Our View

Our View
In Old Towne Ridgecrest

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Verizon

Glad to hear good things about Verizon! My nephew, Brad, works for them somewhere in the Inland Empire and makes "house calls". I guess I should ask him if he's ever worked with crazy radio people, huh?

-Ray

For the Record....

Discount Verizon as my source of stress earlier. Great job Kim. He was here a little after 8 and managed to make sense out of our phone system. I feel obliged to say this because 1) I made a disparaging remark earlier and 2) the quality of work and customer service was noteworthy. He went the extra mile. Thanks to Kim and Justin at Verizon in Ridgecrest!

-Eric

Time for a cleansing of the soul...

Yesterday, we hear tell that some earlier postings on this blog may have upset some folks, where we used to work. My apologies for that. Kind of. While we continue to thrive in our new environment and control our destiny a little more, I can't help but harken back to days of yore. We can create names for the other "characters" all we want, but there are also two things at work here. One, our opportunity to go out on our own and do things for ourselves and not make someone else a lot of money. But the other, is leaving an incredibly toxic workplace that frankly became a very sad place to go to every day. It is the fault of some of those "characters" who basically enjoyed making other people miserable. When called on it they always came back with a "What? No, really? I had no idea" attitude that was very insulting and only added to already hurt feelings. While we build our new life with so much enjoyment and challenge ahead of us, I have to thank Ray for reminding me of leaving behind that misery. Usually when I'm upset because the phone guy didn't show up (thanks Verizon!), or some hitch in our computer git-along, he calls and gives me some quick word association that is instantly calming, and reminds me that a happy workplace has no dollar value.

Thanks Ray!

-Eric

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

Life in the Newsroom

It is now well past my bedtime. In the past, Eric would not phone me beyond 8PM unless there was some kind of breaking news (and it needed to be REAL news!). Now, the trio are probably still at the radio station after 8PM and I am still awake at 10PM.

It really isn't much of a challenge doing the news 1500 miles away...I'm working no different than before. I still use the phone and the computer. Distance doesn't mean much. I just hope I don't have to show for a staff meeting!

Ah, but I know I will be making another trip to Ridgecrest in the near future. I need to use my frequent-flyer miles I've earned from flying with those free vouchers (sorry, Eric...need to get my digs in).

But, Eric, couldn't you just one day a year call the station The Armadillo?

-Ray

What is that smell?

Could it be another dead furry friend? There is some kind of smell coming from the back room now. We think that it may be a dead mouse or worse, a rat. Our building sits next to an abandoned building and open desert. We knew that we had mice but since our last one had expired we haven't seen any "presents." There also haven't been any more relatives in our 3 traps. We also knew that rats were present after my husband had been cleaning the crawl space and discovered evidence of them. I threw out the leftover food in the fridge and the smell lingered so I sniffed around and I have found the area of it's source. I called the pest control and they are hopefully going to get someone out soon to find it and get rid of it. Until then candles keep the smell from the front office and we don't go in the back unless we must.

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-Sara

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

And Away We Go!

Day number two of the Big Show and I have to tell you I am so pumped! Thanks to all of the callers and well wishers...it's making me think we have a chance. Had our first contest this morning and I had a bunch of contestants. Hans won a CD! I am going to try to come up with some sort of regular tricky contest.

One problem is driving me crazy though. I spent three hours yesterday loading music. I have 300 songs in the computer with more to come in today. If you listen though, there is a thing called an EOM message. It's a special cue tone put on the end of a song to tell the next one to start. Well ummm, it's not working. So what do we get? A nice litle 2-3 second gap between songs. Back to the drawing board on that one. Yes it frustrates me too so thanks for your patience.

Gonna bring The Boy up here today (my son Nick) and have him work on that. I notcie that folks are stopping by here to read what's going on with the station and that's cool, but if you have any questions, leave them on the comments page and I'll try to answer them.

-Eric

The Big Show Returns!

