Big O and Dukes

[azenergyfan]

This past week I caught up with the boys by listening to their podcasts and they really need to be heard in phoenix as well as dc. If CBS was smart, once they flip Jamz to the Zone, they would syndicate a portion of their show back to phoenix. The boys actually do get Im's and calls from the valley still on their show and they have been gone for a year. I think that speaks volumes to the show and the fan base they built here. I would def put the boys on the Zone in middays or pm drive and mix in some music as well.

 

[phreakin]

I'm not sure about syndication working, but they were by far the best thing going on KZON. Only radio show i've laughed at for quite some time.

 

[crguy]

Anyone here think morning, midday, afternoon and night shows should all be local? Maybe it's just me.

Live. Local. Radio.

Save sin-dication for television.

Thank you and good night

 

[azenergyfan]

When you don't have a great talent pool, why have piss poor radio when you can have compelling great radio with someone outside of the market? I think the majority of the station should be local but 10 or so hours per day of syndication is not a bad thing.

 

[ykw]

Anyone here think morning, midday, afternoon and night shows should all be local? Maybe it's just me.

Live. Local. Radio.

Save sin-dication for television.

Thank you and good night

Radio has been the province of networks and syndicators since 1926. "Live and local" has never been the standard, except in the handful of markets large enough to support that as an alternative to national programming (or in those markets too tiny for the big boys to bother with).

And, frankly, why should it matter? Good radio is good radio, whether it originates next door, in the next town, in the next state, or halfway around the world. Why do I need some hometown hero to tell me, say, what the weather is when I can just turn to the actual weather station on my radio, among a dozen other options, or to read the local news headlines for a minute or two when I can watch full-length newscasts or read full-length stories on newspaper websites?

And, even if "local" were important, how local is "local"? Do east Mesans care about Glendale? Do the folks in PV give a hang about Queen Creek? There's very little beyond sports and the heat that defines the entire Phoenix metro area to make "local" particularly compelling to most actual locals.

 

[Big Owen Dukes]

"If CBS was smart, once they flip Jamz to the Zone..."

Hey, if CBS was smart, they never would have dropped the Free FM format in Phoenix. It was, at least after 6pm, clearly the most compelling radio this market has seen in quite some time.

And forget about "local" and all that. Big O...did that stand for Obidiah?...and Chad Dukes were dynamic talents that talked about stuff that at least one or two percent of the massive night-time radio audience in Phoenix cared about! Who cares if they came from the East Coast and had no connection with the "local" people! They anchored that station, and provided a perspective that was live and local simply because they were live and located within Phoenix, unlike the rest of the dayparts.

Those were our boys, fer cryin' out loud!!!

We need to bring them back.

 

[KMGX]

It's a very strange phenomenon; as time passes people seem to manufacture history or make the past seem better than it was--a sort of nostalgia in a way. Do you know why FREE-FM isn't here anymore? Because it 1) couldn't draw a sustainable audience in multiple day parts, nor could it really get any significant audience even for it's "good" shows. 2) As a result of a relatively low audience and cume, the station couldn't get decent confiscatory ad rates. FREE-FM was a large scale disaster in almost every market and Phoenix wasn't any different.

I find a few other things odd about some of the thoughts posted in this thread, such as, "who cares if the talent is local?" In the next breath, I'm sure some of these same people will wax poetically about how "radio was so much better when you had a local connection, there's too much syndication nowadays".

Speaking to the larger issue of radio and the talent pool--as it was brought up in this thread--there's a huge problem in the business today and it's multi-tiered. Certain formats are demanding the talent be edgy, creative, controversial and entertaining and model entire formats after people that have done this in the past; everyone wants another Howard Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Dr. Laura, etc--so, you end up turning off more of the audience than you turn on, because 24 hours of such nonsense is, generally, a failure in the Hot-Talk arena at least. Rather than growing or molding talent, radio today is more about recycling and cost-cutting, why do you think Imus keeps getting gigs? The Imus star faded out of the industry sky 25 years ago (if it was ever really shining all that brightly to begin with).

So, when reflecting upon FREE-FM, let's bare in mind that outside of Los Angeles and Dallas, it was a failure (even in Dallas it didn't get great ratings, but billed well and that's most important). Why it is that some people will keep insisting that KZON morph back to that abortion of a format is beyond me--maybe because it couldn't be any worse than what's there now (which, by the way, in terms of the numbers isn't really doing ALL that much better, except in the teen demo which has no money, yo yo yo). All of that being said, 101-5 JAMZ isn't going anywhere anytime soon, it's owned by CBS Radio after all, they'll hold on to formats that fail for a long time (and 1.5 years was a long time to hold on to FREE-FM considering how much it cost the company), JACK should be your number one example, oof what a disaster.

 

[azenergyfan]

I do agree with you that Free FM was presented wrong. It was too L.A. driven and I am a fan of
Free FM. I believe they should have stuck with Carolla and Leykis and possibly added an overnight show from the bird but they needed to be local in middays and of course they were local at night. If they were going to dump the format they should have went back to the zone and moved Big O and Dukes to mornings. It is true though that their last book was one of their best books.