I'm wrapping up my experience with KZZO-FM with this post. I'm going to attempt to explain how a station that was so exciting and so popular wound up being such a failure.
Recently, I found some scattered comments about KZZO in the 1980s. In one forum, someone said the local joke was that KZZO was so late in adding new music, the songs were falling off the charts by the time we were playing them. I'll admit this appeared to be a problem the first few years. What would happen is that MTV would start playing the videos virtually the moment they were released. If the song was by a well-known artist and the video was pretty good, it would go immediately into heavy rotation, thus just about everyone would be familiar with the song before it hit the airwaves. And, of course, there was that issue with "Don't You (Forget about Me)" in 1985. But the issues surrounding the music were not the main contributor to the station's failure.
As I've mentioned before, Jid the owner had a dream of owning an empire of small market radio stations. In order for him to achieve this dream, he had to charge a pretty high premium on advertising. Even though we were not officially the highest-rated station in town, our ad prices were set as if we were.
And this was part of the problem. Jid refused to sell the advertising for less than a specific dollar amount. If a potential advertiser stated they would be more inclined to purchase airtime if the sales staff could come down just a little bit more on the rates or allow a few more spots to run for the same amount, the answer was always no. I could see his reasoning on this. If we agree to a lower rate, they're just going to ask for a rate that's even lower. And they're not going to keep that bargain to themselves. The client would likely inform every business in town about the deal he got and then everyone would start asking for that same price. Jid did not want us to be the highest-rated station in town selling air time at bargain basement rates. He was not going to get the empire that way.
But when those first Arbitron ratings came out with a major error that completely screwed us over and we were not listed as number one, it would have been nice if Jid had realized he wasn't going to get his empire as quickly as he thought. He probably should have taken measures to try to make KZZO profitable and become a lot more reasonable on the rates.
Another issue was that we had about 12 hours out of the day that ran almost NO advertising whatsoever. This was between 6pm and 6am. There was plenty of room for ads. If Jid wasn't willing to offer lower rates for drive time and day time slots, he could have come way down on the prices for nighttime programming. Businesses who never advertised before would probably be more willing to buy ads at those times and if they saw an increase in their revenue, could then be persuaded to buy the prime spots. About the only advertising we did at night was the Domino's Pizza giveaway, and they weren't even recorded spots.
I guess it was two years later that Jid figured out that his dream for an empire was not going to become a reality. That's when he brought Mr W in as a partner. He still refused to come down on the ad rates. I'm certain Mr. W and Jid had many arguments about that. I mean, which is better: Allowing an advertiser to pay $200 and get more ads for his money, or refusing the offer and getting no money whatsoever? Jid likely pulled the "I know radio and you don't" routine on Mr. W to trump him every time. But during that whole year, Mr W's bank account continued to be drained and he couldn't do a thing about it.
And of course, there were issues with the advertisers themselves. They were used to the conservative nature of country music stations, so if we did something they didn't jive with, they wouldn't advertise. When we launched, there were some businesses that didn't want to be associated with a station that referred to itself as "The Zoo." I remember that we lost one advertiser who refused to buy air time as long as we were playing the song "I Want Your Sex" by George Michael. The stupid thing was that, when it was a hit, we only played it once a day and it was only at night. That was not enough to damage the morality of the whole town.
But we really found out about the radically conservative values of the local merchants when Heid started working six to midnight. I don't know if Heid was aware of this, but we lost one-third of our advertisers because of him. As I said before, he wasn't vulgar, just somewhat raunchy. However, it was still too much for the tender ears of the grown-ups in Clovis. Members of the sales staff said that if they were meeting with a client and they mentioned Heid during the course of their pitch, they knew they were going to leave empty-handed. The staff begged and pleaded with Jid to get rid of Heid or just switch him back to overnights. Jid wouldn't do that. He was too pleased with the buzz that Heid had created, even though it was causing financial chaos for everyone else at the station.
