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Old article about the launch of Star 107.9

Two things.

1) I was there (not as a host but simply an observer) the day Star 107.9 debuted. Operating from frayed thread, Jason (Kevin) put together a pretty good station. Although one can't rest on their laurels, he pulled off a class act with very limited and small resources.

2) The google books thing has allowed me to go back and research a lot of old memories and history of favorite hosts. For example, did you know Bob Conners worked for a daytime station in Pittsburgh (WEEP) spinning country music before coming to WTVN and even has/had a CMA membership? http://books.google.com/books?id=OS...=onepage&q=bob conners pittsburgh cma&f=false Wonder if he kept it up? And former WTVN morning man John Fraim was lost in a cave in Kentucky when he was working in Cincinnati?
 
That's a good article. I ought to frame it.

<shameless plug>
Of course if you want to listen to STAR1079, and you have an Internet connection, all you have to do is go to http://www.star1079.com and click on the 128k Play button and that will take you to a page that you can launch the stream. Or if you have a 3G phone with an unlimited data plan you can get it on your phone by setting up a free account with Moodio.fm and then search for the station "STAR 107.9" and then add it to your list of stations, and then using your cell phone go to their web site and launch the stream. Moodio even lets you select the data stream quality. So in a way, you can take STAR1079.com with you in your car.
</shameless plug>

Maybe the radio we remember "when Columbus radio was good!" can still exist... on the Internet.
 
del_griffith said:
Two things.

1) I was there (not as a host but simply an observer) the day Star 107.9 debuted. Operating from frayed thread, Jason (Kevin) put together a pretty good station. Although one can't rest on their laurels, he pulled off a class act with very limited and small resources.

2) The google books thing has allowed me to go back and research a lot of old memories and history of favorite hosts. For example, did you know Bob Conners worked for a daytime station in Pittsburgh (WEEP) spinning country music before coming to WTVN and even has/had a CMA membership? http://books.google.com/books?id=OS...=onepage&q=bob conners pittsburgh cma&f=false Wonder if he kept it up? And former WTVN morning man John Fraim was lost in a cave in Kentucky when he was working in Cincinnati?
Click to expand...

Del:

I remember the article quite well...more so than I remember the interview, believe it or not. Thank you for your kind words.

You're correct to suggest that we didn't have the backing that the big stations had back then. But, initially, though, we did have some backing, and some budget...just not as much as one would have liked. Those were the fun times for the Star project. I had enough cash that I could do a medium sized book contest once or twice a year that, with a little smoke and mirrors, could be made to sound bigger than it was. And, being allowed to debut the station commercial-free for 8 days was enough to gain attention and make a splash.

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, I only wish there had been more money initially to have allowed me to do music research and promote. That's what we really lacked and what caused major headaches for me down the line. When we did start to research the music toward the end of things, understanding what we needed to do musically was as clear as the nose on Michael Jackson's face. (If you'll pardon my pun.)

The real "frayed thread", or less than it, actually came at the end.

And Vince and the crew has done a great job with the website. It's not exactly what was on the air minute by minute, but it's close enough. And, Vince has allowed me some input as well on the music on the internet site. So, it doesn't surprise me that it does as well as it does. Not so much because of my input, but because we've all learned a lot over the years about what works...and what doesn't.

I should get that article from the Billboard Archives and frame it. But rest assured, I don't rest on laurels...I've got my fingers in so many pies right now, I should be giddy from the sugar buzz....
 
Kevin - It looks like the "20-year rule" you proposed early in the article is being validated once again.  As you may know, CC is having in-demo success with its new 90's station in Louisville, and has just debuted a similar format in Tulsa.

Alan - Thanks so much for digging this up.  Fun read!
 
Nu, you're quite welcome! This is a great article. Kevin, you should frame it. You guys at Star made radio history by debuting the first 80s Oldies station in the country.
Also to note...Kevin was right in the article where he stated that they could get by playing stuff from the late 70s through the early 90s on Star. I think that the same should probably apply to Gen X Radio as well...I would play songs from 1987 through about 2002. That way the playlist wouldn't get so repetitive.
For the die-hard fans of Star, Deborah George, the former overnight personality on Star for its first year or two is doing mornings on Star1079.com. I was impressed that most of the exact same imaging on the webstream is the same as it was when Star was on 107.9. Jake Sommers is on in the afternoon as well.
 
Alans613, thanks for mentioning that. That reminds me, on New Years Day (tomorrow), STAR1079.com will re air stream the 80s Top 100 countdown hosted by Star's original Program Director Jason Roberts. It starts at 8am Eastern (yes we gave Deborah George and Jake Sommers the day off) and it goes for 10 hours.

I should mention that STAR1079.com follows the core programming that Jason Roberts did at the station when it was on FM, but we've also added other 80s songs that listeners have requested (and still add as listeners let us know what is missing). Jason laid the foundation for the station, and what we do now is try to keep it fresh by sprinkling it with 80s songs that either don't get played by regular 80s FM stations, or that were long forgotten. Doin' our best to keep the 80s alive!

Given this is the last day of 2009, I'd like end it by saying thank you to the original staff of STAR 107.9 FM, Jason Roberts, Flounder, Jake Sommers, Chuck Baker, Billy Burke, Kelly Quinn, Andrew Wright, J. Matthews and Deborah George for helping put the station back together and making it sound the way it did when it was on the FM dial and thanks to all the others that have also helped out, but the list is too long to mention here. If we are lucky, we might even have Scary Larry on tonight, he was also part of the original FM staff.
 
