio when they hear it. It's too bad the management at Magic 92.5 doesn't understand what good soul radio is all about."
When 92.5's ratings take a nosedive...again...Jacor might think about dropping the whole Magic format altogether and program a country station there instead. With KSON 97.3 #1 in the San Diego area, another country station may give it a run for its money.
Or better yet, resurrect the Groove format that disappearred from the Los Angeles airwaves when the wimpy 6kW stations Jacor bought were reformatted to a AAA KSCA-esque station in October. With a Groove format on a 100kW station from Mexico and a huge Latino audience here, it should give the dance music fans who have been displaced a new radio station for them all to enjoy once again.
Nastyman has worked over the past 20 years in Dallas, Kansas City, Chicago, and recently
Los Angeles, said he intends to "show the people of San Diego just how much fun turning on the
radio in the morning can be."
Channel 933 PD Diana Laird said that Nastyman will jolt (anyone remember the soft drink
with all the sugar and twice the caffiene?) morning radio here. Nastyman airs on 93.3 from
6am to 10am. For the folks in Los Angeles and other markets who wish to hear Nastyman, just
tune your computer over to http://www.channel933.com
and listen to KHTS programming live!
KHTS also airs dance mix programming weekdays at NOON for 30 minutes and Fri and Sat nights
from 9pm-1am Pacific Time for four hours.
Chio (without the N) moved to afternoons from 2pm to 6pm for the evening traffic rush on
XHRM 92.5 (Magic, formerly Independent Radio) and also takes on duties of assistant program
director.
The five-year agreement with flagship radio station KURS 1040 will be announced this month.
The owner of KURS, Jaime Bonilla, has a partnership with the owners of stations in four major Baja cities along the border and has plans to have Padres radiocasts on those stations as well.
It's possible that the Spanish Padres radiocasts will pop up in other cities in the South West such as the High Deserts. Los Angeles is a natural to have a Padres Spanish broadcast affilliation agreement in that area as well.
The U.S.-based FM's are situated 10-20 miles further north than any of the Mexican stations, thus, resulting in better coverage in the North County listening areas. I also noticed that billboards promoting Califormula's two Spanish stations, X99 (99.3) and Radio Latina (104.5) have cropped up in response to the Heftel invasion in San Diego.
Anybody notice this fun fact between the four Heftel FM stations in San Diego in Los Angeles:
102.9 in San Diego and 107.5 in Los Angeles play romantica.
A woman in a violent and abusive marriage called that day to a relationship expert who guested on the morning radio show.
"Becky" we will call her, appearred at the Kearny Mesa studio there and Jeff and Jer put her on the air. They asked her to get some help immediately to get away from the husband of hers. Telephone calls flooded in to help her deal with the broken relationship.
Jeff and Jer gave her a cellular phone and urged her to call a counseling center, who took her problem there.
Jeff and Jer at Star helped raise over $45,000 in financial aid to help house "Becky" in an apartment for a year as well as to pay her expenses.
San Diego's First News om 600 will be on weekdays from 5am to 9am with Paul Harvey's expanded report airing at 8:35am. Rush Limbaugh stays in the 9am-NOON slot.
Art Bell will be heard from 9pm-4am while "America in the Morning with Jim Bohannon" ends the day from 4am-5am.
KOGO staffers reason for the move is due to the average Southern California commuting time increasing during the afternoon and early evening, thus, having two local talk show hosts make up the extended drive time sked from 3-9pm.
The question is: Who is STILL commuting in the 8pm hour?
The most likely buyer for Chancellor Media? Clear Channel Communications based in San Antonio.
If Clear Channel purchases Chancellor outright, analysts say as many as 100 of the two companies' combined 930
radio stations would have to be divested to satisfy Justice Dept. rulings on multiple station ownership;
radio companies can own no more than 6-8 radio stations in a given market depending on the size
of the metropolitian area.
With Clear Channel/Jacor and Chancellor in a possible merger, expect a massive sell-off of
the excess stations listed for the Southern Califonia area
to a possible buyer, maybe, to CBS/Infinity, Viacom, Radio One, Disney, or a different entity.
Chancellor Media owns KYXY and KPLN in San Diego, and KBIG, KYSR, KKBT, and Mega 100.3 in Los Angeles
Jacor Communications, which is somewhat merged into Clear Channel, owns eight in San
Diego (KOGO, KSDO, KPOP, KJQY, KMSX, KGB, KIOZ, and KHTS) and five or six depending on who
you ask in Los Angeles (KXTA, KACD/KBCD, KEZY, KORG, and KIIS). Jacor runs three stations from Mexico
by special arrangement with the Mexican owners: XTRA-AM, XTRA-FM, and XHRM.
