Bay Area Radio

Morning DJs Fernando and Greg, who lost their previous gig in September when their station, Energy 92.7 (KNGY), changed ownership, are back on terrestrial radio. Starting Nov. 12, the duo can be heard on CBS affiliate Movin' 99.7 (KMVQ), weekdays from 5-9:30 a.m.

Fernando Ventura and Greg Sherrell had been the most recognizable voices on KNGY's gay-themed programming schedule since 2005. Last year they received the Fall Honors award from northern California chapter of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association, and in 2007 they were named to OUT Magazine's Top 100 most influential people in gay culture.

A visit to the Pirate Cat Radio Web site this morning reveals a sad and desolate place. Once, the first thing viewers encountered a listing of the song that was currently playing and what songs had just played.

Now: "Current Song: (Unnamed Server) / Past Songs: / 1. Unnamed Server / 2. [Buffer: 88%] Unnamed Server / 3. [Buffer: 68%] Unnamed Server . . ."

The volunteer-staffed community radio station run out of the Pirate Cat Cafe in San Francisco's Mission District has shut down under a $10,000 fine by the FCC for broadcasting without a license under section 301 of the US Communications Act of 1934.

PCR has been running for 13 years, and while it's true that the site didn't do much in way of paying licensing fees (hence the “Pirate” moniker), neither did it drain the system or make a profit. It certainly wasn't diverting advertising dollars from any other radio station in town. Its rationale (as listed on its Web site):

The Federal Communications Commission is charged with promoting "the larger and more effective use of radio in the public interest." Pirate Cat Radio believes that the FCC has failed in that mission by not creating a practical means for local and neighborhood program services like ours to gain access to the air. We have sought licensing in the past and been ignored or turned down. The FCC appears to have no path of access to air, except for parties having millions of dollars to invest. This is wrong.

Pirate Cat's argument for broadcasting license-free is US Code Federal Regulations Title 47 Section 73.3542, which authorizes broadcasting without a license during wartime. Whether Barack Obama has picked up George W. Bush's mantra of being a wartime president is still unknown, but the FCC apparently isn't buying it.

For now, the cafe remains open, and the radio station plans to continue streaming online.

As reported in Ben Fong-Torres' Radio Waves column in Sunday's Chronicle, the Bay Area Radio Museum and the associated Bay Area Radio Hall of Fame will be shutting down.

Both were run by David F. Jackson, who said that the operation had outgrown his ability to maintain it. Among its offerings, the BARM offered "a treasure trove of radio news, station histories, biographies, photos and airchecks of classic DJs, news and sportscasts," according to Fong-Torres, as well as online tribute stations for KYA and KABL.

The site at www.bayarearadio.org will continue, though without the audio clips, which cost too much to host. Jackson is hoping for an astute CEO to get it on its feet, as well as a volunteer army.

Clear Channel's 98.5, KUFX, unexpectedly dumped its morning show producer, Chris Jackson over the weekend. The Examiner's Brad Kava, reporting the news, called Jackson the station's "most competent, sincere and genuinely nice guy."

For the last 13 years Jackson produced the Greg Kihn show, and few were more upset by the personnel move than Kihn himself.

On his blog (found at the station's Web site), Kihn wrote:

I ran the gamut of human emotions when I found out: first sadness, then anger, then a wave or two of paranoia, then back to sadness. . . . As the reality of the situation sank in, I realized that the face of radio is changing. Certainly you've noticed some old familiar voices missing from the airwaves. . . . Now I have to pick up the pieces and go on. I am under contract myself and I have my own responsibilities.

Writes Kava: "Why do you let go of a guy who has been there for years, has phenomenal knowlege of people and the area, is funny, personable and an integral part of the show?"

The answer of course, which cuts across all media these days, likely has to do with finances.

The East Bay Express this week offers an extensive look at the recently deceased Energy 92.7 FM, San Francisco's groundbreaking gay-themed dance radio station. This, on the heels of San Francisco Supervisor Bevan Dufty's resolution advising the station's new owner to maintain the LGBT format that brought it to recent prominence.

Joe Bayliss, the former sales director for Infinity Radio, bought the station (then playing hip hop) in 2005 with a $33.7M bank loan - a steep price for three kilowatts of power being broadcast from atop Russian Hill.

Still, Bayliss -- a "straight guy with a wife, two kids and two dogs," according to his self-description-made it work ... for awhile.

"While the rest of radio got increasingly homogenous, Bayliss emphasized lesser-known artists, sponsored neighborhood events, and catered specifically to a local market," wrote Rachel Swan in the Express. Energy 92.7 "created a fanbase for local artists like Kaskade; it also helped break such current hit-makers as Lady Gaga and French producer David Guetta. And, unlike the vast majority of commercial FM radio stations, it was independently owned. Most importantly, it was quintessential San Francisco: pure dance with a gay slant."

Bayliss did a series of focus groups before deciding on the format, eventually settling on dance because it didn't just rate well, it had high "passion scores." His target market, gay men aged 25-34, worked well for ad sales. As far as community outreach went, Bayliss hired gay morning show hosts, a gay promotions director and sponsored gay-themed events.

Before the recent economic downturn, the station was turning consistent profits.

That, of course, changed -- for 92.7 and media in general. With a station that almost overnight was worth far less than he paid for it, the bank stepped in and sold it to Ed Stolz, head of Royce International Broadcast Company, for $6.5 million.

