Friday, January 11, 2013

Seattle Radio: Dave Ross Rides To Rescue KIRO-FM

Dave Ross, the 35-year-veteran at Bonneville's news/talk KIRO 97.3 FM, on Monday took over the morning drive-time reins on the FM side after a two-month experiment with long-form conversationalist John Curley as host flopped big-time with listeners, according to Eric Lactis at The Seattle Times.

At age 60, he has just marked 35 years at KIRO, hosting shows in every time slot, he says, except overnight. In those years, he's won his share of journalism prizes and reported from the world's hot spots, whether Ground Zero after Sept. 11 or the fall of communism in the Soviet Union.

Now, after management asked him, Ross is switching from the midmorning show he co-hosted with Luke Burbank to begin work at 6 a.m.

Ross says that in his three-plus decades at KIRO, he's been through plenty of format changes.

"They always happen. That's part of the job," he says.

These days, with new technology to measure listenership, it's a tumultuous industry.

"Instead of ratings going every three months, now they come weekly, so we can track — at least we think we can track — what's working and what's not working," says Ross. "Change comes more suddenly than it did 20 years ago."

But, he says, the essence of radio still is the same: "Trying to make a connection with listeners."

Ross's shift to early a.m. is KIRO's attempt to fix what it acknowledges was a programming mistake.

No comments:

Post a Comment