Our View

Our View
In Old Towne Ridgecrest

Monday, January 30, 2006

Another Week!

So much to do this week. As a matter of fact, it is becoming mind boggling. I have Microsoft Outlook and other tools to keep myself organized, but there are so many BIG projects to do, I feel like I'm chasing my tail every day. We have an engineer coming by this week to get a snapshot of the various projects he needs to oversee and I think Kim and I are going to try to head out of town for a day or two, to get our bearings back.

The remote this weekend ended up going well. Not very well attended, but it was a flex weekend, so there weren't many people in town. However, they sold 4 cars so that was very good. The crew there was great and Brad, who runs the place, is really helping us get the town pumped up. He is a one man PR machine for us. We have several others who are out and about every day and this word of mouth is invaluable.

The web site is doing steady business. I have an update to post but for some reason our ftp service is down today. Could make things interesting later in the week.

I am going to try to post at least another time this week!

Yeah sure...maybe Outlook will remind me.

Monday, January 23, 2006

Notes from a rambling mind....

Several things to cover this morning...

First, I left a couple of thank yous out and they were pretty big. Thanks to Sam and Trudy. They were such a big help in the first scary days. Sam was funny asking the girls to step aside, while he single handedly painted the front office. We have some furniture too. Trudy is and has always been a huge supporter with her kickass talks and of course all of the High Desert Cares stuff. She's even out beating the streets helping us drum up business.

Also a big thank you to Bill Folden who helped us get our back room sheet rocked and made Kim a special birthday dinner. He IS the man. The beautiful thing about Bill is he wants nothing in return and usually is uncomfortable with even a thank you.

The AM is coming together and the lineup is starting to come together too! Here's an early look:

Tony Snow 6-9A
Rush Limbaugh 9-12p
Ed Shultz 12p-3p
John Gibson 3p-5p
Michael Savage 5p-8p

More is coming and for those of you wondering why all the conservative hosts? Not neccisarily the reflection of management here, but the common thread that runs through our little valley. Plus, we'll also be carrying the L.A. Angels, the San Diego Chargers and a ton of local sports. The Champion Burros will be heard on the FM though. Those kids and their coaches have worked hard the last few years. We're going to try to put together a nice broadcast too. Also on the way at least one LOCAL talk show on the weekends. Also, if you live in Ridgecrest, drop me a line and let me know what else you might like to hear, especially on the weekends. The only weekend show lineup is on Sunday night....the Drudge Report.

Saturday, January 21, 2006

Wrap up for the week

Wow! What a great week. Eric had several guests this week in regards to the Larkspur Apartment Complex, Mr. IWV, Operation High Desert Cares and more! Senator Ray Ashburn stopped by yesterday morning and we broke into our regular program to bring our listeners answers about BRAC. We really are bringing back local radio to Ridgecrest.

On Tuesday we hosted our Ribbon Cutting for the Chamber of Commerce. If you weren't there you can stop by the station to see our photograph of the event. The photo was taken by Gary Nordvall and is already framed and hung on our wall. Thank you to our Chamber Ambassadors!

My trials and tribulations with our traffic and billing software are almost at the end. I had some problems on Thursday when I tried to send the logs to the computer that plays our music (the automation computer). After some calls to support and some more fine tuning we got it fixed and now the computer can read the logs. I will do some final editing Monday and we should have it going by Tuesday! The best thing about the software we are using is that it really is user friendly. I had only seen Eric import the log a few times and when I went to do it myself it was very simple!

It really was a great week. Eric will be working over the weekend as well as strutting his stuff in the Mr. IWV pageant tonight. If you get a chance you should go. If you don't....hopefully I can post pictures next week.



Thought for the Week: If it didn't belong to you; no one can steal it from you.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

It's Thank You Time...

Watching the Golden Globes last night, it reminded me that I need to do some thank you's, and I will do these on the air too.

To Sara and Kim for all of their work making this place look liveable and a special one to Kim for putting up with me saying, "I'll be right home". Plus there'll be more thank you's to them because they have a LOT of cool things planned!

Glenn....there really isn't a grunt job you won't do is there? I mean really, even the toilet??? Thanks man- Your work is MUCH appreciated!

To Steve and Keith...Holy Moly....you're work has been invaluable. The wiring, the networking....as they say on the net OMG! Your guys are true professionals even pulling all-nighters!

Ray W....News God. You are one of the reasons we have so many listeners right now. I know that. The check's not in the mail, but maybe some more equipment is?

Chip and Lynn....your words of encouragement have meant much. I look forward to working with you guys and finally making my permanent place in the Valley.

Traci and Hans....Thanks for the goodies and being the first to bring donuts to the place.

