Nov. 17

Airwaves: November 17, 2006

Personalities on Country 540 Announced

Country 540 (XSUR AM) has a new on air lineup to go along with the new music they started playing last month. And a few of them are indeed former KZLA (now KMVN, 93.9 FM) jocks.

Brian Douglas is the new morning man (6 to 10 AM), followed by Adrienne Brooks (10 AM to 3 PM), Jack Boxer ( 3 to 5 PM), Melody Morgan (5 to 10 PM), and Don Bishop (late night and overnights).

Weekends include various programming including Lon Helton's Country Countdown USA Saturdays at 10 AM. Additionally, the wonderful Whitney Allen hosts Big Time Saturday Night at 7 PM. But the big weekend news happens on Sundays when Paul Freeman takes to the air from 1 to 6 PM.

Douglas, Brooks, Allen and Freeman were associated with KZLA before that station went urban.

Now if we can just do something about that awful signal ...

Ringing Endorsements

One of the most popular ways to advertise on radio is through personal endorsements from popular personalities. Howard Stern (Sirius) and Rush Limbaugh (KFI) are highly sought after, as just two examples, because whenever they speak, their fans listen. And buy whatever they are advertising.

Yet my cynical side always asks: when the personality is giving personal testimony, are they really just giving their opinion, or did they just happen to receive free stuff in exchange for the endorsement?

I wrote about this topic in the past. Then as now, I said that I'm not always cynical. I changed the windows in my house through a company endorsed by KFI's John Kobylt. But now that Bill Handel (again from KFI, the current leader in personality endorsements) has brought in his entire family to help with the endorsements, the question remains:

Do you follow the "advice" of your favorite radio personalities when they do their own ads?

Write in and let me know.

Play Thing

KCRW's The Plays The Thing presents Johnny on the Spot tomorrow at 10 PM. Starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Brad Hall, the story is a 1940s political satire about radio, cynical newsmen, rigged elections, corrupt politicians and sex scandals.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Private Party

Clear Channel Communications, which for many years has complained that its stock price does not reflect the assets and performance, is investigating taking the company private.

To that mean, the company is taking bids from investors to do just that. Bids so far have placed the value of the company at more than $17 Billion. Bids were due this week, and a decision on what to do is expected shortly.

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