Haven’t checked in with any Idaho Radio News notes in a while – since nothing truly earth-shattering has happened in a bit, but there are a variety of notes of interest. (Or maybe I just felt I needed to create some content since I ran into Brian a bunch in Phoenix at the Fiesta Bowl and felt guilty for not blogging in months. You decide.)
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Courtesy Ken Bass via Facebook New sea for Bass: Another Boise radio-dial fixture, Ken Bass, is making a trade. Bass will no longer work the wakeup shift on Journal’s KRVB/94.9 The River. Instead he will work afternoons at the station. Like Doss, Bass is one of the good guys – having done mornings just about everywhere, from KBOI to KXLT/Lite FM, and perhaps most famously at KCIX/K-106 when that station was in its glory years. On Facebook, Bass notes he spent just about 29 years on the morning shift. “It’ll be a new year, a new day, and I know it’ll be good for me and the family!” KRVB program director Tim Johnstone swaps back to mornings to pair with Misty Taylor.
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Courtesy KBOI.com Doss reboots: Longtime Boise-radio fixture Larry Doss is plotting his life post-radio. The KBOI newser had his last day on the air on New Year’s Eve. Doss has bounced around the radio dial – before his latest stint for KBOI he did news hits for the Journal stations… just the last two stops in a long career. No replacement for Doss has yet been announced, and there is not job posting that I see just yet.
- Bull charges up the dial: KQBL/100.7 The Bull is trading its
tower near Mountain Home for one on Deer Point. 100.7 FM is being traded to JLD Media (more on that shortly), while The Bull will move to 101.9 FM. 100.7 covers both the Twin and Boise markets – but soon The Bull will be a Boise-market-only product, and will give Impact Radio three full-power stations on Deer Point (KZMG/My 102.7, KSRV/96.1 Bob FM and now KQBL/101.9 The Bull), in addition to a pair of stations that aren’t full-power sticks on “the hill” but have decent coverage around town (KWYD/Wild 101 and KNFL/96.5 & 730 ESPN Radio).
. - Just Leftover Dial-spots: JLD Media is picking up the 100.7 frequency from Impact and trading the 101.9 dial position (which it just purchased this fall). JLD will own several frequencies without perfect coverage in the market – all of which are likely to run Spanish-language programming, and forms a mini-cluster of sorts. JLD, owned by Kevin Terry, has been involved in several transactions with Impact in recent years – including the one that brought My 102.7 to the market.
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Courtesy Khits.fm Tracy Takes On… Management: KTHI morning man Tracy Mitchell will also be moving out of his morning show chair for a gig in management in the Journal cluster. Mitchell has teamed with Margo Vaughn for years – first at KLTB/Kool Oldies 104.3, then at KTHI/107.1 K-Hits. Journal is looking for his replacement. Idaho Radio News Junkies honcho Jim Smith notes that Mitchell’s job change is a promotion.
Variety no longer the spice: KJOT/Rock 105.1 sliced the “Variety” out of its title and revamped its logo in early October. The station hasn’t changed a ton outside of that: still no regular DJs, similar playlist, etc. The station announced the tweak thusly: “Several years ago, 105.1 FM in Boise was known as “J-105”. It then morphed into what was known as “Variety Rock”. Today we turn another page in the history of 105.1FM in Boise. It has now become “Rock 1051…Always The Best Rock”. Enjoy!”
.- Rewriting the Scripps: The FCC gave its OK to the Journal/Scripps merger/trade/switch-o-change-o-rearrange-o. The big missing piece of this whole deal is what Journal will do with either KIVI or KNIN. They’ve been keeping mum on this, and no other outlet has done an ounce of reporting on it. I remain convinced that a particular one of the scenarios I laid out last summer here will come true… but we won’t know until we know. As you’ll notice here, each of the four Journal stations is going through some sort of visible change — after a spring book with middling ratings, it will be interesting to see how they fare in the fall – and heading into this spring with tweaked lineups and new owners. Fall ratings due out later this month.
Don Day is the digital sales manager for KTVB, and used to run IdahoRadioNews.com. Now he tweets a lot.