Fayetteville tests new era in radio

Twenty-first century radio came early for two Fayetteville stations.

Gulf Star Communications Inc. for the last 12 months has pioneered the world’s first multi-market distribution of localized morning shows through KJEM-FM (93.3 “The Eagle”) and KKIX-FM (“Kix” 104) on N. College Ave on N. College Ave.

By combining a sophisticated computer program and network — the Prophet System Wizard for Windows and Gulf Star’s Wide Area Network, or WAN — the stations can deliver localized programming daily in three separate markets using the same personalities. Stations share the cost of top-notch talent, thereby improving their product while simultaneously reducing its cost.

Gulf Star recently expanded the project to Lubbock, Texas, where the concept has been modeled after Northwest Arkansas’ success. The catch phrase for the concept has been “virtual radio,” but Capstar Mid-South Vice President of Programming Allen First says the Star System is just smart.

“In the past, multimarket distribution has been a one-size-fits-all presentation broadcast by satellite,” First says. “But this way we’re able to spread talent across multiple radio properties and at the same time retain our localism. No one has ever done that before.”

Local sells radio, First says. Although the morning show hosts are not physically in two of the three markets where they’re airing, ratings by The Arbitron Co. show Gulf Star’s listeners like what they’re hearing.

A subsidiary of publicly traded Capstar Broadcasting Inc. of Austin, Texas, Gulf Star has the four most popular weekday morning shows in the Fayetteville-Northwest Arkansas market.

KKIX, which has a country music format, is rated first with a 15.1 percent share of the market among listeners aged 12 and older. Classic rock-formatted KJEM is second among 18- to 49-year-olds with a 15 percent share.

KMAG-FM (99.1) in Fort Smith and KKYR (“Kicker” 102.5) in Texarkana, receive custom-tailored versions of KKIX’s morning programming. KZBB (B98) in Fort Smith and KLUB-FM (106.9 “The Rock”) in Victoria, Texas, get localized editions of KJEM’s morning show.

KKYR didn’t join the experiment until this fall, but the other three stations showed significantly improved numbers in the Arbitron book that came out last spring.

“We haven’t had any negative feedback from listeners so far,” says Dale Daniels, a Gulf Star regional vice-president based in Fayetteville. “KJEM has made astronomical ratings improvements here, and picking up its morning show has more than doubled Fort Smith’s numbers.”

But some competitors still say the concept sounds too good to be true.

Mixed signals

One concern is this kind of multimarket distribution will decrease entry level radio jobs and cause a shortage of experienced broadcasters. If proven talent may be shared by several markets, non-traditional avenues for breaking into the business may have to be sought.

The biggest fear, however, is that listeners will reject the concept when they find out disc jockeys presenting “local” news and information are actually hundreds of miles away. A spokesman for one station who asked not to be identified says multi-market distributed shows have a “responsibility” to be honest with their listeners.

Gulf Star agrees. The company is not advertising its cost-saving creation, but its DJs and executives will tell anyone who asks they’re simply riding the radio waves of the future.

The question of logistics is already being answered daily by morning show hosts Darren Wilhite and Tim Wall of KKIX and Jon Williams and Zach Arns of KJEM. The DJs arrive at their studios around 4:30 a.m. to load material that’s not dated into the system.

As the morning progresses, the pairs tailor their shows for each market by dropping local weather, news, sports and comedy bits into holes left around preprogrammed logs of music and commercials. The process is similar to the way motion picture scenes are shot out of sequence and later pieced together on the cutting room floor.

“This makes sense,” Arns says. “We can edit stuff all morning and drop it in minutes before it airs, or we can run two hours ahead. People who aren’t doing this now either don’t have the technology or foresight.

“This is the radio of the future. You can either conform or get run over.”

All calls from listeners in the four out-of-town stations are forwarded to Fayetteville where the DJs juggle fresh material before shipping it out over T1 lines — wide-band phone lines — that handle 350 to 400 outbound pieces of audio daily.

On Jan. 12, 1998, Wilhite and Wall became the world’s first WAN-distributed team originating on KKIX and sending to KMAG.

“It’s still amazing to me that at 7:10 in the morning, we can be coming out of Clint Black in Fayetteville,” Wilhite says, “George Strait in Fort Smith and Reba McEntire in Texarkana. We’re intro-ing three more different songs and telling three local times and temperatures.”

