KYND Cypress - Off the Air

Allow me to try to explain a bit about the CRI deal: G&E Studios is an American company that had a client, China Radio International. G&E leased stations and placed programming on them. Some programming came from CRI but much originated from American hosts (using Los Angeles Air Talent) who did shows on subjects like technology, sports, financial and other subjects. G&E was hired to do this by CRI.

After 5 years, the funding for this was stopped resulting in G&E no longer having a client and a bunch of stations they leased mow needing programming and a new paying client. I suppose the Chinese 'reevaluated' and dropped the ax. It is my understanding the English language version was stopped everywhere in every city G&E leased a station to carry the programming. This would not be a just Houston thing.

I really enjoyed having G&E as a client, really nice people, understanding and very reasonable in their dealings, a truly rare find.

Well explained. Sounds like a lot of programming is about to change, keeps listening exciting I guess.

Possibly anything to do with this I wonder? BTW: As I said before I liked the programming.


http://www.billboard.com/articles/business/6752877/feds-radio-chinese-ownership


Feds Investigate Radio Broadcaster Over Alleged Chinese Ownership

11/3/2015 by Associated Press


Federal regulators are investigating a U.S. radio broadcasting company that is reportedly majority-owned by a unit of a Chinese government broadcaster.

A spokesman for the Federal Communications Commission confirmed Tuesday that the agency will open a probe into G&E Studio Inc., a Los Angeles-based company reportedly owned by James Su, a naturalized U.S. citizen originally from Shanghai.

The company leases stations and air time, and broadcasts in more than 10 cities across the U.S., including Philadelphia, Washington, D.C. and San Francisco.

This sites story about it makes it out to be a "Covert" Radio Network, LOL.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3302100/Investigation-launched-emerges-California-firm-s-radio-broadcasts-backed-Chinese-government.html

Investigation launched into covert Chinese radio network broadcasting in 12 U.S cities and backed by the Beijing government

Report revealed some radio broadcasts are being backed by the Chinese
G&E Studio Inc is 60% owned by state run Chinese Radio International
The firm is owned by James Su, a naturalized US citizen born in Shanghai
He owns or leases virtually all the air time on at least a dozen US stations

I spent a lot (100's) of hours listening to 1520AM KYND while I worked at my shop, and can say that yes, some of the programming from G&E/CRI was obviously hand picked by the Chinese Government, along with the fact that a lot of the big news stories involving China mysteriously were just left out of the programming entirely. But still it was a good listen, and informative.

Interesting posts. "G&E Studio Inc is 60% owned by state run Chinese Radio International"; "The company leases stations and air time". G&E does not own stations from what I know (and I sure don't know it all). The Daily Mail article clearly says that: G&E does not own any U.S. stations, but it leases... So, let's clarify: you rent a space to open, say a hair styling salon on the corner of a busy intersection. You pay the rent and attend to your customers at that location. My question, does the salon operator own the building? Next question: Is the salon owner leasing the space from the building owner? If you rent/lease a home, do you own it?

I think it might be fair to say 60% of their revenue came from the client China Radio International. What I find interesting is how a naturalized citizen can be foreign ownership. Sure, they could be a 'front' but a citizen is not a citizen. For the record, I have never seen, spoken to or dealt with Mr. Su. If he was leasing the station I manage I think I'd know it or I'd have some contact at some point over half a decade. I have known of the people I dealt with prior to them coming to us about the lease. In fact they had been involved in radio in Houston.

Covert is really a funny way to describe things since most of the programming came from independent air talent in the Los Angeles area who were hired to do shows on topics like finance, sports. entertainment and such. They would have been very covert if they were still on by making fun of the Miss Universe blunder and how Mr. Harvey's post misspelled Philippines and Colombia. Scary covert stuff indeed. My point is most all programming I heard was the same sort of stuff you'd hear elsewhere on the radio dial.

It is true the English language programming, while mostly originated in Los Angeles, was paid for through CRI who hired G&E Studios to originate programming and broadcast a couple of shows off of CRI's English Service. Even the news originated from Los Angeles air talent, was simply rip and read, with local weather and traffic added. This would be akin to the BBC hiring an American company to place BBC programming on stations in the USA and authorizing that company to originate programming of interest to the American public. The BBC is known as a state broadcaster.

