Moon Over San Antonio: New PD For KAJA

Travis Moon has been named PD/p.m. driver at Clear Channel’s country KAJA (KJ 97) San Antonio, effective Nov. 30. He replaces George King, who exited last month. Moon previously was PD of country stations WUBE and WYGY Cincinnati. Prior to that, he was the longtime APD/MD at country KEEY (K102) Minneapolis and PD of sister oldies station KQQL.

Record Executive Butch Waugh To Retire In December

Sony Music Nashville executive VP Butch Waugh has announced plans to retire at the end of the year, capping off a successful, 37-year career in the music business, where he has worked in the pop, urban and country formats. He spent 27 of those years with Sony Music Entertainment, including stints as a local promotion rep for predecessor RCA in Atlanta, and then executive positions in New York and Nashville. He has been part of Sony’s Music Row operation for a dozen years. Following Waugh’s retirement, label group marketing VP Tom Baldrica and promotion VP Skip Bishop will report directly to Sony Music Nashville chairman Joe Galante. For more on this story, see the article in the country section of Radio-Info.

Radio Remembers: Radio pioneer Ralph Widman; Oklahoma City host Lisa Mirick

Ralph Widman began his career at KTBS-AM in Shreveport, Louisiana in 1939, had a stint on Ft. Worth’s KFJZ, and spent time with WFAA radio and WFAA-TV. He was a manager of what is now KKDA-AM and did sports on both radio and TV. Widman left the studio, getting into the representation business and ran several rep firms. The Dallas Board of Radio-Info.com has more on Ralph Widman … She was a popular radio host in Oklahoma City, working on KRXO-FM (107.7) before joining KQOB-FM (96.9) and teaming with Ron Benton to make their morning show the top-rated in the market. Lisa Mirick left KQOB in 2006, due to personal issues. Prior to her death in Savannah, Georgia, she was battling ailments from years of alcohol abuse. Mirick passed away of unknown causes. She was only 47.

Christmas In The Air … and On The Air

More Christmas flipping from Phoenix to Wilmington, Delaware. AC KESZ (99.9) Phoenix made the switch on Friday, with morning host Beth McDonald doing the announcement live on the air and live on Fox TV (channel 10) … “107.9 Lite FM” KXLT Boise is now “All Holiday Songs” … GAP West Oldies KLDH “Kool 101.7” Duluth flips to Christmas music just days after rival Red Rock AC WWAX “92.1 Lite FM” … Outside of Philadelphia, WJBR Wilmington, DE started airing all Holiday music – a week ahead of their scheduled flip … The Radio-Info.com Pittsburgh Boards are predicting that two stations will go all holiday music at the same time: WSHH and “3WS” WWSW. Join the “festive” discussion.

Measuring Success

Games are more fun when you keep score—and the way you’re keeping score is going to be important in 2010. RETHINKING MEASUREMENT is an important undertaking for the media industry, and there’s already plenty of shifting in progress—from PPM to Streaming Measurement. Two of radio’s largest “metrics vendors,” Arbitron and Ando Media, have both earned headlines this year for their maneuvers in measurement. While they’ve drawn some heat from customers and buyers—and various debates rightfully continue about each of their practices—they both deserve some applause.

‘Booty Call Songs’ On The Rise At Country Radio

There are enough sexy songs getting played on country radio right now to warrant a “booty call song” category in stations’ music scheduling software. That’s because the latest burgeoning trend in country music seems to be songs with overtly sexual themes. And while country radio stations are known to quickly edit songs with potentially offensive language, such as the “ass” reference in the chorus of the Zac Brown Band’s “Toes,” the most interesting thing about this new crop of sexually-themed songs is that so many of them are becoming consensus hits, completely unencumbered by radio edits.

The A.E. Whisperer

The dog and I were out in the field this weekend. She's a Flat-coated Retriever, and she just lives to get out there and hunt. Not go hunting with me, mind you; no, she loves nothing better than hunting on her own. That old dog has great hunter's instincts, doing her best work off in the brambles, where she knows the hunting is best. While she loves to hunt alone, she also loves to bring back what she's caught, to show it off and get her reward. She's really good at what she does, and when it comes to hunting, I'm probably more of a distraction than an asset to her work. Kinda like a lot of sales managers I've seen lately.

The Gaming Of Media

One year ago, the Pew Internet & American Life project released a study that outlined an entertainment category that has grown so large that it was approaching radio and television in terms of usage. Was it social media, that headline-generating wave of the past few years? No, it was video gaming, a category that is routinely ignored by the press but has gotten so big that the industry is now larger than Hollywood, as outlined in a recent Daily Observer column from the UK. And the gaming story crosses all boundaries—from hardware device to demographics. We are seeing nothing less than the video gaming of life, and it is an area where radio must pay attention and use to its advantage.

KRST Tackles Twitter's Best And Worst Country Artists

Country KRST Albuquerque, N.M., recently posted some interesting internal research on its site in which artists were given a score from one to five “Tweets” depending on their Twitter activity. Station personnel checked the Twitter accounts of 59 stars, judging them on a set of criteria including whether it’s really them posting, how much information they share about their personal life, how often they update, whether they do fun things for fans including contesting, and whether they reply to fan comments.