Williams and Arns were the first in three markets on three differently formatted stations. They say literally crossing formatted lines makes their show more versatile and gives it greater mass appeal.

“We’re not having to cater to specific demographics,” Williams says. “And the thing we’ve remembered is people want to hear themselves on a morning show. They don’t want to hear us pontificating. They want to listen to Freak Show Injury Tuesdays and hear how people just like them ripped their foot open with a hammer.

“We just jump in, interact and let them go. The greatest thing about being in three markets is we have a larger pool of listener talent to draw from.”

None of the four DJs consider themselves “high tech guys,” but they all now find it easier to do three shows at once using the Prophet System than running one show and spinning CDs for a single market.

When Williams and Arns left competitor KKEG-FM (“Keg” 92) in February of 1998 to help Gulf Star test the technology, a publicized lawsuit over a “no compete” clause in Williams’ contract temporarily threatened to keep him off the project.

But the suit was settled out of court because a loophole allowed Williams to continue working in the same market if he was part of a national network. KKEG’s ratings in their target demographic dropped nearly 50 percent for the first book without Williams and Arns.

KJEM’s went from a 4.3 percent share to a 15. Williams says Gulf Star’s new technology was a big part of the success.

“If radio was a cartoon,” Williams says, “we went from the Flintstones to the Jetsons.”

Reels to reality

Jess Smith, Gulf Star’s Northwest Arkansas news director for KKIX and sister station KEZA-FM (“Magic” 107.9), was around for the Stone Age of radio. He got into the business when card machines were new in the 1960s and remembers editing with acetate and razor blades.

“Now I cut and paste on the computer,” Smith says. “It’s great.”

Smith, a two-time National Headline Club award winner, covered the assassination of President John Kennedy and the civil rights movement in the 1960s. In 1992, then-Gov. Bill Clinton even declared April 20 “Jess Smith Day in Arkansas” to mark the broadcaster’s 30th anniversary in radio.

“I’ve been shot at, dog-bit and tear-gassed and had an absolute ball,” Smith says. “But this technology is the biggest revolution I’ve seen in 36 years of the business.”

“I’m not sure I like all of the changes I’ve seen over the years, but this one is exciting.”

Zeb Huffmaster, chief engineer of Gulf Star in Fayetteville, gets most of the credit. Gulf Star presented him with the premise of what it wanted to do. He made it work.

Capstar, which had revenues of $337.9 million for the nine months ended Sept. 30, 1998, owns more than 300 radio stations in more than 80 markets. But Fayetteville was chosen to launch the concept both because it already had the Prophet System in place and because of Huffmaster’s expertise.

“Zeb is one of the most highly regarded engineers with this technology in Capstar,” Daniels says. “He practically invented it. Truly great talent is not easy to find and we have it on and off the air.”

Huffmaster says the station probably initially invested $120,000 to $130,000 in the Prophet System. After working out initial kinks, the process has been nearly flawless.

“Banks have been doing this for years with data,” Huffmaster says. “We’re just doing it now with audio files. They’re bigger files, and we’ve just now developed to the point where we have the speed to send them in a quick enough fashion for radio.”

Ninety-eight percent of Gulf Star’s stations are getting some daily programming downloaded from its WAN hub in Austin. And Daniels, who spoke on the subject in September 1997 at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in New Orleans, says Williams and Arns could be doing five or six stations in the near future.

First says Southern Star, Capstar’s southeastern subsidiary based in Florida, is also now trying to implement the system. He says eventually the usage of “virtual radio” may differ from company to company, but the implications will be the same.

“The people who can see the potential and embrace the concept will be at the forefront of our industry,” First says. “They’ve developed a whole new way to do radio up there in Fayetteville.”

In the big scheme, the technology means stations across the country will increasingly become more global, sharing ideas, audio and talent within seconds. Personalities like Wilhite and Wall and Williams and Arns won’t have to keep trying to make it to a larger market to make a good living.

Daniels says the biggest benefit to radio companies is the most obvious byproduct.

“What it boils down to is this,” Daniels says. “This technology enables us to make a better product come out of the listener’s speakers.”