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The Network - Ashe out Maria Lopez in

A

AnotherCat

Annie Ashe seems to have made a quick departure from the BA Network. As of today Maria Lopez, who works at KKSF like Miranda Wilson, will be doing nights. Here's the story
http://www.radioandrecords.com/RRWebSite/Format_RoomPage.aspx?FormatID=12

This was rather sudden. I liked Ashe's voice, she didn't try to purr or sound sexy, but she wasn't very tight. She did a lot of "and-uh..."s and lengthy pauses and got really nonlinear. The other night I heard her come out of Golub's "Hello Betty" then somehow start talking about "Black Betty" then go from there into talking about how she had been in radio all these years and never seen anyone sniffing the white powder if you know what I mean. It sounded like that Mad-TV bit that was a parody of a person with severe ADD holding a conversation with herself.
 
Whew! I thought we were going to go a whole month dry on this board. Thanks for that news, 'Cat! I listened to Ashe off and on and I always noticed that conversation-with-herself approach. Since it was on BA, I thought...maybe that's what they want. I've heard Lopez. She's good. I'm sure she won't leave a question mark in your head after she goes into a break like Ashe did. "What the heck did you just say?" What did THAT mean?" Now they just need to work on their weekend hosts. Or maybe the people at the affiliates are getting tired and overworked. Lots of mistakes and dead spaces. Also, without trying I'm hearing more wrong songs being backsold and songs/artists billboarded that don't come up on the weekends. Not to mention the rambling hosts. Chances are the casual listener has no idea those are the wrong songs unless it's a vocal. And maybe listeners think talking about what day of the week it is and the artists they know who will be playing at a festival in Cali is cool. Why would the listener care? That's just us radio folk fuming I guess.
 
when Ashe used to work at WJJZ philly back in the day ... the 90s when they were the big thing in philly ... her rambling was off the wall. totally over the top. i'll never forget the one day i was driving home and she played herb alpert "making love in the rain" and she goes "making love in the rain? now why would someone want to make love in the rain? sounds all yicky and cold and ugly. if you're going to make love, i'd think you'd want a nice warm bed, you know what i mean?"

i swear. i nearly swerved off the road and crashed into a traffic light pole. the woman really was nuts but it was kinda refreshing to hear when all the other stations were "your 10 in a row station blah blah!" i never heard her on the new network. no affiliate near me. but it sounds like she didn't change one bit. sorry to hear her stay on the network was short lived. maybe one of her rants went a little past the line and management couldn't take it anymore. lol anyway, best of luck to her. hope she winds up at another station somewhere.
 
I've heard Lopez, She's good
Click to expand...
She is tight and her breaks are more structured, I think she VTs for something like 10 stations besides being on the air at KKSF. What I liked about Ashe's voice/delivery that I don't like about Lopez and Miranda Wilson is they oversex their breaks, they purr and at times sound like they were hired off one of those phone sex 800 lines. Maybe that just works in San Francisco, or in Chicago where Denai Alexander has done so well. I'm female so I just don't relate to the come hither approach. Ashe managed to be "voicey" but natrual sounding at the same time. Too bad she also came off as incoherent. But if she did that in Philadelphia then they must have known what they were getting when they hired her. BA does not understand life outside of LA/NY/Chicago anyway. All this talk about wine, sex, and white powder (!) at 7pm doesn't go over well in more family-oriented markets where people are driving their kids around at 7pm.

Also, without trying I'm hearing more wrong songs being backsold and songs/artists billboarded that don't come up on the weekends. Not to mention the rambling hosts
Click to expand...

The celebrity hosts are reading a script and voicetracking waaay in advance. Norman Brown even gave it away, possibly accidentally, in a cover story for AbyssJazz magazine where he was asked about being on the radio and said that at first it was hard for him to read the scripts and make it sound exciting. Then they asked if he did the show live and he said he recorded it. I was, as they say, LMAO ::)
 
Oh, I think I get it now. For a time I thought these guys were doing it off the satellite feed live. I knew they were reading...I could tell that, but I thought the stations were just using a satellite then having a board op or automation go into the breaks. What it sounds like now is that all the bits are recorded and sent to the individual stations. That explains the wrong songs part. I thought this whole thing was set up to not have the stations even worry about the music and just air the satellite. That probably explains those mistakes. I thought BA was a satellite feed. Too easy for a part-timer or overworked full-timers to put the tracks in the wrong places on the weekends. So we're blaming BA when it's actually the individual stations getting it wrong. Not defending BA, but the affiliates definately have their work cut out for them. I've heard this happen on several stations using it. Especially July 4th weekend (a disaster at the stations I heard) and in the last couple of weeks.
 
BA has a satellite feed but I think that is only being picked up by the Jacksonville and Savannah stations. I don't know if the breaks are the same as the ones that are recorded and sent to the other affiliates. I hear the satellite verison, haven't heard the other one. Could this be the reason they only backannounce one song. Less chance for board-op error? I can't listen for any length of time though, when the choice is Hall and Oates or Steely Dan from the 70s vs my genre-spanning iPod or the new Kashiwa and Najee CDs that are the best they've ever done the choice is pretty obvious.
 
I also noticed just the small amount of back-selling, so I checked out the music logs for various affiliates. For the couple stations that I checked (WNUA, WJCD, and I forget the other), there were just a few songs that were the same. It appears that the jocks record voice-tracks that mention only those songs. This allows the stations to program most of the music log on a local level.

Thanks for pointing out that some stations are using a satellite feed. I will have to look into that more. I guess the music would be the same for each of those stations, but is the satellite feed using the same voice-tracks as the other affiliates? It would be nice if they put an extra 20 minutes into each show and recorded a few more voice-tracks for that satellite feed which mentioned all of the songs played in the set. Maybe they already do that, I did not check. I bet that the weekend artists don't want to waste any more time doing that.
 
you can listen to the satellite feed at www.smoothjazz1053.com
The stations don't post a "recently played" list though. It sounds like the jocks have a local liner that trips the at a specific time that is coordinated with when the network jock break will be or someting because you'll hear the jock say "smooth jazz 105" then there will be a pause anywhere from 10 seconds to a minute, then the actual network break. You know how your voice sounds a little different every day? A lot of times the local liner will sound really different from the rest of the break. Obviously the same person but just those little differences in inflection and sound of voice.
 
Not at WSMJ in Baltimore! ANNIE ASHE LIVES! She's still on according to their website! :D No matter. They probably have more updating to do. For some reason I think their webmaster is putting in some labor this weekend.
 
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