Jock's Off The Air After Kidnap Comments

While the rest of the world was cheering the escape of 7-year-old Philadelphia girl Erica Pratt, one rock radio jock was offering advice to would-be kidnappers. At active rock KSJO San Francisco, voice-tracked afternoon host Mikey Esparza received a one-week suspension for responding to his newswoman's report that Pratt had chewed her way through duct tape with, "That's why I use nylon rope." After a commercial break, he plugged a local hardware store, saying that kidnappers could buy rope, tarp, and lye to dissolve a body. Esparza, who is based at rock KEGL Dallas, is also heard on rocker KIOZ San Diego, but his comments weren't heard on those stations.

SPOTLOAD, STOPSETS, AND STATIC

Clear Channel has often been cited when critics talk about post-consolidation spotloads, but recently CC has been aggressive about attacking some rivals on spotload as well. While many CC stations sign on with 10,000 songs in a row, attacking the spotload of rival WQHT (Hot 97) New York was a major part of the strategy for the new WWPR (Power 105). Now, CC's new country outlet XHCR (Bob 99.3) San Diego is running promos attacking rival KSON's "50 minutes of music each hour" position with promos stating that the station played only 44 or 45 minutes of music in a given hour, according to the city's North County Times. PD Mike O'Brien tells the paper, "We have monitored them now for three days, and there has not been one hour where they have actually played 50 minutes of music."

Meanwhile, rhythmic top 40 WPYM (Party 93.1) Miami, which has been aggressive on the commercial issue since its January sign-on, has a new promo where it promises listeners, "Just one stop per hour for commercials," marking perhaps the first time that a variant of the industry jargon "stopset" has made it into a promo.

MY NECK, MY BACK, MY MODEM

Artemis Records, home of Khia's current hit, has announced that it will waive the royalty payments that would otherwise be due for Internet radio broadcasts. Chairman/ CEO Danny Goldberg said in a press release, "In allowing free use of our catalog at this early stage we hope to stimulate the Internet radio format."

PROGRAMMING: CALGARY, THE NEXT NEW YORK?

Last year, Canadian group owner Standard Broadcasting was granted a license to do R&B in Calgary, Alberta, a market with many parallels to our Denver. Now, rival owner Rogers tries to pre-empt that forthcoming station by flipping classic rock CHRK (Rock 97) to "Kiss 96.9: Blazin' hip-hop and R&B." No PD has been named. Pat Bohn is consulting.

Lou Bennett, former OM of Cumulus/Beaumont, Texas, and p.m. driver for that cluster's mainstream R&B KTCX, resurfaces as co-owner/VP of programming of PrimeCorp Communications,