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KZEW Tribute Site

KZEW is one of those stations that lives well in peoples memories, it captured a time when Dallas was king and everybody wanted to come here.
 
Eye Lipson said:
I've been pleasantly surprised at the number and scope of ZOO flashback sites. KZEW was an amazing collection of talented people in the right place at the right time. I treasure my years at The ZOO.


Ira "Eye" Lipson
Founding Zoologist and Program Direcor '73-'78
Click to expand...

I am very grateful to have been in the right place, at the right time, to be the beneficiary of your programming. The Zoo lives on in the minds of the people who loved the station. Dallas will not see its likes again, in this era of corporate radio incompetance.
 
The official KZEW tribute site is in the works. Still in testing stages, http://www.98kzew.com is destined to be the site for all things zooish. I'm happy to say the ex-ZOO staff are sharing their ZOO stories and memorabilia. Many features yet to come. Come by and check out the cool pictures or visit the ZOO Talk Forum!
 
Zoofreak, thanks for including the rock-105 clip, thats what real rock radio is: Sticking it to the man...
 
Since we have HD and internet radio now...has anyone considered relaunching the zoo as a 70's-80's rock station?? Id listen...
 
Slambang, that would be too much common sense . We are talking about todays radio, where that is in short supply.
 
I've thought before that they should put The Zoo on an HD2 channel at 97.9. It wouldn't be like it was back then, but it would still be a great idea for an HD2 station.
 
I mean 97.9 has the same format they had going into the Zoo Era (easy listening), it would make perfect sense to program it as a HD2 w/ the same type of imaging, jocks and music
 
Slambang said:
Since we have HD and internet radio now...has anyone considered relaunching the zoo as a 70's-80's rock station?? Id listen...
Click to expand...
I think John Rody tried that with an internet radio station "Itsthezoo" a few years ago but shut it down because of copyright royalties etc., but I may be wrong on that. Only listened a few times since I was on dialup at the time.
 
KZEW had an imitator in Abilene - a station on 105.1 - I forget the call letters at the time. They would shut down their beautiful music format at night and programmed much of the same music as KZEW. This was very nice for me - I was in Midland at the time and although KZEW would normally be well within range of my equipment, there was a stupid mono country station on 97.9 in Odessa that jammed it much of the time. Fortunately it was low enough power KZEW would occasionally punch through. But the Abilene station was much stronger so I could at least get the music. And finally the local cable company in Midland started carrying FM from Dallas including KZEW.
 
We actually lost The ZOO sounder roar at the station. We had it on cart, as I recall, and had been searching through SFX albums and couldn’t find it. I don’t think it was really an elephant sound, but then again it was 35 years ago. We used the sound on spots and promos for ZOO concerts & events. At one point I was using the sounder alone to identify the station between songs a few times an hour.
 
My Dad told me when he was Program Manager at WFAA that KZEW's studios were built on top of several inches of stabalized sand so the tonearms and needles on the albums would not easily skip due to excess vibrations.

Does that ring a bell?
 
The original ZOO studios were on the WFAA AM & FM floor, which was indeed super insulated against vibration. However, The ZOO broadcast from an extremely small studio including an antiquated General Electric console that sounded terrible. We constantly fought to overcome a terrible audio chain & transmitter that was controlled by uncaring TV engineers. I recall once talking to a sympathetic new director of corporate engineering and told him to go home, tune in KNUS 99 and then try to find the little FM station to the left. That was our 100,000 class C signal that totally sucked.

Eventually the ZOO signal was cleaned up, but it took many years.
 
Man, I sure miss the ZOO. :'(

Back when radio was radio! ;D
 
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