I was driving back to LA from Sacramento and tuned to KMJ today. I heard the legal ID followed by enternal bumper music with the announcement “FOX Across America” starts in 4 minutes. Suffice to say I could only take about two minutes of it and tuned out just after they announced the show would start in 2 minutes. It sounded like bad radio. Too bad they don’t have the afternoon news block anymore.
-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Fresno / Central Valley KMJ 5 minutes of bumper music at Top of the hour?
- Thread starter Michael Rivers Kramer
- Start date
Day after Christmas, nobody in the building and someone entered the wrong code before they all went away for the Holiday.
I agree. It's a sad state of affairs for traditional radio as I hear the PUR listening is down to below 20 percent of what it was 20 years ago. Back then, an error like that on a 50,000 watt blowtorch would be unheard of. Today it's like "...and your point"? Of course the amount of listening when the 26th lands on a Friday, even in PM drive must be like, "did someone leave the light on"?
We're also talking about after 7PM for an AM station on the day after Christmas. Nobody listening, except a radio fan traveling on the 5.
I'm amazed there was music. They're covering a hole before they join a nationally syndicated show. The music may have been coming from Fox. Perhaps there should have been a newscast there. Don't know who they might carry for TOH news. I heard a sports station running a network channel ID (with no music) a few days ago. I've heard 1 khz tone in similar situations. If there was audience for this station at that time, they've have a local host. There isn't so they don't.
Not just traditional radio. Try calling your doctor. You get an answering service, and they'll tell you to call 911.
I'm amazed there was music. They're covering a hole before they join a nationally syndicated show. The music may have been coming from Fox. Perhaps there should have been a newscast there. Don't know who they might carry for TOH news. I heard a sports station running a network channel ID (with no music) a few days ago. I've heard 1 khz tone in similar situations. If there was audience for this station at that time, they've have a local host. There isn't so they don't.
Not just traditional radio. Try calling your doctor. You get an answering service, and they'll tell you to call 911.
Last edited:
It was around 5PM
KMJ is owned by Cumulus....enough said. 🙁
They run Fox Across America starting at 7. Perhaps they started it early because their normal drive time show was off.
Maybe that was where the problem started.
If we live long enough, we'll hear it (or it will happen and we'll miss it) on KFI, or KNX or KIIS.
Theres nothing to alert them....they have audio on air and nothing will trip a silence sensor
You expect someone to be listening to their station 24/7?
Im one guy with one station and i keep a very close eye on my stuff but even then, stuff still happens
When I was taking a marketing class at Arizona State University in the late 1980s, the professor posed the question: "When is the best time for your business to begin advertising. Is it when you're down and have no money or when you are rolling in cash flow." Answer: "It's when you're down and have no money that you need advertising the most."
I'm afraid she was right. Radio is down, money is flowing out of it as if there's no tomorrow, they're trying to compete by adopting not only the "new" Internet format but behaving like other Internet radio stations. There are three big problems with this approach: 1) radio is losing what made it popular in the first place; 2) there are so many other Internet outlets that are better at operating as a one-person outfit that radio is never going to be able to compete with them; and 3) because of the exponentially larger number of Internet-only operations out there, over-the-air broadcasts on the Internet are never going to draw the kinds of listenership and advertising dollars that over-the-air radio did, not even the meager (by comparison) advertising dollars that over-the-air commercial radio is getting today.
No I wouldn’t, but PM drive on a weekday in a top 70 market even if it’s on a holiday? And the other stations in the market are giving traffic reports, albeit probably from SF. Truthfully, I don’t expect much from radio anymore. I’d rather listen to streaming or my iTunes.
One thing that made it popular was that it had no competition. Nothing radio can do about that.
Better? You mean they play the music I want rather than their own playlist? Not much radio can do about that.
What I hear from people on this board a lot is comparing radio now to what it was like 30 years ago. Internet outlets don't have that point of comparison.
That's OK since the audience and advertising for over the air is declining anyway. The way to handle that is to budget for the new reality. Internet radio has already done that. That's why it's mainly automated with no personalities.
The facts are pretty obvious, Ted. People are not coming back to traditional old style radio. There's nothing broadcast radio can do that will cause people to throw away their digital devices and replace them with transistor radios. Believe me, I know.
We can try to act like nothing's wrong, and things are just like they were, but they're not. This is the 4th quarter. Our logs used to be filled with spots from retailers. Most of them have gone out of business. Why? The internet.
My above response made me wonder how radio broadcasters who have no, or very little, Internet presence are doing these days. There aren't very many anymore but I remembered one group out of northern Vermont and northern New Hampshire led by Barry Lunderville. The group briefly placed individual websites for its radio stations plus streams for these stations around 2010 but both were gone by the end of 2012, if memory serves.
Anyway, I looked up Mr. Lunderville online and discovered he had passed away in 2018. (A competing radio site had listed his death as having occurred in 2023 but the obituaries for him are dated 2018.) Though I no longer found any individual radio station websites, I did find this website
Radio New England Broadcast Group - Home of WLTN, WXXS, WMOU, MIXX, KISS, THE OUTLAW AM/FM Radio | Discover Local Radio Today
Experience Northern New Hampshire and Vermont's best local radio with curated music, engaging shows, and community updates on WLTN, WXXS, WMOU, MIXX, KISS, and THE OUTLAW.
radionewengland.net
which says that the stations are run by a Brian Lunderville (presumably his son?) now. The site does show a stream that is currently disconnected and is apparently available only for race days. What I haven't been able to determine yet is whether by (mostly) eskewing the Internet, These stations have been able to save money or if they are losing money at the same rate (if not faster) than their online competitors, including Cumulus, the owner of KMJ, the station being discussed in this thread.
Most satellite programs fill with *something*. Some syndicators use PSAs or PI advertising. Premiere tends to use a countdown for the ToH news break and spots elsewhere.
That's why I said I was amazed there was music
Yeah BUT.. i operate on the.. everyones human and mistakes happen... and maybe they have the day off there.
I have the day off the 26th as well. one station im associated with closes the office dec 24th to january 4th but still regularly checks vmail and email and has notes up on the door, still voicetracks shows, etc
Same thing 4pm on New Year's Day. Maybe whoever is setting up the automation is assuming that the TOH Fox News is included in the feed. I too miss the afternoon news. At this point I'd enjoy the morning news in podcast form but it's the one show they don't release that way.
A few nights ago WWNC-570 in Asheville, NC kept having a 1khz tone go off and on every 5 seconds. They left the satellite receiver on a channel that plays a Bloomberg Update and the automation didn't kick it off to go to another talk program. The tones were heard as far as Minnesota and Nebraska by DXers.
I have noticed affiliates in some very small towns will just leave the satellite feed going during 'local' advertising, so there's 3-4 minutes of non-stop PSAs before the program resumes. John Tesh feeds a bunch of national spots and 1-2 PSAs during 'local' avails, and a song around :37 after the hour. Have noticed this over and over on KKRB Klamath Falls OR (a great AC station BTW). But most IFYL affiliates insert his advice segments in between the local playlist, so this isn't a common occurrence. Delilah throws 4 min of PSAs in the local avail.
I still have about 45 minutes of generic smooth jazz music archived from several years ago when WDAY-AM Fargo's automation didn't kick in and they kept playing the Premiere "Test Channel" all night. Does that channel still exist, PT?
i know a radio station that plays the barix test channel over night and has for years.. the station GM thinks its a programming service, has been told otherwise and wont believe it