Bill, is that your voice announcing song artists and titles between songs? If so, man you need to crack a mic more often, sir. I haven't heard a disc jockey with the energy just oozing out of the radio like that in years.

Would like to mention that something is still not quite right with the power level, though. I've got KYND locked in, but there are dropouts and static that I'm not accustomed to hearing from 1520. It's not as strong of a signal as usual down here near the Loop. Thought I'd mention it, in case you were looking for a reception report that you could pass along to your engineer.

Yep that's me jocking that from my cheap studio at the house. That's what I get for being an old top 40 jock back in the day when you only spoke over the music and shut up before the lyrics began.

We were having some problems today and the engineer will be out there in the morning to see why what couldn't go wrong did. I mean we are talking something like turning on the radio, then you walk away from it 5 minutes and for some reason without human intervention, it turns itself off. All you can do is scratch your head, turn it back on and watch it for a while to see if it does the same thing. Then again, if you watch it, it never messes up. It waits until you are not watching it. Or at least that's my experience with equipment that is to do what it is supposed to do.

Yes, KYND is playing a Texas Music blend, sort of a rocking country mix that is somewhere between country and Americana

Somewhere between country and unrecognizable, Bill, lol. Guess I need to brush up on my "Red Dirt" music, because I couldn't find one tune, during my intermittent listening of KYND today, that I knew. Sure was good to hear it back on the air, though. Something just doesn't feel right when KYND is a missin', and KOKC keeps telling me to hurry and go see my local Oklahoma Ford dealer every 30 minutes.

Hi Bill, I am listening this morning, station sounds great, wondering what power level it is currently running at? Any word on what programming we may hear soon on KYND?

Hi, Thanks. I know it is an odd music choice but I kind of went with the Texas Music Scene TV show as a base for artists and a sound that is a little rock and roll and a little country. It's a 80 minute loop and I screw up 3 times in the recording done straight to CD (hitting the wrong start button to fire off the Sheryl Crow, saying These are instead of This is on one track and hitting the wrong track on the Avett Brothers tune.

We are running at 25,000 watts as I gaze at the Nautel on the other open screen.

As for what programming will come, I don't know. Nothing confirmed as of this morning.

I need to make a run to a friend's house to get back much of my music. He's dubbing hundreds if not more CDs for a station's music library...most all the stuff from back when a certain company offered various formats on CD. When I do that it could be interesting.

Had a glitch from 11:45 to 12:38. We're trying to figure out that 'ghost' that is doing that.

If you have listened, you'll note Sheryl Crow, Tom Petty, Joe Walsh, Don Henley and Gretchen Wilson performing songs you have heard nowhere else in Houston and they might sound out of character for the artist.

I might mention the engineer is out there and fine tuning everything. Out of the blue, the volume about tripled and the sound much more crystal clear. He's still tweaking now.

It's sounding OK today. I noticed also that 1090 is broadcasting no audio, just carrier was doing same when I checked couple days ago as well.

I know one of the guys that does some work out there from time to time. I'll send an email to him. Makes me wonder if their are having trouble with their client's studio to transmitter relay or if they lost the client and just forgot to override the settings for sign on and sign off.

Years ago I had a client that had their engineer come in and install a new control board. He didn't hook things back up right and 4 days later after blaming us, they found the problem. We ran fill programming from our studio until they found the problem

Yep, I am up working at 4:24AM, and here is 1090Khz AM with a dead carrier at S-9+ level (my meter cal is set back on purpose) Supposed to be OFF at night, and supposed to have programming during day, it just sits here with carrier all day AND night long now... See image:

I'll pass that info along so the guy I know can call the station owner about this. It might be possible they were working on things over there as that's the time to do it. I can only speculate. I know watching one station is plenty for me so I could imagine several is harder to stay on top of. I know for me, the software updates that happen don't always carry over all the previous settings on the transmitter so you have to watch things like a hawk...squawk! Last update wiped out our January start/stop times which is why I'm always watching at those times since you never know when they happen.

I'm a five minute drive from the 1090 or the 1520 transmitter, LOL. I'll check it again tonight, see if it's still operating in carrier only mode, currently it still is during the day right now.

KYND's Audio is not right, or seems low compared to all the other stations, checked to see if it was overload here since I am so close, doesn't seem to be.

Yeah, definitely something wrong there, Stations with only S5 signal strength have 2-3 times the audio of KYND right now, see pic.