Local (and other) radio news

[RGMike]

OMFG...THEY'RE PLAYING M83 - MIDNIGHT CITY!!!! (And it's not New Music Thursday!)

they played it right before 10@10 this morning too.

[RGMike]

OMFG...THEY'RE PLAYING M83 - MIDNIGHT CITY!!!! (And it's not New Music Thursday!)

they played it right before 10@10 this morning too.

OTOH, KFOG is also playing the new Lisa Marie Presley -- WTFF??

[RGMike]

An East Bay Express piece on the changes at KBLX:

http://www.eastbayexpress.com/EarBud/archives/2012/05/03/quiet-storm-brand-may-dissolve-in-wake-of-kblx-sale

[RGMike]

Meant to note this earlier in the week, but  apparently Gene Burns, who had been hired by 910 AM after KGO let him go, and who then had a stroke, is offically not returning to radio anytime soon. Gil Gross (also ex-KGO) has been given Gene's timeslot on 910 permanently.

And Gil (with whom I worked many years ago at ABC) is just terrific. Sad circumstances, obviously but nice to see him get a regular gig.

[RGMike]

April radio ratings: KFOG down slightly; KITS up slightly (!). Oldies 103.7 is suddenly in the Top 10 -- WTF? Do people really like hearing "American Pie" 27 times a week?

[Alicat]

April radio ratings: KFOG down slightly; KITS up slightly (!). Oldies 103.7 is suddenly in the Top 10 -- WTF? Do people really like hearing "American Pie" 27 times a week?

Rarely I stray now from XM radio in the car but recently FM surfed and 103.7 was enjoyable enough. 98.1 is still at the top of my FM list.

[RGMike]

Listening to Kiss-FM, thinking maybe they'd be playing Donna Summer (so far no luck) but it was weird hearing Mike Krukow doing that AAA car insurance commercial that references the Giants -- I figured those only ran on Cumulus stations; Kiss-FM is Clear Channel.

ETA: another oddity... if a song is followed by commercials, Kiss-FM's stream will play another song by the same artist. It's happened twice this hour (first Lisa Lisa and then Janet Jackson) so I'm assuming it's not coincidence.  WDAS (which is also on the iHeartRadio platform) does not do this.

OMFG: Newcleus, "Jam on It". Smurf voices on black records in the '80s: worst. fad. evah.

[Tinka Cat]

Listening to Kiss-FM, thinking maybe they'd be playing Donna Summer (so far no luck) but it was weird hearing Mike Krukow doing that AAA car insurance commercial that references the Giants -- I figured those only ran on Cumulus stations; Kiss-FM is Clear Channel.

ETA: another oddity... if a song is followed by commercials, Kiss-FM's stream will play another song by the same artist. It's happened twice this hour (first Lisa Lisa and then Janet Jackson) so I'm assuming it's not coincidence.  WDAS (which is also on the iHeartRadio platform) does not do this.

OMFG: Newcleus, "Jam on It". Smurf voices on black records in the '80s: worst. fad. evah.

on my lunchtime constitutional I dialed up KBLX (102.9 FM) and heard Bad Girls

 toot toot!  beep beep!

[RGMike]

And so my search for a new morning radio home begins.  I tried Kiss-FM today; musically they're perfectly fine but... while I realize Renel has to be voice-tracked (at least during baseball season), it all sounds so... canned.  Tomorrow: KQED.

[radical347]

Renee's on with new music.  Had not been a big fan of her in the morning, but compared to Melanie...Renee sounds absolutely sublime.

[RGMike]

Renee's on with new music.  Had not been a big fan of her in the morning, but compared to Melanie...Renee sounds absolutely sublime.

Bwahahaha! She's like an adult sent in to explain radio to the children.

[Tinka Cat]

Renee's on with new music.  Had not been a big fan of her in the morning, but compared to Melanie...Renee sounds absolutely sublime.

absolutely what I was thinking.  Not a huge Renee fan, but I was like "thank GOD you're here!"

[RGMike]

More Cumulosity:  KGO had replaced its overnite programming with "Red Eye Radio" (aka the Midnite Truckers Network, also owned by sCumulus) back in Dec. As a very right-wing-ish show, it was of course a very poor fit with KGO and they've moved it to KSFO.  Now they're running a feed of Bloomberg radio from NYC and per a poster on the NYRMB it includes NY weather traffic and local commercials, which led that poster to ask "is anyone competent in charge over there?" (you don't know the half of it, bub!)  Another poster commented

Ding ding ding, we have a winner!

The answer seems to be ... no.

I'll have to listen again to make sure this is the absolute truth, but the person between Noon and 2pm, Kim Foster, is a news anchor, not a talk host, and that's still a news block. And they had been running news (albeit a badly-done one, hosted by a refugee from the KFOG Morning Show) from 7pm-Midnight, which now seems to end at 11pm so they can carry Bloomberg. I should point out that the 11pm hour is the audio from the "Bloomberg West" TV program, which is produced locally, contains local (largely Silicon Valley) content, but is 8 hours old by the time it airs on KGO.

The consensus out here is that the asylum has been turned over to the inmates. And now that the inmates have pillaged and burned KGO, they've set their sites on KFOG. I'm left wondering if this could be revenge for Sherman's march through Georgia.

[RGMike]

Someone on the radio-info.com SF Board posted this rather amusing bit: imagine if Classical stations had Morning Zoos...

Mahler-Boy: "Y'know, Joshua Bell is going to be in San Francisco playing his fiddle with the symphony.  I think that's AWESOME!"

DJ Scherzo: "You're all happy because you have a crush on him.  ADMIT it!"

Mahler-Boy: "Well, it's a man-crush. Just like you and Yo Yo Ma."

DJ Scherzo: "Yeah, but cello players are STUDS!  I asked my girlfriend about Yo Yo Ma and she went all dreamy, so I know it's stud power at work there."

Mahler-Boy: "Well, I happen to like Joshua Bell because he's GOOD!  Have you heard him do Bruch's Concerto #1?  Well, I HAVE, and he rocks on it.  He played it with the San Francisco Symphony and they couldn't even keep up with him. "

DJ Scherzo: "Yeah, but they threw in some Wagner on that show, so that's cheating.  Anybody can make Wagner sound good.  You can drive a truck through a Wagner concert and it won't even hurt the sound."

Mahler-Boy: "Which reminds me, we're late with traffic.  Here's Joe McBeethoven with traffic...

Joe McBeethoven: "Well, there's a jack-knifed big rig on the Nimitz. They spilled a number of violins on the freeway, but since they're low-priced Chinese violins, the CHP doesn't expect any traffic backup."

DJ Scherzo: "Can I pick one up for my kid?"

Mahler-Boy: "Yeah, she destroyed her last one, swatting at her brother."

Joe McBeethoven: "Over on Ygnacio Valley Road, there's a slowdown, probably for the concert at the Lesher Center."

Mahler-Boy: "Naw, they're playing Gershwin and nobody but blue-haired grandmas go to Gershwin..."

[radical347]

KMTT/Seattle appears to no longer be Triple A.  They look like something between Classic Rock and Jack.  The only things they are spinning that are close to currents are "Somebody That I Used to Know" (9x) and Rolling in the Deep (7x) -- and they don't show up anymore in the mediabase AAA airplay leaders for these.  There are also a handful of current songs that have one spin apiece.  Too bad -- they used to be one of my favorite AAA stations.