Ron K....you KNOW this wouldn't have happened without you. You're place in C.I.A. history is etched in stone. (Sharon- thanks to you too! You always keep me "honest")

Eric B....Our voice of reason. Stopping by the remote Saturday was perfect timing. I needed that.

Janis....the SASS to Coyote intercom works fine! (They holler down the street "PICK UP THE PHONE!")

The News Review Gang....I'm lovin' our weekly lunches.

Peggy at the Swap Sheet...You are my hero! Thanks for raising the bar on being everything that is "community".

Bad Andy....our weekly visits finish off my week.

David E. You newshound you!

Karen @ the D.I.....I think we need to start calling this place "Little Texas".

Gloria L. ...I know our contests are going to be great!

Steve B....My ears!

Nick @ Nickoletti's....you rock dude. Small business RULES.

Pete and Gail @ Bud Eyre and Brad @ Diamond Motors....Here's to selling a lot of cars to valley residents! The AV dealers suck!

Last but not least...

Fritz and Robert...Fritz you are an IDEA MACHINE! For those that don't know, there is a familiar voice on the air with us. Remember Fritz and Pony from KRAJ a few years back? Well he's a Ridgecrest boy and proud of where he lives. He's going to be doing a lot with us. Robert is our one and only intern. He knocked me out by knocking out a ton of work on the music library. He loves this town too, which I think may be an important qualification to work here.

These folks are just the tip of the iceberg. It has been awesome already. Like the guy who drove by in the red Chevy dually. He sticks his head out the window and shouts "You guys rock!!".

Wow.

The Ribbon Cutting

The big day is here, in just about 10 hours the ribbon cutting in front of the station is about to happen and i'm excited.
Steve and I have been busy from 10am to 7 pm re-arranging the studio, wires and all.
We've had lots of visiters coming in giving their appreciation in Eric's endeavor in bringing the IWV a local station, Let me say thank you to everyone listening, and visiting the website.
We're not through yet though, we still have a lot of new things coming and surprises.
Also we may be doing a LIVE broadcast of the event, everyone is invited to come to the station and join in on the fun, we might even do a tour of the new studio !!!

Keith

Sunday, January 15, 2006

Gremlins?

OK, Eric...Keith...I'm thinking you guys have been working too hard lately. You're beginning to hallucinate. Wires dancing across the desk...honestly! You should see the wires in the Texas Newsroom. They don't dance around. They can't. There's too many of them. It's crowded. Although, when I'm listening to the station over the net, I swear my modem and router lights are keeping beat to that country music. As a matter-of-fact, I'm sure they are!

That's it. I'm going no further with this.

Ray

Friday, January 13, 2006

The Revenge of the Gremlins

Eric has been trying to rid the automation system of a nagging unknown glitch, so far it has happened everyday at the same time, but the system logs don't show what is causing the problem. I'm guessing that there is a corrupted file that may be the root of the problem, coming up with a solution is going to be interesting because we don't want to take the system down and re-enter everything by hand again.
I would also like to make a note that we might have a poltergeist in the building, Late at night Steve and I have heard things like doors closing and strange voices, which I think was caused by all the electrical equipment.
Now i'm not superstitious but today I saw a headset cord moving on the workstation, Eric was sitting next to me and when I got his attention the cord slowed then stopped moving.
If we do have a ghost I think i'll name him George, as in Curious George. Because everything that has been happening is like a child's curiosity. That or it's the ghost of our ex-resident Mickey.


Keith

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

The Heartbeat of the Coyote

A lot of exciting stuff is happening as we get closer to the weekend, we have a live remote coming up this Saturday, which will be my first.
Eric will be adding Podcast to the website soon which will be neat to go with everything that is there.
I also got a peek at the window/bumper stickers, they look awesome!

**NOTICE**
There will be a major upgrade to the Shoutcast server soon, right now it has been running at bare minimum specs which is ok, the new upgrade will hopefully improve on performance.
Yes there is a small delay, thats caused by the nature of the internet.
We send the stream from the studio to Shoutcast, which has to "hop" many servers to get there first.
Then in turn, the stream has to "hop" servers back to the listener, all those "hops" create the delay, which can be as much from 30 seconds up to a minute or longer.
The New server will have more feeds availiable, right now we are doing 64 feeds.
Another new piece of equipment (actually several) is coming soon, but I can't say anything about it yet, so for now it's a secret.

I am grateful to be a part of the Coyote Gang and honored to contribute to our town.
All of this would not be possible if it wasn't for the listener's, without all of you we wouldn't have a true "local" radio station serving our community.

Keith

Sunday, January 08, 2006

What a week.

