KYND Cypress - Off the Air

Oh, and no, it was for sure English, and for Sure San Antonio, but I am not sure what freq it was, maybe it was in the bottom of the band?

To try to get this topic back on track, if KYND continues to play music, what format should it be? I bet oldies is first. For fun, give me a sample hour.

b-turner said:

To try to get this topic back on track, if KYND continues to play music, what format should it be? I bet oldies is first. For fun, give me a sample hour.

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You mean, there's actually a chance KYND keeps this up? If you guys are serious about staying with the tunes, and are looking for something fun to do with 1520, why not repeat a little history here in the Space City? Take KYND to what now would be coined classic Top 40. It happened in 1982, why not again in 2016? It's most certainly your expertise, just listening to you jock the station. You certainly have the pipes for it. I'm thinking something along the line of what 93Q sounded like circa 1985. High energy, wacky sound effects, and a real request line. Going much older than 80s music may make a few around here ecstatic, but to really catch the attention of the 30 & 40 somethings that certainly love to wax nostalgic over the things we all grew up with and just how much things have changed, this would be the neatest thing you could do, Bill. I mean, why not? People still talk about the old days of 93Q as a CHR, here 30 years later. Heck, it's been 25 since it went yee-haw, and still fond memories of 93Q and the Q Zoo are always met with a smile and a fond recollection of what that decade of music at 92-9 was to their youth.

An hour of music?

Survivor - Eye of the Tiger (...well, of course)
George Lamond - Bad of the Heart
Toni Basil - Mickey
Camouflage - The Great Commandment
INXS - What You Need
Foreigner - Urgent (this'll be a regular request from "Bruce on the westside", Bill)
Frankie Goes to Hollywood - Relax
Dead or Alive - You Spin Me Round
Information Society - Walking Away
Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up
Heart - Never
Jane Weidlen - Rush Hour
Depeche Mode - World In My Eyes
Erasure - Stop!

I don't know, that's around an hour's worth of commercial free music, I guess. Just an idea, it'd be cool to hear. Probably want to use better examples of 80s music than I gave. I'm a bit of an eccentric in music listening and train wrecks don't frighten me, lol. Guess that's why I'm particularly fond of San Antonio's Jack.

Here are a few random Oldies songs from my music collection.

Kai Winding - Hero
Johnny Rivers - Poor Side of Town
Chris Montez - Let's Dance
A taste of honey - Boogie oogie oogie
Billy J. Kramer with the Dakotas - Bad to Me
The Trashman - Surfin Bird
Buddy Cole - Time on My Hands
The Dramatics - In The Rain
The Chiffons - He's So Fine
The Music Explosion - A Little Bit o' Soul
Al Kooper & Mike Bloomfield - The Weight
Bill Haley - Rock Around The Clock
Midnight Star - Operator
Johnny Otis - Willie And The Hand Jive
Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth

Simply put, going for a music format would mean getting more office space, greatly increased payroll, marketing campaigns to build awareness all in a quest to get any ratings significant enough in the right demos to get some agency buys (not so much the big agencies but the sort that handle some of the smaller multi-location businesses). Then, maybe a million or two later, you reach breakeven and hope to pay back the money invested only to have that hungry 24/7 AM steal your audience because KYND is a daytime only station.

However, in the meantime, we have a time to test the waters, play and have some fun.

Thanks for the suggestions. Looks like I need to make a trip up to retrieve most of my music library that I loaned to a LPFM to load in to their hard drive. About the best I can do at this point is Texas Music, Bluegrass and Classical.

Good luck Bill!

Off topic, but has 1090 been shut off by someone yet? It might be just flipping a switch for the land owner.
Or maybe they'd let someone play some music on the station, LOL not at night, of course.

I really don't know what is going on at 1090. I know a contract engineer that has done some work out there at some point. That's about it.

KYND is currently playing oldies/classic hits. Have been some outages that don't make sense: why a CD will play for hours and hours, then suddenly stop and why output lines screwed down to the input are tight but suddenly fail to work, so you drive out, touch the cable to check it and the audio comes back. I could see if the line was in bad shape of the screws not tightened enough. Makes me think that little building is haunted.

