Eddie Gutierrez
Not many programmers or general managers can actually say they dug the hole for the antenna that beams out their signal. KJEEGM/PD Eddie Gutierrez can. In his 14 years at the station, he’s done just about every job there, and done them well.
Having that kind of tenure and being able to enjoy your years of service for a single independent owner, such as KJEE’s founder Jim Evans, is a rarity in this crazy business.
Being a man of many hats, Eddie still loves the essence of his gig – the music. That passion shines through across the board at KJEE and has translated into some more than respectable ratings successes.
We caught up with Eddie recently and got the lowdown on what it’s like to be a real big fish in a small, but affluent pond.
eQB presents excerpts from the FMQB May Magazine Modern Rock Up Close featuring KJEE/Santa Barbara PD Eddie Gutierrez
On the Santa Barbara market… Being in Santa Barbara is much different from a major market in many ways. I do sales also, so I get to see some of the outlooks on that side too. Besides the fact that our percentage of what advertising is spent in the market is much, much lower than a major market, which can affect things. We’re small enough that we have a pretty smart community. Santa Barbara has a lot of artistic, musically inclined people. There are a lot of bands from here. Jack Johnson is from here, Michael McDonald. The spectrum of music is pretty incredible. Being close enough to Los Angeles is a also big thing.
On his target demo… We don’t go very young by playing too many younger skewing bands like theRed Jumpsuit Appartus or 30 Seconds to Mars. The Alternative stations tend to lock themselves into being too young. With us, we try to open up our boundaries. We’re trying to be more of an 18 to 49 station, as opposed to an 18 to 34. What that means is we heavily daypart a lot of the ‘90s stuff. We don’t want to scare away the daytime listeners; we don’t want to put on Limp Bizkit andKoRn too early. Not to say we can’t play the acoustic version of KoRn. We can play that stuff, but we’re very selective. We don’t want to bang the heavy stuff too early on.
On their recent ratings successes… We had the highest 18-34 numbers we’ve ever had. Our PM drive host and music director, Dave Hanacek, went from 7.4 share to a 27.5 share. That’s pretty incredible. That’s basically a third of all people 18 to 34 are listening to our PM drive. We doubled our ratings from the book previously. We did great in all our primary demos. This book our 12+ number went from a 3 to a 5.9. We set some new records. Our Adults, 18-34, went from a 6.7 to 15.8. Our 18-49 number went from a 5.2 to a 9.9, and our 25-54, which is the money demo, went from a 3.4 to an 8.3, which is great! If we look at our 12+ number rating-wise, I believe we’re the highest rated Alternative this quarter, from the last book.
On time management…. I’ve been here for 14 years. Everyday I do something different. I learned how to do everything myself, so that I can delegate it and show people how to do it. I know how to do the traffic. I know how to put commercials in. I know how to produce commercials. I’ve done it long enough so that I can not just tell someone how to do it, but if they don’t know how to do it I can help them do it. Being in a small market, there’s a benefit to that. You get to know everything; you get to do everything. Even if you have to file something or get something out of the file yourself, you know how the filing works. Everything from filing to meeting record company people and picking the music. You just gotta make sure that you stay on schedule.
** QB Content by Mike Bacon **
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