Radio Survivor

More good news for fans of the dumped duo, Fernando and Greg, formerly of KNGY 92.7. They’ve got a new slot on Bay Area radio station, 99.7 KMVQ-FM, a CBS outlet.  The press release we received from CBS Radio yuks it up about the news.

“First, Levi Johnston agrees to pose nude and now Fernando and Greg land at Movin’ 99.7. I’m not sure I could be any happier. Can’t wait to wake up the Bay…again!” declared Fernando Ventura.

Hardy har, but seriously folks, this is a move up for these guys. It was a bummer that KNGY got sold and its popular Gay oriented dance format erased (including Fernando/Greg), but the signal was relatively small. 99.7 is much bigger. And being streamed by CBS, owner of last.fm, will probably get them piped through a bunch of mobile apps. The release mentions this but doesn’t offer details.

F and G will do mornings on KMVQ beginning Thursday, November 12. As we’ve already reported, they’re also running a show on Stitcher mobile. Who knows what’s next?

Fernando and Greg are back on the Stitcher mobile service

Good news for distressed Energy 92.7 FM fans in the San Francisco Bay Area. Fernando and Greg, the popular duo who regaled drive time listeners on that now defunct station have returned, this time on the Stitcher mobile phone radio service. We just got the press release from Stitcher a few minutes ago:

“For the time being, Fernando and Greg will record thirty-minute talk shows at least three times each week in the Stitcher studios. The show will then be available to all Stitcher listeners in time for the afternoon commute and a late-day pick-me-up. The duo will put their spin on sports and entertainment, as well as share hilarious stories from their personal lives.”

As Bay Area radio lovers know, 92.7 was sold in September and its popular gay-oriented dance/talk format shut down, causing a lot of pain among the station’s fans. So this will be welcome news for listeners.

You can download the Stitcher app onto an iPhone, Palm Pre, or Blackberry (bummer: most Blackberrys except the Curve 8830, which is what I’ve got). Anyway, register with the site and the Fernando/Greg show is yours once again. It’s in the “Stitcher Picks” section of Stitcher, we’re told.

A footnote to the controversy over the loss of KNGY-FM, “Energy 92.7,” San Francisco’s Gay oriented dance music station. It appears that had the frequency’s new management wanted to, it could have retained the old format’s staff, or at least retained the services of Energy’s popular morning show duo: Fernando and Greg.

Radio Survivor has obtained a copy of the Asset Purchase Agreement between 92.7’s former owner, Flying Bear Media, and the buyer, Ed Stolz of Golden State Broadcasting. Section 7.9 of the agreement outlines personnel issues:

“7.9 Employee Matters. Within twenty (20) days following the date of this agreement, Buyer shall notify Sellers which of Sellers’ employees Buyer wishes to employ. Effective as of the Closing Date or the LMA [Local Marketing Agreement] Effective Date, Buyer shall offer employment to such employees.”

The agreement is dated July 13, 2009. According to the contract, a Local Marketing Agreement would have been triggered had both parties not closed the deal on Sunday September 13. But from the documentation it looks like Golden State owns the license outright, having purchased it for six and a half million dollars.

This gives a somewhat different picture of the choices that Golden State faced when it bought the station than I took from my brief interview with Stolz. During that conversation I asked him whether he had any inclination to keep the old format and staff.

Stolz pointed out that the prior owner had gone into default with its lender and dismissed its staff “long before we ever reached the building.” This contract suggests that, whatever financial condition Flying Bear was in, the company offered Stolz the choice of keeping the Energy 92.7 team.

That option appears not to have been taken. Golden State has picked new call letters for the signal: KREV, and gone to a Top 40 format which, so far, is entirely bereft of any on air talent.

As Jennifer Waits has reported, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors is poised to pass a resolution calling on KREV station owner Ed Stolz to “reconsider his choice to abandon the successful format of Energy 92.7 and rehire the talented staff that provided a radio format that was adored and appreciated by so many fans throughout San Francisco and the Bay Area.” We’ve been covering this issue now through the week. Thousands of listeners to Energy 92.7 are upset that the station’s Gay/dance oriented format has been cast aside. They’re particularly unhappy about the loss of the former formats’ drive time duo, Fernando and Greg. Stolz’s Golden State Broadcasting Company took over the signal earlier this month.

So I figured, what the heck, I’ll see if I can find Stolz’s contact information and ask him what he plans to do with KREV. It’s not that hard. You just go to the FCC’s station search database, type in KREV, and out popped Golden State’s address and telephone number, which I called.

Stolz was, to put it mildly, not happy to hear from me.