You have to screw the audio cables together? I thought they might just plug in like headphones, but I've never engineered a real station.

LOL and CDs are extremely repetitive because they only allow about 80 minutes of music. Do you have an extra laptop? An extra old smart phone? I would use something like that to make 1520 a little more professional. You can put a lot more music into the mix. Heck, even if you use an MP3 CD that would be better than an old standard CD.

The wires are screwed down, can't get any tighter, wired perfectly but I don't understand why it goes out on me here and there.

No laptop etc. to do anything. We're between paid clients at the moment...zero billing in other words. Asking for any outlay of cash is out of the question because we don't know when we'll get a new client. At this point, it's just a keep something on the air thing.

Ugh. I didn't know you guys had it that bad.
Good luck to you with finding a client soon or maybe Pro can try selling KYND, if they find any good broadcasters who might want it. I don't know the owners' plans as well as you though.

Quite frankly it is the nature of brokered time radio. Either you have a client or you have zero billing. It takes a couple of weeks to a year to get a new client, so you have to skim some cash from each month to build a fund to wait out the time between clients. We had a 5 year run with our last client. When you have zero billing, though, you sure don't spend a dime you don't need to spend because you never know when that new client comes around.

Putting the station up for sale typically takes about 2 years from the time you list it with a broker and get a buyer that has the financing all lined up. An election year is always shaky for those making big investments and the situation with the oil prices doesn't help either. Houston is a great market and much better than most but those factors mean timing is a bit off on trying to sell.

I guess the best way I can describe our budget at this point is being laid off and you look at the cash you have saved up and dole it out sparingly because you are not sure how long until you get that new job. We're just allowing for our usual operating expenses and keeping the rest in reserve. And you never know. We might have a deal tomorrow, next week, next month or maybe months from now so we're acting like it might be months.

Oh, okay. Let's hope you get a deal soon.
I was going to mention as well that I believe electrical tape as well as screws might keep the wires better connected. If the outages keep up I don't think electrical tape's very expensive from Home Depot or another hardware store.

Yep. We have a partial spool under the desk at the back of the transmitter room. Was with the engineer when we changed it out enjoying all the nice warm fuzzies of being a couple of feet away from one of the coils in the phasor.

I caught KNYD coming in well with some short fading here in Kilgore TX this morning under KOKC around 7:30-8am. Nice mix of classic hits.

Wow, being heard in Kilgore is something. With KYND being a 3 tower directional, our signal shoots mostly south and east, so it must have been a good morning for tuning in before the sun got too high in the sky. The good thing is it's 60 minute music hours. The bad part is the rotation is only 80 minutes before you hear the same songs again.

Thank you for the comment on the selection of music. The songs range from Respect by Aretha Franklin to Runaway Train by Soul Asylum or literally 1960s to the 1990s. 50% is 1970s with about 3 or 4 songs an hour designed to be sort of 'oh wow' songs such as Come On Eileen by Dexy's Midnight Runners, Reflections of My Life by Marmalade and Bernadette by the Four Tops. Newer songs handpicked on the basis: Would the song have been a hit if released in the a couple of decades earlier.

Bill, Have you thought of airing Cypress radio until you get a client? It would be good for Jimmy and give them exposure. It would be an easy fill time for you.

I was surprised too. I looked at KYND's pattern on radio-info and thought it was strange I was able to catch it here. Being up on the dial helps. KGOW's daytime skywave is a monster here in early mornings and late afternoons. I think KOKC is still on their temporary tower after their 50K 3 tower rig was downed by a tornado last year. They're 10K non-directional, and surprisingly it comes in good in East Texas.

I listened KYND about 8:30 am.. I caught "The Final Countdown" for the second time. If you're stuck doing that for a long time, I'd fill up a old laptop or PC with a bunch of classic hits and oldies MP3's, Station ID's and liners and run it with Winamp or Zara Radio.

Catching The Final Countdown by Europe I hope you didn't pop a burrito in the microwave.