How Do You Launch a New Radio Station but Hire The PD Later? (KJXK San Antonio)

[Gregg.]

How often do we see this? An owner changes the station. Then when all the listeners in the market have already sampled it, that's when the Program Director is hired. Radio Insight has a story today that Sam Pieprzyca has been appointed the PD at Bob-FM 102.7, which was formerly running the Jack-FM format straight from national syndication.

The article explains his experience with the Adult Hits format and how he will be in tune with the San Antonio market. But the station already debuted weeks ago! Instead of the Jack voice, it now has a new Bob voice. But unfortunately, he's not as funny as Jack, even though he makes similar snide remarks between songs.

Here's the problem. All the Bob humor is timeless. I have the feeling jokes we hear Bob say today, he'll say next month and next year. Meanwhile, Jack makes jokes about current events and pop culture. Jack-FM has a team of writers based at KCBS-FM who come up with what Jack says each week.

Not to jinx Sam Pieprzyca but how's he gonna do that? And on an automated station with a set format but no DJs, what exactly does a Program Director do? All the prep work you'd expect a PD to be part of, playlist, logos, liners, Pieprzyca wasn't on the payroll.

Sam Pieprzyca Rises To KJXK Program Director

Following the January relaunch of Variety Hits "102.7 Jack-FM" KJXK San Antonio as "102.7 Bob-FM", Connoisseur Media has announced the

radioinsight.com

 

[TheBigA]

Not to jinx Sam Pieprzyca but how's he gonna do that? And on an automated station with a set format but no DJs, what exactly does a Program Director do? All the prep work you'd expect a PD to be part of, playlist, logos, liners, Pieprzyca wasn't on the payroll.

Somebody has to actually run the station everyday. The music doesn't schedule itself. The promotion strategy has to be localized. I've never run a Bob station, but if it's like Jack, the PD writes the liners the voice says. So perhaps the current liners are lifeless because they were written by the format captain. Now with the local guy in place, he can add some color.

 

[lanceventa]

He was promoted to Program Director after being with the cluster in other roles including most recent APD since 2004.

You're making it like they had nobody doing the work, but he was already in the building. The promotion was just finalized later. There's also a thing most companies have these days called corporate programming leaders and the cluster OM has been in programming forever (and likely was the day-to-day PD before today's announcement but never fully specified for me to report as such).

 

[Mark Roberts]

He was promoted to Program Director after being with the cluster in other roles including most recent APD since 2004.

You're making it like they had nobody doing the work, but he was already in the building. The promotion was just finalized later. There's also a thing most companies have these days called corporate programming leaders and the cluster OM has been in programming forever (and likely was the day-to-day PD before today's announcement but never fully specified for me to report as such).

Rarely do I get involved in pure-play programming discussions, but since I was in San Antonio last weekend…

The “Bob” concept is well-established and known. It’s not going to run itself, but it should be fairly easy to get it up and running with only minor adjustments possibly needed later. It sounded well-executed to me when I heard it. It sounded a little more mainstream than the Austin version, but Austin is not San Antonio, either.

To amplify a point that Lance made above: in corporate environments, it’s often the case that someone is formally promoted to a position after they’ve actually been doing it for a while. A common saying is, “to get promoted to a bigger job, do that job”. That’s true in a lot of fields, not just radio or TV.

 

[stan]

Bob is the poorer relative to Jack and not nearly as appealing. Must be a cost saving mice.