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The old 95.5

O

Old Yeller

Guest
Can someone post any of the audio that Jorgesnson stunted with when Y-95 went away, just prior to the launch of KYOT.
 
Old Yeller said:
Can someone post any of the audio that Jorgesnson stunted with when Y-95 went away, just prior to the launch of KYOT.
Click to expand...

People have asked for that for years, and I don't think anyone has found any airchecks of the Radio Museum.... which was probably better than the "format" that followed.
 
I agree, if I remember correctly. It was a mish-mash of music with really great creative.
 
Old Yeller said:
I agree, if I remember correctly. It was a mish-mash of music with really great creative.
Click to expand...

Are you talking about the Rhythm & Rock format that preceeded the Smooth Jazz for several months?

That was not a stunt. Mike Jorgenson thought he created a format. Seriously. He sat in a Phoenix Suns game, saw everyone dancing in the aisles to the songs they played during timeouts, and thought it would be a huge hit if it were on the radio.

[The stunt that went between Y-95 and the launch of The Coyote was "The American Radio Museum," which was a bunch of old radio & movie clips that ran for a day.]

The format was doomed. His handpicked first song, "Nutbush City Limits" didn't play at launch because the nervous-as-all-get-out media buyer who won the charity raffle to fire the first song touched the wrong box on the touchscreen. After all, she was a media buyer, and Channel 10 put a camera in her face to air the format launch live. Heck, the creative people spent days on the Radio Museum, but nobody thought to produce a format launch piece. (Dean Moomey and I put that together 3 hours before the launch, after I had pulled an all-nighter with the automation.) Some very famous consultants were enlisted for their advice, which was probably ignored considering how it all turned out.

The guys hired to launch the "Rhythm & Rock" format got blown out within a month. It's not their fault - they were rock radio guys who thought they were launching a rock station but never got a chance to do anything of their own other than the creative. Mike couldn't keep his fingers out of that station.

I got thrown into taking care of the Coyote after that. At first, the direction of the format changed weekly. Then it changed daily. Then, after the ratings showed that we took Y-95's 1.9 and sank it to a 0.9, the decision was made to take it jazz. Nick Francis was hired from a station in Seattle that changed formats to program, and we bought their CD library. We put together the remote voice tracking (portable DAT machines in people's homes, with tapes sent every 3 days) and launched it within a month's time. Incidentally, about the same time, John Sebastian was hired at KSLX and I was directed to piss him off by playing his library. So I wrote down everything they played for 2 days, set the artist & title separations to an hour-fifteen, and played about 250 of their songs for the last month of the station's life. Sure enough, the last numbers of the Coyote went up because it finally had some focus and it was playing songs that people knew, but at that point we had already begun putting the new station together.

There was at least one person in Phoenix who really liked the all uptempo "party music" format, because he called the station's comment line all the time. When we started playing KSLX's playlist, we no longer cared about tempo, so he'd call and complain every time Nights in White Satin popped up. The last time he called was right after the first song of the "Smooth Rhythms" format aired (Nick would remember exactly what the tune was; I think it was from Acoustic Alchemy, with the vocals in Portuguese) and shortly after that I unplugged the answering machine.

For the end of the Rhythm & Rock format, we tracked albums from midnight until the launch. This was necessary because we used CD Jukeboxes, and we had to pull the old format's discs. Playing Pink Floyd's The Wall at noon in its entirety was kind of fun.

But trust me, Mike Jorgenson was as serious as a heart attack when he thought that Phoenix wanted Rhythm & Rock. We probably could have created Jack-FM back in 1993 if we had some music research. We did jockless with snarky sweepers before it was cool. We just had someone telling us to play all the wrong records. After the 0.9, Mike decided that from that point on he'd let programming people program, and for the most part he let the PDs & consultants do their jobs.

I know the people on the Smooth Jazz board love to bash Broadcast Architecture, but they really helped Nick turn KYOT into a ratings monster. They were on top of their game in the 90's, and it was a great station back in the day.
 
This isn't much, but it's a start:

http://airchecked.com/2011/08/30/kyot-phoenix-sep-93-stunting-amer-radio-museum/

It contains the following:

- Two sweepers from the American Radio Museum

- A sweeper for Beautiful Music KRFM (the format/calls on this frequency in the 60's and part of the 70's) -- I assume this was of the "special Arizona exhibits" in the American Radio Museum.

- A promo that aired in the very early days of "The Coyote" (with the Rhythm and Rock format)

- A promo that began airing on KKFR (Power 92) within hours of Y95's demise. The promo claimed that Power 92 "won't sell out", yet that's pretty much what happened only about 3 months later.

I'm hoping to get my hands on a more detailed American Radio Museum aircheck. If I can do that, I'll post it to Airchecked.com and reply to this thread (or start a new one if necessary.)

The timing of tomorrow's name change is ironic considering that everything described above occurred almost exactly 18 years ago (early September '93.)
 
justthenumbers said:
- A sweeper for KRFM (the calls on this frequency in the 60's and part of the 70's)
Click to expand...

I loved the old KRFM clips. They had the audio track of one of the old KRFM TV spots, and the way it was laid in there, it sounded like the format was launching.

There was at least one S-bomb in the Museum from a movie clip. "Vietnam... Shhhhhhhiiii----" Nobody caught it.
 
Keeping the history going...from July 10, 1986, here is the flip of Beautiful Music KQYT "Quiet 95" to AC as "KOY 95.5 FM" (which later became Y95):

http://formatchange.com/95-5-kqyt-phoenix-becomes-koy-fm/

Key times on the aircheck:

2:00 - sign-off of KQYT (at Noon on July 9, 1986?)
3:12 - following a long period of dead air (12 hours perhaps?!? Talk about "Quiet") -- "Celebration" by Kool and the Gang is joined in progress (at Midnight on July 10, 1986?)
3:43 - First mention of "KOY 95.5 FM"
 
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