“This is a private number,” he insisted. I pointed out that it was the number that he or his staff had put on the FCC’s General Information form, and asked if he planned to consider returning the station to its popular Energy format. Stolz pointed out that the prior owner had gone into default with its lender and dismissed its staff “long before we ever reached the building.” Fair enough—the point presumably being that the format was “abandoned” before he got there.

“Why did you buy the station?” I asked.

Stolz seemed quite startled by this question. “Beg your pardon?” he asked. “This is obviously a joke.” I asked him if he had any thoughts about the San Francisco Supervisor’s resolution. “We haven’t heard anything about this, so until we do, I have no comment. You’re asking some very odd questions and quite frankly reaching me on a personal number.”

I asked Stolz which of my questions were odd, and why. “We’re done. Ok?” he replied.

Somehow I don’t think that Fernando and Greg are coming back.

On Monday over 6,000 San Francisco Bay Area radio listeners discovered to whom the public airwaves really belong, and it’s not them. They are not the first dedicated audience to receive this rude awakening, but that doesn’t matter at the moment. What matters is that they tuned into their favorite Gay oriented radio station, KNGY, “Energy 92.7 FM,” and it was gone. Golden State Broadasting bought the license from Flying Bear Licensing on August 6. But nobody noticed this until Monday, a day after the escrow deadline passed, and the station dropped its dance format and popular drive time morning show duo, Fernando and Greg.

The new format, 92.7, “The Revolution,” sounds like something slightly to the left of High School Musical, and man, are Energy’s fans ever pissed. Here’s one of almost 500 comments from their Facebook protest page: ”

This is CRAP!!! Getting rid of the BEST station around, then replacing it with top 40 BS. No Fernando & Greg, how am I supposed to make it through my morning commute? No afternoon dance music I refuse to listen to the boring replacement for 92.7!”

There’s a lot of talk about how to bring the station back, but the Facebook groups’ founder, John McAleer, knows the score. “Here is a reality check,” he wrote to his followers. “It is not going to happen.”

That’s right. As radio station fans have learned over and over again, in the wonderfully deregulated world of broadcasting, it’s none of your business what comes and goes over the AM/FM airwaves. And any attempt to make it otherwise is damned by the conservative right as a sneaky attempt to bring the equivalent of Death Panels to the radio bands.

I noticed the format change yesterday, since I often listened to Energy 92.7 while driving up and down the 280 here in San Francisco. But I didn’t give it that much thought until my colleague Jennifer Waits posted her story about the switch for Radio Survivor. I thought Energy had its moments. Fernando and Greg were funny. My favorite line was a comment Fernando once made about people in the mid-west. “They love their churches, their shopping malls, and their strip clubs,” he crooned. The show also had some compelling late night talk radio, including an outraged commentary that I’ll never forget, aired late last year the night after Proposition Eight was argued before the California Supreme Court.

But like most radio today, Energy didn’t provide very much coverage of local issues. The morning show was mostly about yucking around—not really connecting to the Bay Area scene. But people are so starved for anything even remotely resembling reality based personality driven radio that they flocked to what Energy 92.7 did offer. And now, to their understandable dismay, it is gone.

A sincere concern

Some scattered intel about the new owner, Edward R. Stolz, who appears to own both Golden State Broadcasting and another company, Royce International. For many years the latter firm owned alternative rock station KWOD in Sacramento, where Man Show guy and self-appointed expert on gays and adoption Adam Carolla did a stint for a while. Then Stolz went into negotiations with Entercom Communications to sell KWOD, then tried to back out of the deal, then sued Entercom, alleging that the much larger company was essentially forcing Royce to sell.

“Royce stands for independence, localism and a sincere concern for the needs of the communities it serves,” Stolz declared at the time. But the sale went through, the Federal Communications Commission eventually approving the transfer last year.

In any event, it’s nice to know that Mr. Stolz stands for localism. Perhaps he’ll listen to the thousands of people who want Fernando and Greg back. Even better, perhaps the thousands of people who miss Energy 92.7 the way it was on Friday will support efforts by the FCC to pass some very mild rules that would require commercial radio licenses to establish local advisory boards. There the public could occasionally offer feedback and learn something about what is actually going on at these signals.

Here’s the good news: I keep thinking that over-the-air radio is dead. But it’s not. People really want the magic which is real music and real voices connecting to a real location. They want more than a server driven juke box service like Slacker. But making that kind of radio possible again will require creating the economic incentives for its revival, and setting up modest rules that require station owners to be up front with the audiences they serve. Maybe some of Fernando and Greg’s fans will pick up the torch for that cause.