SDN Gets Ink (Oct 21, 2005)

Excerpt:

"I'm thinking it had a lot of competition from the Mighty 1090's Padres baseball (broadcasts), as well as from the country stations," said Web publisher David Tanny of sandiegoradionews.com. "I guess people wanted relief from the news of the day."

With all the bad news about Hurricane Katrina that dominated the airwaves (both radio and TV) most of the time in late August and early September, people wanted to hear something else as they were already aware of the devastation and most of them probably did donate some money towards the Red Cross relief efforts. Also that month, the race for the pennant by the San Diego Padres helped the all-sports Mighty 1090 gain some momentum, but with the team eliminated by the St. Louis Cardinals in the first round two Saturdays ago, and uninteresting Ducks hockey taking over, expect the gain to be only temporary and go back down a point until the Padres begin spring training next March.

ESPN 800 Complaints and Grievances (Oct 21, 2005)

The good news?

ESPN Radio 800 is carrying every game of the World Series featuring the St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Houston Astros.

The bad news?

ESPN Radio 800 is carrying every game of the World Series featuring the St. Louis Cardinals vs. the Houston Astros.

At night after the sun sets, you just can't get ESPN 800 in North County and it disappearrs when you drive east on highway 52 through Western Santee between the transmitters of KFMB-AM 760.

Some of the games were on the Los Angeles ESPN 710, but some weren't being broadcast there because of hockey games by the Los Angeles Kings.

ESPN 800 didn't broadcast one of the NLCS games last Saturday afternoon due to a college football game between the USC Trojans at Notre Dame. Who could complain about a game with a nail-biting ending provided by quarterback Matt Leinart, who was just recently named one of seven finalists for the 2005 Johnny Unitas Golden Arm Award, presented annually to the nation's top senior collegiate quarterback. Helix High alumini runningback Reggie Bush is once again among the list of most noteworthy college football players today like Leinart. During the commercials, I tuned in to 710 which was airing the NLCS game.

ESPN 800 had many broadcast glitches including having their automated commercial inserter not queueing up and the broadcast going dead air when it was time for the local station break (in Spanish then in English as XESPN 800 Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico). Instead, it went to a default feed of ESPN Radio for a couple of minutes before the engineer flipped the switch back to the baseball feed.

Seems that ESPN 800 is still using dialup from the studio to the Mexican transmitter. The USC game last Saturday suffered from signal dropouts, sometimes stopping when the announcer was just getting to the point where the runner reached the goal line in the game (he's at the 20...15...10...5....CCKKKKKHHHH!!!) Hey ESPN, invest in a T3 line and get rid of that annoying dialup!

And what's with the baseball game between 710 and 800? There's a 30 second gap between the time I hear a play on 710 and the time it airs on 800. No wonder the 800 game did not sync up with the pictures on Fox 6. Feels like a 3-4 hour Ashlee Simpson lipsynching gaffe 1/2 a minute out of whack.

Can't we get a local station like KCBQ to pick up ESPN and turn 800 back into a Jose Mexican oldies format?

Jose! "Toca lo que Quiere" (Oct 21, 2005)

'Jose,' who personifies everything heard between the music on the new format, will make his debut on Thursday, October 20th at 3:00 p.m. Pacific Time on KRCX 99.9 FM in Sacramento and at midnight, local time, on KCVR 98.9 FM in Modesto, and KCVR 1570 AM in Stockton, California, KRZY 1450 AM Albuquerque, New Mexico and KMXA 1090 AM Denver, Colorado.

'Jose: Toca lo que Quiere' (he plays what he wants) targets Hispanic adults 25-54. Featuring a mix of Spanish-language adult contemporary hits from the late 1970's to today, 'Jose' will air a wide variety of music from an array of artists, such as Los Bukis, Juan Gabriel, Los Yonics, Rocio Durcal, Los Tigres del Norte, Vicente Fernandez, Los Angeles Negros, Mijares, Alejandro Fernandez and more.

"Entravision Radio leads the industry by innovating and creating new Spanish-language radio formats that are just as diverse as the U.S. Hispanic market itself," said Nestor Rocha, Vice President of Programming for Entravision Radio. "We are very excited about the launch of 'Jose' and will continue to create Spanish-language radio formats that accommodate the different tastes of groups within the U.S. Hispanic marketplace."

Wilma Resurrection (Oct 21, 2005)

First off, novelty singer Tony Goldmark has teamed up with his girlfriend for a duo that they call "Flying Like Wilma", and had a couple of songs played on Dr. Demento a few weeks ago.

This past week, we learn of Hurricane Wilma, which is currently at stage 5, with winds over 175 mph.

And on Wednesday night, during a season premiere of "Drawn Together" on Comedy Central, a new roommate was being sought and a Wilma Flintstone was seen for a few seconds being interviewed.

I hate it when people name hurricanes with people names. I wish they would use numbers and letters to desinate a hurricane instead.

The Wires (Oct 21, 2005)

(read more - Bill Virgin-Seattle PI). Don't like the job a local radio station has done? Now's the chance to tell the Federal Communications Commission about it. Radio licenses last eight years. The FCC has set up the review and renewal system so that all licenses in a state expire at the same time; in Washington, that's Feb. 1, 2006. The regional group including Washington is now up for review. Renewal applications were due in to the FCC by Oct. 1.

FMQB: David Rehr Chosen To Succeed Eddie Fritts At NAB