Re: WHIZ Talent
> Can anyone else who's
> listen to Zanesville radio tell me about the stations there,
> particularly WHIZ? Who are their jocks, where'd they come
> from? What kind of morning show do they run?
Their jocks are affordable, local talent and I think they have squeezed out all the performance they can from them, so I'm not sure it's a lack of coaching that's the problem. Brian Wagner, the PD/OM is a smart, talented guy, so I'm sure he works with them to improve their on-air delivery.
The morning guy - Jared Stewart - used to do middays, but moved to mornings after Brian Wagner moved upstairs. Does a decent job. The show is mostly music, with news/weather/sports updates mixed in. They are information heavy, running both network and local news updates. They occasionally have a local guest on and they run some network stuff, like Leno's previous night monlogue. There isn't much personality on the show, it's more the DJ is there to fascilitate the different pieces.
The rest of the jocks are pretty below average - particularly the afternoon guy - Jeff Ball - who is downright awful. For a tiny market, it's probably the best they can do. The imaging is bad, but it used to be about 1000% worse before they recently overhauled it. Now it's passable, before it was embarrasing.
That said, they put on the best available local product for the audience.
It's a shame for the station to move. The only other options for locally are contemporary christian, country and WWJM-FM 105.9 ("The Mix"), which is Hot AC but bird-fed 24/7, and personality show heavy, with Bob and Sherri, Pam Stone and Matt and Ramona.
The AVC stations in Cambridge bleed over, and they do an awfully good job with some local content for a market even smaller than Zanesville, but they are focused on Guernsey County and east, rather than Muskingum and Licking counties.