Yesterday morning (12/26/05) the Big Show launched with Eric at the helm. We had switched our format at 11pm Christmas night from Christmas Music over to True Country 92.7 "The Coyote." Congratulations Ridgecrest, you have your station back!

I listened from about 7am until The Big Show's 9am end. Eric tested the call in system with Ray Watters, our news man in Killeen TX. Why is our news man in Texas you ask? Ray is a dislocated local. He and his lovely wife spent many years here in the valley before moving to Texas to be closer to their daughter. In fact his wife was my brother's first grade teacher! Ray still has very close ties to Ridgecrest as his son is here as well as many close friends made over the years. On with the story!

Eric flipped a switch that made Ray sound great on air. The one downfall was that Ray couldn't hear Eric. When Eric flipped the switch back......dial tone. Ray was gone! All was well because it wasn't but a few minutes later that Ray was back on air and he and Eric resumed their banter. The Madman Steve O'Neal made a special appearance to the Big Show as well. This man is a Saint! He makes the glue that holds our station together. So despite the fact that he had been awake into the wee hours The Madman couldn't stay away for the first show! John Perridge of I-Rock, the across town Rock Station, also made a guest appearance as well as brining a gift. It was great to have our listeners hear that the two radio stations do get along! Eric said that there was a lot of behind the scenes scrambling but as a listener I couldn't tell. It sounded great and like a nugget of Gold, will only shine after more and more polishing.

Our new format sounds fabulous! It is truly a mix of great country songs of the past and some of today's best country.

Eric spent the rest of the day renaming over 300 files as well as letting the computer know when the end of the song is (EOM). Kim and I spent the day on billing as this is the first day of the new Broadcast Month. We had visitors through out the day and I just can't say enough about how Welcome we are feeling.

-Sara

Friday, December 23, 2005

We're almost ready!

The new 92-7 FM The Coyote will hit the air on Monday (well technically Sunday night). I know we'll have some bugs, but hopefully they'll be few. The one thing that has struck me during all of this has been the wonderful reception we have gotten from everyone. The help we have received here in our building and the outpouring from even people passing on the street. We have a tremendous location here and hopefully we'll be a welcome stop for everyone.

The station sounds great! I've been running up and down the dial, listening to the other stations and we sound as good, if not better. (IMHO). Even though I have done this for over 25 years, 13 in this town, I am a little nervous for the first air shift on Monday. I need to get as much done today and tomorrow because I really want for all of our family to be together on Christmas Day.

The drama from our crosstown rivals (and former employers) should heat up Monday too. We're not answering anything their doing on the air to attck us. We have our own thing to do and our own goals that are attainable without getting dirty. It's funny how they're already attacking us based on things they have heard on the street. See how nice I am? I should've started a rumor we were going Polka or something.

More later.

-Eric

Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Another Day Down

Eric got the automation up and running!! It wasn't easy by any means and it did require a phone call to tech support but now things seem to be working great! However Murphy's Law did give us a bump in the road. The board for the production started giving us some static. Once we switched the board out static was gone. Is there a goblin in our studio?

Kim and I hashed out accounts today and came up with lists of who we'd like to call on. We all took turns re cutting some of the few commercials that were on the air. With the program we use to record them and edit them their quality is so much better than the previous broadcasted commercials. We also took a tour of our traffic and billing software. WOW! It's really user friendly! Thank goodness for that! We also made a couple of sales today. Each one was very unexpected but very welcome. It seems that we are really are on the road to success!

My Dad told me a long time ago that if you love what you do it's never a job. I never knew how much that rang true until now. I really love what I do. I love this so much more because there is so much room to grow! It also helps that everyone who works here has a very easy going personalities and we don't let the little things get us down. Some give us three months until we fail. To those people I say that you obviously never took a chance on something or someone. How sad for you, to never learn the joy of a risk that exploded into something great. Life is passing you by.

