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What Was Discussed on KDKA's College Student Overnight Show

G

Gregg.

We've talked about KDKA Pittsburgh deciding to employ four college students for its overnight show, airing 1 to 5 a.m. On KDKA's website, via Audacy, you can listen to "Next Take." For the March 11th edition, they discussed...

--They hope they're getting better at doing the show.
--It's tough to do the show and be a college student. One of them is taking 18 credits this semester.
--They wish they could do it live but they need sleep. So they record it, sometimes days ahead of time.
--One of them is going on Spring Break in Arizona. One says he will catch up on his sleep during Spring Break.
--One of the hosts read a wire service story about how local Congresswoman Summer Lee called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas. Others discussed her reelection effort and how Jewish leaders are not happy with her.
--Someone read a wire service story about funding for an LGBTQ community center in Philadelphia. Others discussed the story.

Because the show is prerecorded, it can't take phone calls or texts from listeners. It's just three students trying to chat among themselves and discuss some issues, helped by another student who is producing. They are not very polished, to say the least.

I also notice in station promos, KDKA lists its FM translator dial position first, 100.1, powered at 99 watts. The 1020 AM signal is listed second, non-directional 50,000 watts and one of the 37 original Class I-A stations.

.
 
Gregg. said:
I also notice in station promos, KDKA lists its FM translator dial position first, 100.1, powered at 99 watts. The 1020 AM signal is listed second, non-directional 50,000 watts and one of the 37 original Class I-A stations.
Click to expand...
I can't blame them for listing the FM first. I've always found KDKA's signal to be lackluster compared to other class A AMs. If I had to wager a guess, I'd say it's because of poor ground conductivity at the transmitter site. The NYC AMs boom much further it seems, and that would make sense since they're really close to a bunch of water.
 
The show isn't all about "woke" topics. Last night (er... early this morning) they were talking about Boeing and their slew of recent safety incidents, and how the company's quality control rapidly declined after they merged with McDonnell Douglas.
 
If we can't take risks in 2024 radio on the overnight hours, what are any of us doing?

This show doesn't have to be great on its own. If it succeeds in giving a younger generation an entry point into doing talk radio, that's enough on its own.

Nothing KDKA does at 1 AM is going to make much money or lose much money. I'm all for these sorts of experiments - they're more interesting than being the 250th Red Eye Radio affiliate.
 
Gregg. said:
I also notice in station promos, KDKA lists its FM translator dial position first, 100.1, powered at 99 watts. The 1020 AM signal is listed second, non-directional 50,000 watts and one of the 37 original Class I-A stations.
Click to expand...
What's crazy were these big 50,000 watt stations with monster signals (and power bills) that never mention their AM frequencies at all, But only the frequency of their tiny 100 watt translator.
 
Bongwater said:
What's crazy were these big 50,000 watt stations with monster signals (and power bills) that never mention their AM frequencies at all, But only the frequency of their tiny 100 watt translator.
Click to expand...
Because, for better or worse, that FM translator (along with streaming) is likely were most of their listeners are finding them in 2024. I drove through Pittsburgh a few summers ago and noted even back then that in all their on-air positioning and in their logo, KDKA mentioned the frequency of their FM translator first, then 1020AM and their calls. Considering the history of that legacy station and how many residents there take pride in their city and its history, I thought that said a lot.

BTW, thanks @Gregg. for bringing up this topic again and starting a new thread after the other one got sidetracked and was closed by the mods as a result. I was interested to know and understand if this program would be live or no, and if so, how newbies to the industry would handle some of the "special" ones who sometimes call overnight, or how they might handle long periods without any live callers, but I guess they won't need to. While I'm sure they sound young and green (as we all likely did at one time), the fact that it's pre-recorded allows them to edit or even hit the "abort" button and start over if what they're doing just isn't working - before it goes to air.
 
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I can remember being on my college station in my late teens and early 20s. I'm not sure I'd be able to handle doing a four hour talk radio show, even if it's pre-recorded. I'm not sure my friends and I would have much to say about current news topics. I was just concentrating on how I sounded as a DJ and as a newscaster.

The program's webpage says "KDKA Next Take. Produced by University of Pittsburgh students." It doesn't give out any other information. But from the Inside Radio article, it says, “KDKA Next Take” will be hosted by Pitt students Margaux Rentzel, Jaime Ely and Ryan Tarabokia as well as producer Dylan Foster. Audacy Pittsburgh Marketing & Promotions Director Amy Mauk will serve as Executive Producer. KDKA notes that the students are all in the classes of Kevin Michael Smith, Pitt’s Director of Undergraduate Studies in Broadcast.

Here's the link for anyone who wants to hear it...

 
Thanks for posting the link, too bad KDKA doesn’t do an RSS feed for the podcast or flesh out what the topics of each show are, who the hosts are, etc.
 
I read a recent blog post by Fred Jacobs characterizing the concept as "actually creating a cluster farm team, an innovation rare to radio across the board in the U.S." Good take, I thought.

jacobsmedia.com

Radio's Teenage Wasteland

Unlike the rest of the media/marketing ecosphere, broadcast radio continues to ignore Gen Z.
jacobsmedia.com jacobsmedia.com
 
Gregg. said:
We've talked about KDKA Pittsburgh deciding to employ four college students for its overnight show, airing 1 to 5 a.m. On KDKA's website, via Audacy, you can listen to "Next Take." For the March 11th edition, they discussed...

--They hope they're getting better at doing the show.
--It's tough to do the show and be a college student. One of them is taking 18 credits this semester.
--They wish they could do it live but they need sleep. So they record it, sometimes days ahead of time.
--One of them is going on Spring Break in Arizona. One says he will catch up on his sleep during Spring Break.
--One of the hosts read a wire service story about how local Congresswoman Summer Lee called for an immediate cease fire between Israel and Hamas. Others discussed her reelection effort and how Jewish leaders are not happy with her.
--Someone read a wire service story about funding for an LGBTQ community center in Philadelphia. Others discussed the story.

Because the show is prerecorded, it can't take phone calls or texts from listeners. It's just three students trying to chat among themselves and discuss some issues, helped by another student who is producing. They are not very polished, to say the least.

I also notice in station promos, KDKA lists its FM translator dial position first, 100.1, powered at 99 watts. The 1020 AM signal is listed second, non-directional 50,000 watts and one of the 37 original Class I-A stations.

.
Click to expand...
There were only 640,650,660,670,700,720,750,760,770,780,820,830,840,870,880,890,1020,1030,1040,1100,1120,1160,1180, 1200,1210 as 1-A station channels in the US.

The real issue here, though, is that KDKA has not made any money off the big signal for many decades. The advantage of having 50 kw is now being able to overcome man-made noise and interference in the Nielsen metro.
 
Mikey Radio said:
Because, for better or worse, that FM translator (along with streaming) is likely were most of their listeners are finding them in 2024.
Click to expand...
Not really. The metro survey area has 6 full counties. The translator misses about 70% of the population in the radio market.
 
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