And when Heid left for Dallas, the sales team immediately went to their old clients and told them he was no longer poisoning our airwaves. But it was too late. They were either pleased with their advertising on the other stations or they found out they didn't really need to advertise on radio, period.
But there was another issue at play: Our sales staff just didn't know how to capitalize on Heid's primary audience. In the movie "Private Parts," Howard Stern is about to get fired from WNBC after two major advertisers pull their spots from his show. But his butt is saved when another advertiser buys enough to more than make up for the loss of those two clients. Good salespeople could have used the fact that Heid had so much appeal with younger listeners to find advertisers who wished to reach that demographic. Of course, they would have had an easier time doing that if Jid had been willing to come down on the ad rates at night. We just couldn't win.
After Heid left, Jid no longer had any involvement in the operations. It was left in the hands of the silent partners, who really had no idea how to run a radio station. The main thing they did was to try to make us seem like a new radio station by having us refer to ourselves as KZZO 107.5 instead of "The Zoo 108." This change forced us to get rid of the majority of our on-air jingles and they did not buy us a new package, nor did they try to get us new call letters. At the staff meeting announcing this change, they didn't state the reason why, but I figured out that they wanted to make it seem like we were no longer that station with the vulgar DJ and the two gay owners.
But the damage had already been done. I don't know if the new people in charge made any attempt to lower our ad rates, but we were not doing any better. I'm glad I was able to get out while the getting was good.
In 1991, when I was moving from Denver to San Diego, I stopped by the station. However, the General Manager was the only person I knew who was still there, but he wasn't in at the time. The next time I came through Clovis a couple of years later, I tuned the dial to 107.5, but it was no longer KZZO. It was a station running satellite programming. I could tell because their listener line was a 1-800 number. The next time I came through, there was silence on the frequency.
When I moved to San Jose, I looked for radio stations in Clovis and Portales on the Internet. I found that there was a new station on the same frequency. It was KSMX. They went by the nickname "Mix 107.5." They were actually the only station in the area with a website. KTQM/KWKA didn't have one. According to the site, a couple of guys from radio in San Diego bought the station and became the morning team. It seemed like they were doing pretty well.
A couple of years later, I went to Clovis and stopped by to check it out. (This was shortly after I had been cut to part-time at the newsradio station in San Jose.) The station was now located in the downtown area. I walked in. There was no one in the front lobby. I heard someone yell, "Hello?" I said, "Hi!" The person came out. It was someone I recognized. It was one of my Mom's cousins (making him my first cousin once removed). He told me he was from the sales department. I had to point out that I was related to him, but we actually hadn't seen each other in a long time.
He told me about how the new owners came in and really turned the station around to make it more a part of the community. He told me the station was doing so well, they were sold out of air time for the next month. When he told me this, I thought, "There's no way you sell out of air time on a radio station." I mean, I can understand how it relates to automation and satellite programming (which was on at the time). I can also understand how, if someone just wants a $200 order, the station wouldn't want to disrupt its traffic, but if Coca-Cola comes up and says, "We need to buy $50,000 worth of air time next month," the response they would get is: "Hey, look! New inventory!"
He said that because KSMX was doing so well, KTQM and KWKA had reduced themselves to offering ads practically for pennies. I'm glad someone was able to come in and squash them.
The owners weren't there when I visited. They were getting ready for a remote at some carnival that was taking place that weekend. I was really hoping to meet them. I don't know that I would have wanted a job there (after practically losing the one I had at the time), but it would have been nice to have that connection.
They proved it was possible to start up and have a profitable station. They probably had the best of luck in getting the Arbritron ratings to come out in their favor early on. I'm just sorry that Jid wasn't able to achieve his dream. But even if he did, he would have only been able to enjoy the empire up until 1993, when he died of brain cancer. It's strange to think that in three years, I will be older than he was when he passed away and that I did not accomplish anywhere near what he did during that same period of time.
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