The station now goes by KREV ("the Revolution"), and plays Top 40. The entire staff was replaced.

Writes the Express: Energy "had an old-school way of doing business: find a niche audience, develop a playlist based on what's hitting in the clubs and what's charting nationally, and do market research by sending out weekly e-mail blasts." Said Simpson, "I really think that it matched what was going on in San Francisco -- gay culture is part of San Francisco, whether you like it or not."

BayNewser is at TechCrunch50 this week, taking a gander at some of the most promising new startups in media and advertising.

You know how you have those friends who always seem to discover the most interesting music, and you just hope and wish they'd make you a mixtape so you could taste even a fraction of what they're listening to? Hope and wish no more. Friend Radio, one of the companies in TechCrunch50's Demo Pit this year, could be the shortcut you've been waiting for.

Friend Radio is a Facebook app that lets you make "radio stations" of your friends' music. You tell it which friends you want to include in your station, and it scours their "Favorite Music" lists then hops over to YouTube to find the corresponding artists and tracks. Friend Radio then cobbles those all together into a station it beams out to you on a player that sits on your Facebook page.

And as with Pandora, you can simply enter a song you like, and it'll build a station of comparable music. Also as with Pandora, you can give specific tracks a thumbs up or thumbs up to train the station as to your specific tastes.

Launched this past summer, Friend Radio already has had about 25,000 people sign up, says co-founder Chris Turitzin (though when we took a look, the site says it has a little over 18,000 actual monthly active users).

The interesting—though perhaps not unsurprising—revelation since launch? The social dynamics of Friend Radio are more like Twitter than Facebook. Instead of everyone listening to everyone else, there are small group of what Turitzin, a graduate of Stanford's Product Design program, calls "snowflakes," the tastemakers whom others choose to listen to. Most people, Turitzin says, are "sponges," absorbing other people's music selections.

As for monetization, revenue comes from the sale of iTunes tracks and concert tickets.

BayNewser's verdict: We're using it already.

San Francisco's gay-themed radio station, KNGY (Energy 92.7), was sold in August, and the bill just came due. The station's new owner, Golden State Broadcasting (which also operates stations in Palm Springs and Las Vegas), took over at 9 p.m. Thursday, flipped the format and dismissed the approximately 35-person staff.

The new station's call letters will be KREV, and instead of the techno dance music played by KNGY will serve up mainstream Top 40.

The new station, dubbing itself "The Rev FM," boasts the slogan, "All over the bay, the revolution is spreading."

Not so fast, wrote the Chronicle's Sam Whiting: "Whatever the revolution is, it can't be more revolutionary than Energy FM. The DJs were out, and advertising sales were geared toward the LGBT community."

According to the Chronicle, the programming is currently being beamed in from Palm Springs.

Yesterday's news that Michael Savage was dropped in his hometown market, by KNEW, is followed today by news that he and his company, Original Talk Radio Network (ORTN) have reached a settlement in a lawsuit filed by Brave New Films (BNF).

Last year BNF produced a short film, "Michael Savage Hates Muslims," which was posted on YouTube, consisting mostly of audio clips of Savage ranting against Muslims on his syndicated radio show. ORTN subsequently demanded that YouTube remove the clip from its site; as a result, YouTube took down all of BNF's online content, and BNF filed suit for damages and free speech rights.

BNF was represented pro bono by Bingham McCutchen LLP and Stanford Center for Internet and Society's "Fair Use Project," which was founded in 2006 to provide legal support to a range of projects designed to clarify, and extend, the boundaries of "fair use" in order to enhance creative freedom.

On Aug. 21, Savage and OTRN settled, which included the following written apology:

OTRN acknowledges that it made a mistake by asking YouTube to remove Brave New Films' video "Michael Savage Hates Muslims" from the YouTube site. Upon further examination, it is clear that video should not have been included in OTRN's September 29, 2009 takedown notice. OTRN apologizes for this error.

Savage, of course, has taken numerous anti-Muslim stances over the years, many of which can be heard in the film in question:

Rich Lieberman sends word that KNEW (910 AM) has dropped Michael Savage as of this morning.

The station's program director, John Scott, was quoted on Lieberman's Web site as saying that they were "headed in a new direction and a new mind set at this station. Savage does not fit in any longer."

Coming from a guy who still puts Glenn Beck on the air, this is, to say the least, confusing. Word on the street points to internal friction with station management; losing Savage's significant salary might also have been a factor.

The Examiner's Brad Kava makes a bold proclamation today: Local rock radio is dead.

Luckily for him (but not so luckily for local rock fans) he has the numbers to back up his claim. Namely, as of the latest August ratings, not a single one of the top 15 San Francisco radio stations plays rock 'n roll.

Highest rated is KFOG (hardly on the cutting edge of music), which clocked in at 16th place. Stations that focus on newer music fared even worse, with Alice in 19th place and Live 105 in 21st. They are, wrote Kava, "the worst ratings for rock I've seen in three decades of covering radio."

The top 10 stations are either talk (KGO, first place; KCBS second; KQED fourth; KNBR fifth; KSFO seventh), easy listening (KOIT in third place; KIOI in eighth) or other kinds of music (KBLX's soul in sixth place; KYLD's hip-hop in ninth; and KSOL's Spanish music rounding out the list).

On the other hand, KKSF, which recently switched from jazz to a classic rock format, actually climbed in the August book.

Full ratings can be found here.