lol "Coming up in the next few minutes, The Killers." Into the Killers...
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The Zone Returns To Phoenix
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
I heard a segue like that too tonight. AI doesn't realize they don't have advertisers yet. Just like automation when there is a programmed stop set but no ads to run.
IIRC that was 2005, and it didn't last very long. I liked listening to it when I could pull in 92.9 in just the right areas of the valley while driving around. 92.7 didn't always make it easy.
I heard the translator briefly last night before turning in and I could definitely hear breaths being taken during pauses. The problem, in fact, was quite the opposite; the breathtaking was a lot louder and shorter than you would actually hear over a radio broadcast. Obviously the owner is testing out the system. How it should sound (and how I hear it on non-AI stations) is that any breathtaking is only faintly heard during pauses written into the script through punctuation marks like commas, periods, etc.
The Zone was a mess of a radio station during much of its existence at analog 101.5 MHz.
I don't understand why anyone would want to bring it back.
Pairing that brand with a AAA playlist is even weirder.
This new radio station seems more like a toy or experiment than anything. 94.9 has nowhere near full market coverage on analog FM, and why harm the Wow Factor's availability in the southeast part of the metro?
In my opinion, this move just makes the Wow Factor weaker, and I doubt 94.9 / 101.5 HD2 will be able to command any sort of meaningful ad revenue.
Unless some third party is funding this play thing / experiment, I don't understand the business rationale behind it.
I don't understand why anyone would want to bring it back.
Pairing that brand with a AAA playlist is even weirder.
This new radio station seems more like a toy or experiment than anything. 94.9 has nowhere near full market coverage on analog FM, and why harm the Wow Factor's availability in the southeast part of the metro?
In my opinion, this move just makes the Wow Factor weaker, and I doubt 94.9 / 101.5 HD2 will be able to command any sort of meaningful ad revenue.
Unless some third party is funding this play thing / experiment, I don't understand the business rationale behind it.
Oh, I'm sure the Middle Eastern Men of the Media have an opinion... @DrAkbar
Fortunately for Nurse Jeff and me, we have aged out of their target demographic. But IMHO, it's a hobby for someone higher up the food chain.
Does the Gremlin even have an FM converter?
In a way that's true. This station isn't owned by iHeart, Audacy, or a big outside radio company. It's privately owned by a local owner who can basically do whatever he wants with his licenses. This is what would happen if iHeart and the big radio companies turned their stations over to local operators.
Everyone assumes that iHeart wants to eliminate local talent and replace them with AI. The first station (at least in Phoenix) to do that is a small local owner.
Zelus Media is a company known for it's focus on esports and recreational gaming. The Phoenix cluster is the company’s first foray into radio.
Definitely, a small operator going up against the big ownership groups.
But, the General Manager/part owner has 40+ years worth of experience in broadcast radio. He's not been afraid of trying new things (he gave John Sebastian's "Wow Factor" a chance), but has been impatient (remember "My 103.9" during its three-month run with Adult Hits in 2012?).
Zelus, yes. But Michael Cutchall has decades of experience running other groups. Most recently he was market manager for Beasley Las Vegas, was CEO of Riviera Broadcasting in Phoenix and Vegas, Operating Partner at YMF Media, CEO of Sun City Communications & Cobalt Communications, Executive Vice President of Capstar/AMFM, Regional Vice President of SFX Broadcasting and COO of Prism Radio Partners.
Correct. He cut his teeth at Western Cities/Nationwide in Tucson, where their operational "dream team" was formed (some of them would end up at KZZP during their heyday).
My thoughts as someone who was at the launch of the original KZON:
- Musically this is much more accessible and familiar than the AAA incarnation of 101.5. When KZON launched in the 90s, the tightest category meant that a song played once per day, and outside of a small vocal core of music geeks (and the late Michael D Jorgenson) it was hard to get into. I've heard Birds of a Feather on 94.9 play about 6-8 hours apart, which sounds about right for a recurrent.
- Honestly, I can't fault any of the songs Dennis is playing here. It's a solid playlist.
- I want to like the technology for the jock breaks, and I like the idea of it, but in practice? It's too robotic and stiff. If this is where the technology is right now, I'd either lean into it and create a robotic character and turn it into a joke (if you ever listened to the Jelli station in Vegas back when that was a thing, they gave that text to voice some sass and it worked) or just go jockless. I was on a plane early this morning and caught a couple unhosted overnight hours and enjoyed that much more than the AI Dennis Constantine that followed.
- Musically this is much more accessible and familiar than the AAA incarnation of 101.5. When KZON launched in the 90s, the tightest category meant that a song played once per day, and outside of a small vocal core of music geeks (and the late Michael D Jorgenson) it was hard to get into. I've heard Birds of a Feather on 94.9 play about 6-8 hours apart, which sounds about right for a recurrent.
- Honestly, I can't fault any of the songs Dennis is playing here. It's a solid playlist.
- I want to like the technology for the jock breaks, and I like the idea of it, but in practice? It's too robotic and stiff. If this is where the technology is right now, I'd either lean into it and create a robotic character and turn it into a joke (if you ever listened to the Jelli station in Vegas back when that was a thing, they gave that text to voice some sass and it worked) or just go jockless. I was on a plane early this morning and caught a couple unhosted overnight hours and enjoyed that much more than the AI Dennis Constantine that followed.
They might get to a point where it's all unhosted, like the Wow Factor. They may have overthought this, adding AI talent where it's not needed.
They also need to limit the amount of talking that the A.I. jocks are currently doing It's very excessive for a music FM. We don't need to know every detail about the song that was just played.
Telling the story of a song is a hallmark of the AAA format. They only do it once an hour. However, the way they're doing it is abruptly going from a backsell of the last song into the trivia bit about the next one, and it doesn't flow well when delivered by AI.
The other mainstay of AAA was backselling every song in the set, which they are thankfully not doing. With radios and streaming displaying metadata, nobody is waiting 4 songs to hear the DJ tell you who sang the second song in the set.
That's good to know that it's once an hour. I haven't listened through an entire hour yet, just streaming it every now and then.
Another reason they don't have to backsell the music is that this is a very mainstream AAA, and most songs are going to be recognizable to a listener.
I hope today they are staying better on track with the proper talk breaks. Coming out of The Moody Blues, "...and that was Smash Mouth from 1996."
I only heard one break today where the songs didn't match. But I heard several hours where the last song ended at :58 and there was silence until the top of hour fired at :00. Whoops.