As we start a new week I think it's time to reflect on the past week and what a great one it's been! Only 4 days and we have been busy! We started the week off with our sign and banner being mounted on the building. Thank you to all of you who honked! We heard you! Be on the lookout for the new Coyote Decals coming to a vehicle near you! There will be more information coming on how to get your own. Again, thank you to Ralph at A to Z Custom Graphics for a Fantastic Job!!!

Also, Thank You to Gary for taking the time to repair our back door! It works great now! I also have to thank my husband Glenn our resident handyman. He went in yesterday and installed another light fixture and did some other odd jobs yesterday. Also a Thank You to Keith and "The Madman." These two guys make things work! Each week our office gets a little nicer and a little smaller. We are out growing our space fast. I'll take it as a sure sign of success!

I still don't have our Traffic and Billing software at 100% yet. I am getting a little farther everyday. This week I am really going to work on the clock. We also had a hard drive problem with the computer and that set things back a little bit too.

Eric is at the station this morning watching the automation computer to make sure our 2 new shows fire off correctly. Mike Lemming is hosting Inspirational Country from 8-9am and we have Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40 from 9 to 1pm. It's a hoppin' Sunday at The Coyote!

Keep listening for more great giveaways, surprises and great Country Music. If you have any comments feel free to leave them in the comment section of this blog or email them to us. Have a great week!!

-Sara

Thursday, January 05, 2006

The New Apartment Complex....

Where do I start with this? Okay, there is a new apartmenet complex possibly coming to town. The folks who live near this proposed property are pretty upset because it is going to change the whole dynamic of their mostly quiet neighborhood. Well, lets face it. Most neighborhoods in the Valley are quiet. Adding hundreds of residents in a couple of large lots is a pretty drastic change. There are two things at work here. One, the proposed complex is supposed to be "affordable" housing. Now evidenlty you can't challenge this based on that. The neighborhood folks are challenging it on the basis of inadequate studies ahead of time. Like traffic. It's a pretty bogus deal that they did a traffic study in August. That's when the population of this place is at its smallest. A lot of folks on the last minute vacations. No school. There are a couple of schools near this area. So it wasn't a "peak" situation.

So we're having those people on the air to talk about it. Now I want to afford all parties equal time. It's what we're supposed to do and I think it makes for compelling radio. Problem is, my friends at the city CAN'T take sides. They have to remain objective and take all things into account. So I'm trying to track down the developer. No luck yet. However, his reputation isn't exactly shiney. After talking with one city official though, the "affordabe" (read low cost) part may not be what it's supposed to be because it's based on median income. Ridgecrest has a pretty healthy median income because of all of the D.O.D. jobs in town. Stay tuned.

-Eric

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

It's Here!

For the past week and a half we have had a banner hanging on our building to let everyone know where we are. We have been waiting for this day from day one. Our sign is here!! Yay!!! It is awesome! Ralph did a superb job and I just can't say enough about it! It should be up tomorrow sometime. Look for it and when you drive by and see it give us a honk to let us know! We sure would appreciate it!!

I've been working on the software that schedules our commercials and does our billing for the past couple of weeks. I would compare it to immersing yourself in a foreign language. It's something I've never done before so it has been learn as I go. Even "Google" can't help me this time. Tomorrow I have a training time set up with the company who distributes the software. I want to go over some of the things I don't quite understand. I'm hoping by the end of the week to have it up and running 100%. (Did I say this before?) Eric has been great to punch in our commercials one by one each day and not complain! There are 24 hours in a day and each one of those hours has a number of breaks that are around 3 minutes long. Commercials are usually 30 seconds sometimes 60 seconds. There are approximately 6 commercials in each break. It's a lot of data to enter! Steve was telling me that there was a time when this was always done by hand. Yes Virginia, there was a day before Radio was automated.

In the sales area it was fruitful. A lot of people are back in the office after a long winter break. So Kim and I are back making appointments getting some sales. Our week is off to a nice start and I am very optimistic that it will continue.

There are so many people that we want to thank for their time, support, hard work and belief in us. I hope that our success is their reward.

-Sara

Monday, January 02, 2006

Happy New Year!

I actually took a day off yesterday (New Year's Day). Unbelievable. Of course I felt guilty. For a minute. I think the true testimony to the teamwork around here, is that after a week this baby will run on cruise control. I updated the weater twice on Saturday and we're on top of it today. It's raining like a big dog! Ridgecrest Blvd. has about a foot of water running in the gutters. Wow. In case you don't know, the desert is not very water resistent. Or wait, maybe it's too water resistent. Steve is putting EOM's on songs and Keith is networking the computers. Anything else I tell you, I would have to shoot you first, or Sara and Kim would shoot me. Trade secrets you know.

-Eric