We have learned friend-of-the-site Trish Gazall is leaving her post on 550AM as John Brown’s sidekick on the midday show The Mindset.

Efforts to get a comment from Trish have returned nothing so far, but we do know that she is leaving on her terms and it was believed she is leaving because she was looking for a job a bit more musically inclined rather than the talk-focused KTRS job.

Which 106.5 The Arch jock did we hear recently opined on the internet about how much they hate the company they shill for?

If you sons of bitches were not paying me to say that I liked u I would switch providers in a heart beat. ASSWHOLES [sic]

Service provider huh?  We’re guessing they are compaining about what everyone complains about: Charter  …or it could be that anal wart cream delivery service.  Bastards are always late.

Wait wait wait.  Are you telling me that when an on-air personality says something is awesome, they are sometimes just doing it for the money?!  Say it ain’t so!  The Easter Bunny, Santa Claus, massages with happy endings and Mark McGwire’s home run records are real though right?

According to a tipster to STLMedia, 100.3 will soon kill the Christmas music and move to a new format for the area: All 80s and 90s music, aimed squarely at those Gen-Xers.

Says the tipster…

CONFIRMED. GEN X RADIO COMES TO 100.3. MUSIC OF THE 90′S AND 80′S AIMED AT GEN X. EXPECT STUNTING AND A LAUNCH RIGHT AFTER FIRST OF THE YEAR. THE ARCH IS SCREWED.

We love this idea.  The only time we listen to the radio these days is when the Point is doing one of their “Wayback Weekends” full of 90s music, so if 100.3 wants to make a whole station out of that idea, we can’t wait.

I mean we still aren’t really going to listen to much radio…but if we forget our iPod, this station finally sounds like a decent music alternative.

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Actually, it didn’t take much digging to confirm the tipster.  It will be called The Sound, here’s their site, soundstl.com, which is un-shockingly horrible.

Also, to add a little bit of radio intrigue to this news it appears former head honcho of Bonneville stations 106.5 The Arch and 101.1 Movin, Jules Riley is returning to town to take on her former mates as the new PD of The Sound and possibly z107.7!

Its little secret that Jules was against the move that made 101.1 from dance music (Movin) to sports (101 ESPN) and left soon after loosing control of that frequency.  Now she is apparently back and in control of more or less the same two properties with The Sound going right after the Arch and z107.7 a more modern, and more popular, version of Movin, only with the more unstable ClearChannel.

If you give a rat’s ass about radio, this could get interesting.

If you don’t, then it won’t get any more interesting than this.  Fair warning.

We’ve been through this all before…

Last year it was MOVIN 101.1 that finally had the life-support plug pulled on it and switched to Christmas music in October, and now its 100.3 KATZ thats flipping the switch to Christmas music a little earlier than we all would prefer.  So two years in a row, the majority of St. Louisan’s are left scratching our heads as to why on earth you would want to play Chrismas music this early.

There are two reasons for this, so allow us to break it down for you.

Reason Number One: It allowed you to get a jump on the ratings

As of just a few months ago, the radio ratings system used “diaries” for listeners to tell the ratings people what they listened to.  The problem is that most people wouldn’t put in “105.7 The Point” they would put in “rock” or “alternative” or “country” so stations are allowed to stake claims on these keywords.  For holiday music, the staking process boiled down to a race: Those that start that music first get the keyword.  So when 101.1 started Christmas music last year in October, it got to stake it’s claim to the keyword “Chrismas” so that even if some reindeer sweater wearing grandma was actually listening to Y98’s Christmas music, but just wrote down “Christmas music,” 101.1 got the point.  Trickery at it’s finest.

However, in July a new ratings system came to town that is more or less a pager that people wear and it does all the tracking of what you listen to with codes embedded in the radio signal.  I’m not 100% sure how this effects the keywords, but we would think that means they are gone, which also means the only real reason 100.3 is switching to Christmas music so soon is…

Reason Number Two: It’s a Cheap Time Filler

You hear a lot of DJs on the “Christmas stations” do ya?  Nope.  You don’t pay a soul…hell you don’t even need to keep the lights on in the booth!  Playing Christmas music for a few months is a super cheap way to kill the time.  Step 1: Lock someone in a room. Step 2: Tell them to make a schedule of all the Christmas songs you have rights too. Step 3: Repeat it until the new year.  Step 4: Change the station.