One feature I always enjoyed on Star 107.9 was the "Kroger Top 6 @ 6", which spotlighted the top 6 songs of a particular year during the current week.
Also a couple of other "Star" jocks if I remember correctly...J-Money, Tony Scott(Formerly of WNCI), and Drew Hansen(Also formerly of WNCI).
 
Plus Suzy Wad was a fill in for a bit on the mornings. One of my favorites was Club1079 on Saturday nights. I've been trying to see if DJ AAA could get me those discs so can bring Club1079 back to STAR1079.com, but he has been very busy.
 
V.Riley said:
Plus Suzy Wad was a fill in for a bit on the mornings. One of my favorites was Club1079 on Saturday nights. I've been trying to see if DJ AAA could get me those discs so can bring Club1079 back to STAR1079.com, but he has been very busy.
Click to expand...
Suzy filled in for the vacationing Kelly Quinn for one week on the morning show with Andrew Wright in the Summer of 2000. I even remember the old Star website posting pics of her in the studio doing the show.
 
Well I have to admit to having some warm fuzzies here ::) As the original overnight jock, I felt very privileged to be part of the Star launch. The staff was one of the best groups of people I have ever worked with (Jason Roberts/ Kelly Quinn, Jay Stevens, Billy Burke and Nick Danger.) There were definitely some challenges with the budget but Kevin always managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat when we needed to. Even as the years have rolled on, Star remains one of my favorite stations to have both worked for and listened to.

One of the best times was our first anniversary concert with Rick Springfield at Mecca. The venue may have been a dive but the concert was great. The concert was outside and WNCI projected their logo on to the stage briefly. We had quite the rivalry going on there for a while. You know you have done something right when a 175,000 watt giant feels threatened by a 3,000 watt baby
 
DebBonner said:
Well I have to admit to having some warm fuzzies here ::) As the original overnight jock, I felt very privileged to be part of the Star launch. The staff was one of the best groups of people I have ever worked with (Jason Roberts/ Kelly Quinn, Jay Stevens, Billy Burke and Nick Danger.) There were definitely some challenges with the budget but Kevin always managed to pull a rabbit out of the hat when we needed to. Even as the years have rolled on, Star remains one of my favorite stations to have both worked for and listened to.

One of the best times was our first anniversary concert with Rick Springfield at Mecca. The venue may have been a dive but the concert was great. The concert was outside and WNCI projected their logo on to the stage briefly. We had quite the rivalry going on there for a while. You know you have done something right when a 175,000 watt giant feels threatened by a 3,000 watt baby
Click to expand...

The Springfield concert was a blast...(I think the final total attendance was around 3,000). And yeah...WNCI might like to forget we ever existed, but they were "concerned" enough to, as Deb said, project their logo on the stage, try and lock us out of 80's concerts at the former Polaris Amphitheater, etc. For the most part, it was the usual "radio" games.

So, was there ever payback on stuff like that? There was, but we had nothing to do with it. The day we were at Polaris on a very windy concert day and I watched the WNCI inflatable radio come off it's moorings (apparently the set up people didn't have it staked in the ground well enough), and go rolling down a hillside. I had to go to the box office to tell them they needed to "find the guy from WNCI" to tell him his big radio was being blown en-route toward Polaris Parkway!

Sometimes...there is a God!
 
Star was an amazing station that came along at the right time. Like I told Andrew Wright, in Miami the number 1 station was their 80"s station. Star's signal was weak in spots, but it was an amazing station.
 
Boss Jock said:
Star was an amazing station that came along at the right time. Like I told Andrew Wright, in Miami the number 1 station was their 80"s station. Star's signal was weak in spots, but it was an amazing station.
Click to expand...

Not so much amazing...we didn't know what we were doing most of the time...we were making it up as we went. But, God bless a management that gave us the freedom to experiment, and the freedom to fail at times. But, I do agree with you, I think we came along at just the right time, and frankly, kept the big guys in town watching us because they never knew what we were going to do next.

We were dangerous to them - a competitor that wasn't going to win 12 plus, but was willing to throw away the rules in a programming sense just to see what would happen. It was fun to be a part of it...and I'm proud of the success we enjoyed.
 
alans613 said:
One feature I always enjoyed on Star 107.9 was the "Kroger Top 6 @ 6", which spotlighted the top 6 songs of a particular year during the current week.
Also a couple of other "Star" jocks if I remember correctly...J-Money, Tony Scott(Formerly of WNCI), and Drew Hansen(Also formerly of WNCI).
Click to expand...

Here is a clip of the Top 6 @ 6 Program on Star 107.9 aired in Dec. 1998:
http://www.mediafire.com/?64i9tf43o1b5yfd
 
I was living in Columbus during some of STAR'S days. I was working for XEROX in Groveport for awhile (4 months) and STAR was the only thing they piped thru the warehouse, for some unknown reason STAR 107.9 came in clearer in a tilt up concrete building then the high power FM's like WNCI or WCOL. I also seem to recollect on my car radio STAR came in better in Marysville and around Bellefontaine then it did in Dublin. Some of STAR'S music was a little different but was much more enjoyable to listen to then other "small" Columbus signals like CD101.
 
I have some old STAR 107.9 broadcasts on cassette around here somewhere. What an amazing station on such a bad signal. One of my all-time favorite stations!
 
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