Radio Shakeup: Sidelined deejay gets a new gig

Financial times have been tough for local radio stations and the people on them for the past couple years now. What few radio people who have survived layoffs and pay cuts are all abuzz this weekend because out-of-town corporate radio owner Entercom managed to outbid out-of-town corporate radio owner Cumulus for popular jock, Kelly Urich.

Urich left MIX 93 months ago but has stayed visible on the sidelines with his online 'radio station, 'kcradio.com.' Reportedly he gets to keep his online insurance policy against joblessness while taking afternoon drive at KISS 99.7, the former Boulevard. The former something else. KISS is just a Top-40 sounding station that runs the same pop songs into the ground until its young audience basically is sick of them.





The radio buzz is that the vanilla latte voiced Urich takes over afternoon drive, moving Ryan Seacrest's satellite show to middays.

Alive and local. Afternoon's is considered better than middays because of the drive home rush hour crowd and the thinking is that live and local is better even than an out-of-town, satellite-fed voice, even if it's an American Idol host.

What does it all mean for an industry suffering from layoffs and drastically cut salaries and now hours of jockless automation? No one knows though lots of ex-radio people are on their own message board speculating about one station nudging out another.

Just last week, the urban sounding VIBE fired their morning team, "Shorty and the Boys", and changed to a top 40 format. Urban aficionados may turn their noses up at some of the new music being played but if you use radio just for background sound, you might not even notice.

Whatever's going on with the musical chair format changes, when the music does change, another deejay ends up without a studio chair to sit in. The VIBE hasn't announced a replacement for well liked Shorty.

New ratings service. Predicting the results of all this is impossible anyway because radio's rating service, Arbitron is changing formats too. Kansas Citians selected to rate stations are no longer keeping tedious diaries of what they listen to. Instead they're wearing small 'people meters' around their necks. The pager-like devices pick up hidden signals from radio and tv stations and when plugged nightly into a modem, send the listeners radio habits back to the home office. For their trouble, Arbitron sends them a check for up to fifty dollars once in awhile.

Once tabulated, stations buying the rating service get to use the rating results to help them sell advertisments.

What will the more accurate PeopleMeters mean to local ratings? Do people really listen to the same station all day or do they punch the buttons every time the commercials come on? How many are watching morning TV instead?

What if more adults actually listen to balanced NPR from KU and UMKC instead of right wing KMBZ? Or are people changing to XM/Sirius satellite radio?

(Reporter Standup:) "...And will Kelly's live and local return, these format tweeks and people-meters make a difference? Local deejays hope so, for every station that's successful by piping in satellite feeds from Los Angeles is another station that isn't hiring local jocks."