It happened last year, its happening this year, and it will happen again.  But do any of the actual public like it?  Doesn’t seem that way.  Most people we hear from hated it last year and hate it this year.  Right or wrong, people get stressed out about Christmas and when you remind them its coming earlier then they would like, its not going to make them happy.  Add to that the fact that, on the whole, Christmas music sucks donkey dong and you have yourself a recipe for a lot of people dumping on your station.

Doesn’t matter to the stations though.

Maybe that kind of thinking is why less and less people listen to the radio these days…

After the abrupt cleaning job at K-Hits last week, it seems the St. Louis radio landscape.  Here’s a purposely vague  summary of what we are hearing:

1. It’s been about a year that this much talked about station has launched, what contracts will failed to be renewed?

2. Could there be a shake up in the mornings for a station down the hall from item #1?  We doubt it but contract negotiations aren’t starting off well.

Ratings are great, but if you aren’t making money your high-priced talent needs to be a little less high-priced.

Yesterday was a big St. Louis sporting news day!  Tony LaRussa made his decision to return to manage the Cardinals for at least 2010 official and confirmed the rumor that Mark McGwire would be on board as the team’s new hitting coach!

This is a major local news story that broke through the bounds of St. Louis and got national coverage.  Obviously the network synonymous with sports, ESPN, picked up and story and when they needed that local view they turned to the obvious radio station choice…KMOX?!?!

Ouch.  Now that’s gotta sting over the local ESPN Radio affiliate WXOS, 101 ESPN.  Its one thing to have a falling out in private, but to have your old flame have their new slut’s name all over the place?  Wow.  So sad.

Lets relive it shall we?

What do you have to do to not even get a phone call from the company you pay to broadcast their content?

First off, let me do a little finger wagging at 101 ESPN for not including the mighty Punching Kitty on their press release list.

Secondly, here’s their new publicity stunt.  Its so obviously as stunt we normally wouldn’t report on it, but we really like Randy Karraker around here, so what the hell…

Here’s the part the matters:

WXOS-FM’s Randy Karraker announced that he is stepping up to the plate in a bid to purchase the St. Louis Rams NFL franchise.  Karraker made this announcement on the air this afternoon at 5:05pm on 101 ESPN.

With the recent debacle of Rush Limbaugh’s efforts to join Dave Checketts’ quest to purchase the team, and the rampant rumors about the Rams potential sale and move back to Los Angeles, Karraker was reminded of how bad it hurt whenleft St. Louis.  And although there are a reported six potential groups interested in purchasing the team, none have stood football  out from the rest of the competition.  Rather than just sit and watch it happen again, Karraker decided to do something about it, and has created the Randy Karraker: Save the Rams Fund-and Fan-Raising Campaign.

Of course nothing can come out of ESPN 101 without having several mentions of Program Director Jason Barrett.

101 ESPN Program Director Jason Barrett notes, “Randy is pulling together all of the people he knows, and is calling on the public to raise the funds necessary to keep the Rams where they belong, right here in St. Louis.” Barrett continues, “He realizes this is a huge uphill climb and he doesn’t expect it to be easy. But Randy is going to do his best to make a difference and he hopes to do it with the full support of the public.”

We know you are the PD Jason, you don’t have a piss on everything so it smells like you.  …also don’t get us started on those dreadful new commercials for Bernie’s mid-day show with you reading your lines like a coked out porno star.

Back to Karraker:  Its a noble effort to collect money, but if anyone is under the assumption that the donators will be “part owners” of the team, I got some bad news for you: (source)

Green Bay is the only team with [a public ownership] structure in the NFL; such ownership is technically in direct violation of league rules, which stipulate a limit of 32 owners of one team and one of those owners having a minimum 30% stake. However, the Packers corporation was grandfathered when the NFL’s current ownership policy was established, and are thus exempt.

