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KESZ Rumored to be renamed as "The Breeze"
- Thread starter Y2kTheNewOldies
- Start date
I believe that at-home and at-work listening combined still exceed in-car listening, so in-car listening is not "the bulk." Also, the new cars with HD are working their way into the existing car total very slowly. The average car on the road today, i understand, is about 10 years old, so HD has a long, long way to go. The promotion problem lies with the non-radio people who bought out iBiquity. They are only in it for the licensing fees they can collect on the technology, so as long as the cars are rolling out with HD-capable radios in them, that's money in the bank for the bean counters now running iBiquity to cackle over. It doesn't matter if the end user (the car buyer) ever listens to an HD signal, or even if the car is even sold. Why waste money on promotion if you can rake it in without telling anyone about HD?
I personally think DTS/Xperi have been doing a better job with auto makers with getting HD into cars than independent iBiquity did. Possibly because before the Sirius-XM merger, auto makers had stakes in the satellite radio company. iBiquity did more promotion, but the whole “stations between the stations” campaign confused consumers.
Something needs to happen to get digital terrestrial radio going in the U.S. - even if that means forcing Xperi to make the HD technology open source (which, in a free market economy, won’t happen).
I graduated high school near Phx, and was aware of this station. It branded as "KEZ", as I remember, which to me sounds itself like a legitimate set of call letters (at least grandfathered, anyway, like KYW or other three-letter calls), so it was always a bit confusing. "The Breeze" works, as would "EZ 99" or some such.
The “stations between the stations” campaign was not done by iBiquity. It was done by the HD Alliance, which was made up of the station groups that were early adopters and, in I believe all cases, investors in iBiquity. I was the delegate for one of them, and we decided to drop out because of the lack of any focus on minority communities. But the Alliance got huge banks of spots from its participants to promote HD and car brands with HD and retailers selling after-market radios.
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TTBOMK they still do. They receive a payment from Sirius based on subscriptions. And in turn they get placement in the dashboard.
There is talk that now that they own Pandora, we may see Pandora get placement in the dash.
The PD who rebranded "EZ Rock 99.9" as 99.9 KEZ used to do nights at KFI and that was an influence on everything he did. He always wanted jocks to punctuate it as K--E--Z so it sounded like call letters and not K-Easy.
I'm not sure if I'm ready to say that the bulk of FM/AM radio is in car only. It definitely is for satellite, but not necessarily so for terrestrial.
The thing I've noticed with new cars with HD is the automakers deliver the car with HD turned off. So someone has to know that HD exists and then turn it on to hear it.
For all practical purposes, HD Radio is a means to program translators. There's no other way you make money off of it right now.
I know that GM and Honda owned good shares of XM, and Ford and DaimlerChrysler (which might have stayed with Daimler after Chrysler was sold) was involved in Sirius. That might have changed after GM's bankruptcy, and diluted after Liberty bought a controlling stake in SiriusXM. They were first to the dashboard, and iBiquity/DTS/Xperi has been trying to play catch-up with HD ever since.
I've noticed that HD is shut off upon delivery. Maybe it's a ploy from SiriusXM and the other dashboard partners, but it might be out of respect for those dealers where there's no HD or on the cliff of a signal. Nissan has been HD's biggest automotive holdout so far. I wonder if the ouster of Carlos Ghosn will change that.
That would be a clever piece of corporate skulduggery, if that is in fact the case!
"The Breeze" is on KEZ HD2 replacing XMAS music. "The Breeze" was originally on 100.3 in the 90's right before Z-Rock. It was a mostly new wave instrumental format for a very brief time.
I assume you're talking about Steve Labeau who did afternoons at KFI and was PD there at that time (mid 80's at KFI)
Oh, he did nights too - I used to DX him after dark in Phoenix long before I worked for him.
But punctuating the calls forcefully "K...E...Z" like you might say "64 K--F--I" was very much on purpose, because he wanted people to remember KEZ and not K-Easy.
Funny, but I have three cars (2012-2016) that have digital radios and none of them (1) were turned off at delivery or (2) have a transition problem (unless you are at the ragged edge of a digital signal). In fact, when taking delivery of two of the three the delivery guy went to great lengths to demonstrate how the digital signal works. Perhaps digital radios have gotten better recently?
More likely, since the FCC allowed stations to increase their digital signal to -14 dB, reception has gotten better. 93.3, IIRC, is one of the “grandfathered” -10 dB HD stations, which means they’re running 10,000 watts digits ERP. The iHeart and Bonneville stations are running their 2006-vintage HD transmitters, which was in the -20 dB era.
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