The publicity surrounding “Ashley Z” Elzinga and her KBFF (Live 95.5) Portland, Ore., virtual twin, “AI Ashley” gives Morning Show Boot Camp, set to convene in Dallas on August 10-11, an obvious hot topic.
In June, Ross on Radio took a First Listen to the “AI Ashley” experiment, as well as Elzinga’s morning show on CHR WKHQ Traverse City, Mich. Elzinga had already been voice-tracking KBFF, and I was able to listen to that as well. A week later, I updated the story after I heard an hour that seemed like a mix of AI and regular voice tracks.
On Aug. 1, I took another listen to Live 95.5 in the 11 a.m. hour. Then I decided to get a baseline by listening to Portland’s top five music stations to hear what midday personality sounded like in the market. One of those happened to be a radio station celebrating a 40th birthday very different from the more publicized one being celebrated by Top 40 WHTZ (Z100) New York this week.
Portland’s top five stations in the June PPM include non-comm N/T KOPB and commercial N/T KXL. The market’s No. 6 station is Adult Hits KYCH (Charlie 97.1), a format that has always been non-hosted. I ended up listening to the music stations among the market’s top eight, as well as Live 95.5.
Here’s what the 11 a.m. hour sounded like across the market:
Classic Hits KLTH (106.7 the Eagle) – Middays were hosted by WLIT (Lite FM) Chicago’s Robin Rock. There were six breaks in the hour I heard — all with call letters and most with artist front-sells, customizing them to the station. Rock’s breaks were divided between station business (the morning show, iHeart Radio podcasts, and the iHR talkback app, which was also tied into a local listener request/shout-out) and topical bits (MegaMillions, making the perfect sandwich).
I wrote about AC sister KKCW (K103) earlier this year, in conjunction with a Fresh Listen to the John Tesh radio program on that station. K103 was similarly structured to KLTH at the time. Again, I heard six breaks in the 11 a.m. hour, hosted by Orlando-based Jana. She directed listeners to the website to win Jonas Brothers tickets and front-sold New Kids on the Block by talking about a possible forthcoming tour. She also did a bit about National Girlfriends Day, and favorite healthy snacks. As with Rock, who thanked people for listening, there were a lot of small personality brush strokes here, including a lot of workday mentions.
Triple-A KINK middayer Jared did five breaks over the course of the hour, most of them tied into that hour’s music — Green Day with an album coming up; Hozier coming to town in October; Gotye still recording, even after his moment of prominence had faded. But there was also an upcoming Iceland-trip giveaway, and Jared speculated on whether Post Malone would be a good travel buddy. Listeners can qualify for the trip by texting codewords, or by filming themselves doing the Ice Bucket Challenge, something else you might not have thought about in a while.
While a lot of the localism on KINK was related to upcoming shows, including the station’s PNC Live Studio shows, one of the most attention-getting sense-of-place moments was the station’s “Positively Portland” comment-line vignettes, a response to the city’s travails of the last three years. “If we all get together, we can make it awesome again,” declared a fourth-generation Oregonian, who noted how the city “has been through its ups and downs before.”
Country KWJJ (The Wolf) features Audacy’s Nashville-based syndicated Country midday show Katie & Company. Katie’s five breaks that hour were mostly national stories (concertgoers throwing things on stage, the man behind the Internet’s viral blue-or-gold dress, now charged with the attempted murder of his wife), but there was also a teaser for Justin Moore co-hosting the show’s Superstar Power Hour, and a break about having worked out every day so far this year.
There’s a lot of stationality on the Wolf, much of it stemming from the station’s format battle with Alpha’s KUPL (the Bull). One sweep-starter promo reminds listeners that The Wolf played 212 more songs last week, adding up to 11 hours’ worth of music. “Eleven hours more of Luke Combs [or] Mandatory Morgan [Wallen}.” There were also a lot of brief listener-voiced calls-only sweepers, a feature of KWJJ going back more than 20 years to when the longtime station outlet was just known as “JJ.”
KQAC (All Classical Portland) was actually down in June, but it was still the No. 6 station in the market and on August 1, KQAC was celebrating its 40th birthday, a day ahead of New York’s Z100, with a one-day listener telethon with the goal (which it met) of raising $40,000. APD/middayer Brandi Parisi was teamed with morning host Warren Black that day, meaning that afternoon host Christa Wessel was on with the station’s Adam Eccleston, with whom she hosts a weekend show dedicated to young Classical musicians.
Over the course of the hour I heard, there were eight breaks, most of them about 2-4 minutes long. Reading off the names of donors allowed for a lot of local mentions, as well as the donor from Surprise, Ariz., but one of the most attention-getting was a comment from Russ and Jan in Tigard who were excited how well the station was doing in the ratings because “they say no one listens to Classical.” (KQAC is heard on seven frequencies throughout the state; that allowed for a lot of geography, too.)
There was also a running bit about how the birthdate made KQAC a Taurus, particularly because of its loyalty and creativity. (“We are the most creative station out there right now.”) Later, the duo talked about famous Taurus classical musicians, including Lizzo.
Finally, when we heard Ashley Z on KBFF in July, making a return visit after our initial article, it sounded as if she were dividing her four breaks an hour between those identified as “AI Ashley” and other breaks (as just “Ashley”) that sounded more fluid. On Tuesday, none of her breaks were identified as AI or sounded like the previous AI breaks (meaning that the AI was MIA that hour, or that it’s sounding a lot more natural after six weeks). None of the four breaks were straight front-sells or station business. Topics included:
- Adults who stop going to the dentist;
- Why Morgan Wallen’s talent makes him sexy, despite not being conventionally attractive;
- How watermelon has become summer’s pumpkin spice;
- Why Jain’s “Makeba” makes her anxious, particularly the song’s ending.
Middays might seem like an unlikely place to gauge the amount and tenor of personality on a radio station. With a few Ryan Seacrest and now Angela Yee-type exceptions, that daypart is supposed to be music-intensive with content dispensed only through brush strokes. There’s no intent to diminish any topic here, particularly when we’re talking about content that works in an 11-second window. But as radio looks to find the right place between personalities and DJs, getting the most from those brush strokes is what I’m listening for.
Stumbling on to a radio-station telethon in the course of this assignment was interesting. There’s no other circumstance under which I would have sought out (or chosen to sit through) eight 2-3 minute fundraising breaks, even well-handled ones. But hearing all-hands-on-deck at KQAC is a reminder of which things cannot be automated. It is also a reminder that one of the things you don’t hear very much these days (even in a station war like KWJJ/KUPL) is a station selling itself aggressively. That may be one of the things radio needs again.
This story first appeared on radioinsight.com