All in all?  This is a good move by 101.  Its a fun little PR stunt with their most personable host at the focal point and when it all comes to a hault, the money goes to charity which makes the local Bonneville chapter look good to the Mormon overlords.

Meanwhile the staff at KFNS 590AM are getting their listeners to pool their money so they can afford the rest of that Frank Cusumano contract.

More at 101 ESPN.com

Saw this little note over on fellow gossip maven site STLMedia:

Even though they are both owned by Bonneville, on-air folks at WIL make much more money than those at #1 WARH.

Maybe AFTRA affiliation is good for something, but you can bet there’s some chafing at WARH.

So maybe this is surprising to some people, it wasn’t here.  Yes, its true our fair editor has a connection to radio parent company Bonneville as he was previously an employee, but that doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t take much thought to figure out that 92.3 WIL is a personality driven station, just look at the marketing.  106.5 the Arch however is just the opposite.  Sure they have great talent on there, but its not the focus, the music is.  The Arch didn’t get to #1 by pimping Van and Rick or Michelle Steele, they did it by creating a station you turn on when you get to your office and leave it on all day.  It’s background music.

So…of course WIL jocks get more money.  Its as simple to figure out as the old TV commercials or the billboards.

Is it right?  Yeah, probably.

Are the Arch jocks pissed about it?  Maybe, but we haven’t heard anything to that effect. (Let me know if I’m wrong though)

Does anyone out there really care either way?  Eh, probably not.

Sorry.

After years and years of broadcasting classical music to St. Louis, KFUO-FM 99.1 has been sold and will transition to “JoyFM” to play the worst music ever: “Christian contemporary music”

From STLToday:

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod will sell its 61-year-old classical music station, KFUO-99.1 FM, to Gateway Creative Broadcasting, the LCMS and Gateway announced today, for $18 million plus $8 million in interest over a 10-year term.

The sale will become final in March, pending the approval of the Federal Communications Commission and transfer of the license.

Des Peres-based Gateway, as Joy FM, broadcasts Christian contemporary music. It presently owns two “rimshot” stations, in Potosi and Bowling Green, that do not penetrate St. Louis County or city.

The thing is, no one seems all that happy about this sale, and its not just because they are all a bunch of Mozart nuts.

First there is the internal strife about the sale.  STLToday goes in to detail on this in their article quoted above:

The station was never advertised, and the sale was handled in secrecy. LCMS treasurer Tom Kuchta and board member Kermit [Editor's Note: Awesome.] Brashear, an Omaha lawyer and politician, were behind the sale. Brashear handled the negotiations.

LCMS second vice president Paul W. Maier, a professor of history at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo, charged that the board had ignored a petition signed by 41 church leaders, and abandoned its responsibilities. At its August meeting, the board turned over full authority to sell the station to Brashear. No discussions within the Synod were ever held.

“That’s difficult to understand,” said Devantier, “why that group or any group within the church was never able to submit a bid to purchase the station.”

Its not just people inside the LCMS that are up in arms about this move, others in the radio industry are doing all they can to queer the deal as well.  One of them is our friend-of-the-site blog STLMedia you flatly states that the “sale must be stopped at all costs!”

So whats the big deal?  Well no one was allowed to make any offers!  This whole thing seemed to have gone down after someone lost a hand at a back door poker game.  Its not like there aren’t groups out there that wanted to make a bid, there is at least one apparently that wants to keep it a classical station, but they never got the chance!

There’s a weird line here with stuff like this though right.  Who says you can’t sell something you own to whoever you want? Well its not that easy.  For one, even the group of people that own it aren’t wild about this deal and two, when you start dealing with FCC controlled properties things aren’t as cut and dry.

I’ll never understand why they did just listen to other deals and say they didn’t “like” them and still sell to JoyFM.  No one could have said a thing if they had just taken a damn meeting with the other guys.  People are so lazy.

If you want to join in on the fight to keep Classical music pumping or just because you really really really hate Christian rock, check out what you can do on this STLMedia post.

Remember when radio really mattered?  Yeah, I know its been a while.  Jog your memory with these old and cheese-tastic KSHE 95 tv ads!