Radio Waves Podcast #293

Radio: April 9, 2021

The King is dead. Long live the King.

Just as when the former Clear Channel radio group changed its name to iHeart in order to solve all of its self-created problems, Entercom has decided to become Audacy.

Audacy: audio, audacious, and an odyssey, according to company CEO David Field.

Sure. Whatever you say, David.

The name change was not unexpected, as Entercom pretty much destroyed itself — just as iHeart did — by overextending itself through buying too many stations, then trying to handle crushing debt by cutting talent, promotions, and salespeople. Kind of the exact opposite of what they should have done, which was to build up stations through better programming, better promotions, and a focus on what local listeners want to hear.

Instead, they changed the name. The radio equivalent of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. The new Audacy has no more chance of surviving longterm than did Entercom. I won’t be shedding any tears.

Mark Elliot Passes

Former KHJ (930 AM) morning man and former voice of KRTH (101.1 FM) Charlie Van Dyke posted on Facebook April 4th that his good friend Mark Elliot passed away. No other details were available.

If you grew up in Southern California in the early to mid 1970s, you know Mark Elliot. His smooth delivery and amazing “pipes” made him one of the best DJs on the station at the time. He could do anything. But he got tired of radio, and he decided to move into doing VoiceOver work, in which he was tremendously successful.

Ken Levine wrote about Elliot’s career change in his blog; read it at http://kenlevine.blogspot.com/2011/01/how-to-break-into-voice-overs-without.html.

Prior to landing at KHJ, Elliot was a jock on KFRC/San Francisco, which was KHJ’s sister station in the Bay Area. While still in radio, Elliot hoisted the Weekly Top-30, an alternative to American Top-40 (that Elliot filled in as host for Casey Kasem at times), that aired — as I recall — on KHJ and later K-WEST (now KPWR, 105.9 FM) when that station was top-40. The Weekly Top-30 was produced from 1979 - 1982.

The primary voice for Disney productions from 1983 - 2008, Elliot also did voiceover work for CBS Television and Fox, numerous movie trailers even outside of Disney, and commercials. In other words, you probably heard him without realizing it, no matter where you were.

But I will always remember him as a super-nice guy who had arguably one of the best deliveries ever to be heard on KHJ. Here’s a short sample: https://airchexx.com/charlie-van-dyke-mark-elliot-93khj-los-angeles-june-18-1976. Elliot begins at about 5:25.

Kaplan and Crew TV

The border-blaster that was once the home of Wolfman Jack and is currently sports-formatted The Mightier 1090 (XEPRS, 1090 AM) is venturing into television.

OK, I’m stretching it a bit, as the station itself is not moving to television. But 3 - 6 p.m. afternoon show Kaplan and Crew — hosted by Scott Kaplan and featuring Alex Padilla and John Browner — is making the move, with a nightly Kaplan and Crew Tonight show, which can be found from 7-8 p.m. on Cox Cable Television’s Channel 4 and 1004 in San Diego and Santa Barbara, along with Channel 118 on Cox systems in Orange County and Palos Verdes.

The television edition made its debut on March 29th, and features two “best of” segments from each day’s radio broadcast with other elements added as time permits. I have not seen it myself, as I am not a Cox cable subscriber, but the XEPRS signal, 50,000 watts from a suburb of Tijuana, Mexico, reaches much of Los Angeles County as clearly as a local … so I — and you — can tune in to the radio show easily. 

Veteran talk host Bill Moran, formerly heard on KABC (790 AM), KFI (640 AM) and KGIL (now KMZT, 1260 AM), called to tell me about a podcast series he recently launched. Called “The Golden Mic Experience,” the program features residents of The Village at Northridge — a senior living community in Northridge, California — talking with Moran about their most intimate memories, sharing words of wisdom developed throughout their lives, and reveling sometimes deep secrets.

From dating at the age of 79 to stories of Holocaust survival and more, featured residents tell their stories. In episode one, 90-year young Norma Yaegar, author of Breaking Down the Walls, spoke of  her experience entering the male-dominated world of finance and telling the story of her walking the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, the first woman to do so.

Episode two features Gloria Sands telling her experiences as a mid-century model, giving listeners an inside look on what to was like to be a popular and successful advertising model during the “Mad Men” era.

“It’s a show that covers issues important to senior citizens,” says Moran, “but is so much more. It’s also a way to save these fascinating stories for future generations as well as link families together.”

Interested? Head over to srglive.com or search for The Golden Mic Experience on Spotify.Com.