Attuned to its audience; KOMO invites you to listen and watch

VICTOR STREDICKE – December 15, 1988 – In its golden age, radio allowed audiences to witness its programs. So now along comes one audience-involvement local feature and one international: – KOMO Radio stages its second annual “KOMO Radio Christmas Concert,” Saturday afternoon in the Ballard High School auditorium
Entertainers include Reilly & Maloney, Stan Boreson, Brenda Kutz and the Samantha Smith Elementary School children’s choir. Larry Nelson, KOMO personality, is host. The event costs $5, which benefits Ballard Community Hospital’s community-service programs. A tape of the event will air Christmas Eve and Christmas morningon KOMO, 1000 kHz.

– Garrison Keillor presents a 90-minute holiday program, “An American Christmas in Copenhagen,” at 7 p.m. Saturday on KUOW, 94.9 mHz. Keillor apparently will depart from his usual live-on-stage performances, with a walking tour of Copenhagen, a speech before foreign students and performances by Danish carolers, in addition to his monologue.

CONGLOMERATES COMING

The Federal Communications Commission says it will examine on a “case-by-case basis” requests to waive its rule prohibiting direct ownership of both a radio and television station in the same market.

(KIRO-AM-FM-TV, KOMO-AM-TV and KING-AM-FM-TV here are exempt because they existed in such combinations well before the rule was enacted in 1970.)

The one-to-a-market rule has prohibited ownership of a radio and VHF television station (or any similar broadcast operation) and a daily newspaper in the same market. Recent acquisitions by newspaper and broadcast chains have complicated ownership in East Coast cities.

The FCC apparently will look with most favor on applications involving radio and television stations in the top 25 markets, where media conglomerates naturally cluster. (Seattle-Tacoma-Everett is 15th or 17th in the market, depending on who’s counting.)

According to the FCC, at least 30 separately owned or operated “voices” must remain after the proposed combination.

HI-FI HO HO HO’S

Crazy holiday songs are included in the “Celebration of Christmas” edition of “Music With Moskowitz,” at 7 p.m. Sunday on KRPM-AM-FM, 770 kHz. and 106.1 mHz. The five-hour program includes “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth” as well as nostalgic yule songs, old-radio segments, Lionel Barrymore readings, and Northwest singers Gary Val and Jim St. John.

Five years ago, Jim French produced a studio session of “A Christmas Carol” packed with Northwest actors and radio personalities.

It will be a key segment in Christmas Eve programming on KIRO, 710 kHz.

TO ALL THE SHIPS AT SEA

Kent and Alan, the KPLZ morning team, will be sending a special Christmas program to Navy ships again this year. A tape of the Friday-morning show, from 7 to 8:30 on KPLZ, 101.5 mHz., will be sent to the aircraft carriers USS Nimitz and USS Constellation and to support groups for distribution on shipboard broadcast systems.

Seattle listeners wanting to send holiday greetings to sailors overseas are invited to call KPLZ during the time the tape is rolling.

This is the third year Kent and Alan have given the Navy a holiday tape.

LOCAL NETWORKS COMBINED

Fred Hudson, the Bellevue businessman whose radio investments include KBNP in Portland, has acquired the Oregon News Network and the Evergreen Radio Network, combining them into Northwest News Network.

The systems specialize in news from state capitals, distributed to radio stations that want to purchase them.

TWISTING THE DIAL

“I wouldn’t want this to look like classified ads for out-of-work disc jockeys,” said Jim Dai, former KSEA morning announcer. “But I am `looking,’ if you don’t folks know.” Dai left last month after eight years with KSEA . . . Jack Straw Memorial Foundation, previously the licensee of KRAB, has set an air date of June 1989 (“late spring,” they call it) for the educational FM station in Snohomish County, KSER, 90.7 mHz. . . . Gary Vance, with dozens of years in at KAYO, KRPM and KMPS, has joined KWYZ, 1230 kHz., a country-music station in Everett, for weekend shifts . . . Brian Gregory, familiar as a traffic voice from Metro Traffic Watch, has become midday announcer at KVI, 570 kHz. . . . Westwood One has extended the “The Lost Lennon Tapes,” a weekend one-hour series, for another year. The series, hosted by Elliot Mintz and using material from the Lennon estate, runs at 8 a.m. on KZOK, 102.5 mHz. Tapes of sessions and interviews have been cataloged to fill another year.