Later in the year of 1999, Clear Channel (which swallowed up AM/FM, Jacor, and Chancellor),
divested off the frequency of 100.3 and the radio format "The Beat" on 92.3 to Radio One, which moved
"The Beat" to its just-purchaed 100.3 frequency in Los Angeles. Clear Channel divested KACD/KBCD
to Entravision, which took them Spanish, KEZY to Salem which turned "The Mix" into "The Fish" Christian
music, and KORG to another owner.
KPLN and KYXY in San Diego
were sold to CBS/Infinity (later bought by Viacom). KSDO was sold to Chase Radio Partners, a somewhat
holding company for Clear Channel radio stations.
Jacor Communications (since purchased by Clear Channel) has become the first radio station
in the nation to embrace the Internet when coming up with an idea to brand its owned KSDO 1130 AM radio station
when a new format was launched that day.
Check out the handle that says it's connected with the Internet: KSDO.COM! I'm not kidding.
KSDO.com integrated its on-air programming and identity with the Internet complete with "computerized traffic."
For a while, one of Jacor's sister FM stations, KGB, occasionally ID'd its station with the name
of the handle and adding the "Dot Com" to its handle, hence, 101kgb.com doubles as a plug for its website.
KSDO.COM launced the new business-news/talk format by piling one million dollars in its studio along
its old studio along Murphy Canyon Road just south of Claremont Mesa Boulevard near I-15.
Dr. Laura moved to AM 600 KOGO from NOON-3pm.
Reruns of Rush Limbaugh at 4pm have disapearred as well, but still heard on KOGO from 9am-NOON.
KSDO.COM also simulcasted its signal on the Internet worldwide, allowing listeners to instantly interact with
the talk show hosts live and online whereever they happen to be.
Kevin McCarthy is the vice president and general manager of Jacor Communications of San Diego.
He explained that the branding of KSDO.COM in its handle offers the listeners a single identity
for the radio station worldwide.
"KSDO.COM is the first radio station of its kind. The radio station offers our listeners
the opportunity to instantly interact with our hosts either on the air or online. Never before
has a radio station so completely linked to the Internet," says McCarthy.
He must be forgetting that listeners have been interacting with other live local talk show hosts
on stations across the United States including Ted Leitner and the other talkers from 760 KFMB,
which has been on the Internet for a while at http://www.760kfmb.com/ for sometime in the past three years.
A search at broadcast.com turned up dozens, if not hundreds of many other talk-oriented radio stations
broadcasting local talk shows live over the Internet through Real Audio.
The KSDO.COM studios are located at 5050 Murphy Canyon Road (as of 2001, the stations moved to
9660 Granite Ridge Road, and in 2003, the KSDO radio station moved from there to 9446 Mission Gorge
Road with a new Spanish religion format).
The KSDO.COM radio studio was filled with one million dollars in U.S. currency after the
stock market closed to celebrate the new business radio station.
KSDO.COM Radio featured an all-business talk format including updates every fifteen minutes from
Bloomberg Business Radio.
The lineup went as follows: George Chamberlin 6 a.m. to 9 a.m., Don McDonald 9 a.m. to
12 p.m., "On The Money" with Ray Lucia from 12 to 3 p.m., "The Big Biz Show" with Sully and
Scooter from 3 to 6 p.m., The Computer Show from 6 to 7 p.m., Bruce Williams 7 to 10 p.m., and
Michael Reagan from 10 p.m. to 1 a.m.
Kim Komando (yes, that's her real name) is now heard on KSDO.COM @ 1130AM (as they call it) Mondays, Wednesdays, and
Fridays from 6pm-7pm as part of their daily Computer Show series heard on that station.
Komando is also heard from 7am-10am (live) on a Los Angeles talk station whose calls
I don't care to mention (KLSX). You can also visit her Komputer Klinic website at
http://www.komando.com. There you can see Kim's
Shareware Pick of the Week, learn more about the
digital goddess, list of Kool Site Kompilations, read her weekly kolumn (she must like
starting everything with a "K"), subscribe to her newsletter, and much much more.
Did anybody notice that the announcer coming in from the commercial break for Kim's show sounds like the
guy who announced the TV programs for Channel 10 KGTV?
You can listen to the San Diego station KSDO live at http://www.ksdo.com.
That other station in L.A., owned by Infinity/CBS, refuses to allow its radio stations to
be heard through the Internet. Does anyone know where Kim can be heard live on the Net?
Kim' show can also be heard on KSDO 1130 Saturday Nights from 6-9pm.
As for the other two days, Tuesday and Thursday, you can hear the local hosts Merlin and Cody
instead of Kim (who's show is a total of three hours a week).
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