CHR: KZHT/Salt Lake City PD Jeff McCartney

Jeff McCartney

He’s honed his skills under the tutelage of Scott Shannon, Mike Preston and Ken Medek. Through the years, he has developed his obvious talents to become a strong and passionate programmer. Now, in the extremely competitive market that is Salt Lake City, KZHT PD Jeff McCartney has been able to adapt to his ever-changing market and keep his station in a position to win

e-OB presents excerpts from this week’s FMQB hard copy CHR Up Close interview with KZHT/Salt Lake City PD Jeff McCartney

On the competitive radio landscape in Salt Lake City … This is one the most crowded markets in the country in terms of radio signals. In the eight years I’ve been here, we’ve seen virtually every type of format. Many stations have come and gone. Typically, those are the projects that have one goal in mind: To “re-invent the wheel.” At any given time, that leaves us with about a dozen products that consistently deliver on the ratings and revenue front. The others are “flankers” and niche formats, you need to round out a cluster these days.

On morning radio and KZHT’s, The Morning Zoo with Frankie, Dangerboy and Jessica…Morning radio in Salt Lake City is a whole other animal. Overall, we have to deal with the volume of signals. When it comes to the “Morning Zoo,” they have to deal with more seasoned competition as well. Our immediate competitor, KUUU, is music intensive in mornings. Beyond that there’s Bob and Tom (KBER), Radio From Hell (KXRK) and Johnson and Johnson (KUBL) just to name a few.Frankie and Dangerboy have been together for over eight years now. When Dangerboy first arrived, he established himself and “The Morning Zoo” as the wild and crazy morning show in the market. The last time we did a perceptual study, we pretty much owned that image.

On dealing with today’s emerging technology…
Podcasting… This is one of the perfect ways for radio to embrace the technology. By doing so, we’re keeping our product front and center in the listener’s mind. The first month and a half has been extremely encouraging. I monitor the traffic through the Clear Channel corporate admin every day. It’s not often that we can view the fruits of our efforts. That’s why I’ve got every talent up and running with some content.

HD Radio… In Salt Lake , they rolled out HD radio with our Superhits and Modern Alternative radio stations first. I firmly believe this is great for radio. It allows us to broadcast in digital and also helps us to better serve our listeners with additional programming on the sideband channels. We’ll be up and running within the next year. It will definitely be a few years before consumers are fully equipped to handle this method of distribution.

On what terrestrial radio can do better to ensure it’s a priority with listeners… There are many critics out there who say that iPods are killing radio. Well, take a look at what Apple just came out with: An IPOD that has an FM tuner in it! I honestly think HD Radio will eventually silence those naysayers. One of the major reasons is the dependence listeners have on us. Look at what happened during Hurricane Katrina with satellite radio. It failed. We succeeded because of the importance of being live and LOCAL.

On which artists will break in 2006… Paris Hilton. Yes, Paris Hilton. Back in December when we did the Backstage Bash at the Radio Music Awards, we had a chance to listen to cuts she put together with Scott Storch (who produced Beyonce and some of Chris Brown‘s stuff). I don’t think there was a Programmer in the studio whose jaw didn’t drop!  Putting the station’s current direction aside… James Blunt. I wasn’t surprised to hear that Scott Shannon helped bring this to the attention of the right people back in the States. He’s one of the biggest things in Europe right now. He’s on the verge of exploding!