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Preston Westmoreland wrote to The Tribune

A

airchic

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The Tribune articles are free on-line for one day only, so I have cut and pasted an excerpt from today's paper...The Bottom Line: Radio man Westmoreland can sell homes, too By John Yantis, Tribune May 31, 2006 Got a note this week from Scottsdale resident and former Valley radio talk show host Preston Westmoreland. You’ll remember Westmoreland and KTAR (620 AM) split in August 2004. He turned the night shift offer down and began using a real estate license he held for more than 20 years. It appears he’s good at selling houses. His note said he was named “Rookie of the Year” for highest sales volume for any new agent at Russ Lyon. He and his wife negotiated the sale of the legendary Boulder House in north Scottsdale. It was a home that hadn’t sold for nine years. The house built inside of pile of boulders was sold to the Ft. McDowell Indian Nation for nearly $5 million in cash. The deal included ten acres of land surrounded by Whisper Rock Golf Course. “KTAR finally did ask me to go back and I was able to turn them down,” Westmoreland penned in the note. Station program director Russ Hill, who has been on the job three months, said he and KTAR’s new general manager believe previous station heads mishandled some of the personalities over the years. “Preston was a classic example of it,” he said. “(Sportscaster) Al McCoy was another example of it. We have both made efforts to reach out.”
 
Preston, Bill Heywood, Tom Dillon. All ex-KTAR guys in the real estate biz now.Not only is KTAR driving away its listeners (or are they just dying of old age?), it's driving its ex-employees completely out of radio.
 
Dear God, Przzztn at night?Why? Think of all the needless deaths from people falling asleep in their cars.Sure thing Pzztn, you go sell houses, you probably bore prospective buyers into a hypnotic state.As for KTAR, WTF? Why don't they just do direct broadcast into masoleums?
 
Preston was a GREAT talk show host, and I have a great deal of respect for him, BUT he was starting to slip towards the end. The last couple of years he was at KTAR, he had started to stutter and stumble a lot. Remember the traffic reports? The traffic music would play for a minute or more before he could spit out Detour Dan's intro. A pain in the buttocks when you're waiting to hear the traffic report!I think it was the early stages of Dewey Hopper disease. Speaking of Dewey... maybe he should try real estate?
 
SanCarlos said:
Preston was a GREAT talk show host, and I have a great deal of respect for him, BUT he was starting to slip towards the end. The last couple of years he was at KTAR, he had started to stutter and stumble a lot. Remember the traffic reports? The traffic music would play for a minute or more before he could spit out Detour Dan's intro. A pain in the buttocks when you're waiting to hear the traffic report!I think it was the early stages of Dewey Hopper disease. Speaking of Dewey... maybe he should try real estate?
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Are you suggesting that Preston had a stroke, like Dewey did a couple of years ago? Yeah , his traffic reports are always an adventure, but you got to admit he's game to not let it go.-30-
 
Hey you get what you pay for. ;D Or in this case "don't" pay for. When Ktar signed with Metro/Westwood they let their "in house" traffic reporters go (Jim Welch and Joe Corrao) so they get Dewey and the rest of Metro's people for free. WOW! Free Dewey!!! Was that a "previous" management decision or "current" management decision? Either way...bad decision.
 
Re: Is it $ or pride?

Is it really about the $ for side-of-the-bus media icons turned grocery-cart realtors or is it about snubbing their noses at the station that snubbed them?Hey, if a person can afford to feed his pride, I say go for it! But can ya love hawking bedrooms, baths and beyond as much as pitching topical talk and Kinetico, Ky-ko, etc.?
 
Regardless of who made the Metro decision, the poor quality is Metro's fault. Dennis McBroom and Lee Powell are certainly up to the task, but the other people I've heard shouldn't be on the radio at all. But as anyone who has worked at Metro will tell you, 2/3 of the the people who work there do so because they either can't get into radio, or can't find a station that still wants them.
 
+ the fact that the metro reporters can also be heard on every low rated talk station in phoenix, only using a different name. ??? ..oh wait. i think kfnx dropped metro traffic because their reporters weren't up to 1100 standards. ??what's jeff scott's arizona news network called ? ..do they offer traffic reports ??
 
MASTER_CONTROL said:
what's jeff scott's arizona news network called ? ..do they offer traffic reports ??
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That's the "Arizona News Radio" network, owned by the second incarnation of Skyview Networks. Although the original Skyview made their name in providing traffic reports, the new company currently doesn't offer any to stations.As for veteran Phoenix radio personalities, I think Fountain Hills' own Part 15 AM, KFHX 1620, may still be on the air. They're always looking for well-known talent to volunteer their time and services. But, does anyone (even those within the FH area) listen?
 
OB1 said:
Hey you get what you pay for. ;D Or in this case "don't" pay for. When Ktar signed with Metro/Westwood they let their "in house" traffic reporters go (Jim Welch and Joe Corrao) so they get Dewey and the rest of Metro's people for free. WOW! Free Dewey!!! Was that a "previous" management decision or "current" management decision? Either way...bad decision.
Click to expand...
Emmis made a corporate decision to subscribe to TrafficPulse (now Traffic.com) for most of its stations some years back. I think Wickenburg's KSWG might have also been a TrafficPulse subscriber, using "Detour Dan" reports. Not too long after Bonneville took over KTAR, KMVP, and The Peak, they farmed traffic back to Metro. The Traffic.com site still shows Bonneville as one of their clients, as that may be the case in their other markets.
 
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