-Sara

Monday, December 19, 2005

All in a Days Work

The latest report on Mickey....He is dead. If he has relatives it is not yet known. I found his limp lifeless body in the space next to my desk first thing this morning. Glenn came and cleaned him up and then he worked in the back most of the day putting tape and mud over the drywall in the back. It looks so much better than it did and the temperature difference is amazing!

We took a sneak peak at the office space upstairs. Although nice and spacious it is super dirty and the girl from downstairs said the landlord didn't want anyone in that space. To bad because if it was taken care of it could be some prime real estate! There are so many windows! The whole building is run down. It's too bad because it really is a great location! We are in the heart of the city. So different than being tucked away behind the Dodge Dealer.

Today was a busy day at the station. I recopied the contracts and put them in a new binder. I'm in the process of retyping spots. Many of them were hand written and when I tried to record one today I had to stop because I couldn't read the copy. Yikes. The phones are still kinked. The phone company should be out after Christmas to fix that. TV Service will come after the first of the year.

The new automation system is a trick to learn. I think after the initial pain of the set up it's going to be a good system for us. It's just the normal pain in the butt of learning a new system and figuring out the set up and it's quirks. The traffic and billing software came today and I took the binder home tonight for some light reading. ;)

I am proud to say that we are receiving so much support from the community. It seems that everyday someone new stops by and has nothing but good things to say. It's a daily affirmation that the choices we've made in the past week and a half are the right ones.

-Sara

It's Night Time

Yup, third straight night being here after 8pm. It's okay though. I told someone the other night, that working for someone else for 12-15 hours in one day is awful. Doing it for yourself is wonderful. I got everything squared away with the web site today. It's up-sort of- at http://www.kziq.com. The whole wiz bang site will be up Sunday night. We got some newpaper ads together to run through the week for a big kickoff on Monday.

A real bummer is how many network radio people are off this week AND next week. We don't have our satellite receiver for the network news yet. I can't even get an answer from anyone yet. So, I started drawing a bead on some sponsorable features we'll run. Old school radio. Not just about the music.

While I'm thinking about it- let me ID the cast of characters, because after we get this baby up and running next week, the caca will hit the fan and I'm sure they'll all be rearing their ugly heads in some form or fashion.

Former workmates: (names withheld to keep the peace-but don't think we won't talk about them)

I'll have to check with Sara and Kim and see if these will be okay. Enjoy them while they're here because they may want to change them.

Eric-

Sunday, December 18, 2005

What did we get ourselves into?

Talk about disorganized! I came from my neat little desk with my neat little files organized alphabetically. A closet with some (not many) office supplies and a normal layer of dust and clutter in the office. This place looks like it has not been a working office for 10 years!! Where are the contracts, the copy? We have filing cabinets but no filing system! As we uncover more and more treasures this place is starting to look like it was once Ron Burgundy's pad. Including this awful lamp that we tried to offer on the street for free but even free it had no takers. It's taken a good eight days to finally turn this neglected station into a working office and studio. There is now the defined work stations of the three of us. A food and beverage area. A beginning to an office supply area as well as a studio brought up to date from the late nineteen eighties. Today is a milestone. The back room will be dry-walled. Currently the only thing protecting the room from the elements is some wood planking and a sheet of plastic. Stay tuned to the ongoing saga of our friend Mickey the mouse and his friends. Coming to a trap near you.

-Sara

Welcome!

As you might have seen in the local papers, we have gone out on our own. Slowly but surely WE were becoming the corporate radio pinheads. Our wonderful Valley is where it's at and we aim to prove that the IWV CAN support its own radio stations.

We have KZIQ-FM (92.7) and KWDJ-AM (1360). The AM will be NewsTalk with some Fox hosts coming up plus more. Hopefully that will be up by January sometime. On the FM side...well that's a surprise until December 26th.

We (the whole staff-all 3 of us) will be doing the blog thing here so you can maybe get a little behind the scenes look at what we do and how we get there from here. For legal reasons, there will be references to characters from where we used to work, who will have different names. We'll be casting those roles a little bit later on too.

This may, at times, get a little juicy.