Net Gnome Roundup: St. Louis Update, Feeling Fresh in Phoenix, Houston and More

Last week we mentioned an impending format change at KLOU in St. Louis. The change hasn’t happened yet, but more information has begun to appear. St. Louis market vet Smash will take over mornings at the station on Monday, June 18. STLMedia.net confirms from market insiders that the station will be a male-leaning 70s/80s Classic Hits, much like sisters WRIT Milwaukee and WBIG Washington. It’s now just a matter of when the flip takes place between now and Smash’s debut.

Elsewhere in the Clear Channel domain of web-domains:

It looks like Houston could be getting a dose of Mojo. Recent domain registrations include mojo950.com and mantalk950.com. We could’ve pegged these for Seattle’s KJR as opposed to Houston’s KPRC if it were not for the concurrent registrations of sports790.com for KBME and news740.com for KTRH.

Panama City, FL may be the next market to see the WFLA news/talk branding that originated in Tampa and has since expanded to Orlando and Tallahassee. 945wfla.com was registered this week in a state where Clear Channel only owns one station on that frequency: WFBX Parker, FL currently a Classic Rocker with the “94.5 The Fox” branding.

In the interest of fairness to Clear Channel, we do have a domain that we’re pretty sure they have nothing to do with: Fresh1015.com Right now it’s an anonymous GoDaddy registration using Domainsbyproxy.com (a service you’ll hear us mention from time to time, a company that allows registrars to protect their registrations from gnomes like us), but we’ve got a good tip that this one is in fact related to CBS Radio’s current Free-FM in Phoenix. CBS launched the first “Fresh” branded AC in New York earlier this year to good success and recently the consultants behind the brand have been busy preparing for launches in other markets. As always we’ll be following this one closely.

Impending Format Change in Vancouver, BC

This morning at midnight PDT, Standard Radio CKZZ “Z 95.3″ dropped its longtime CHR format and began stunting in preparation of its new format launch tomorrow at 7:00am. Of course every Net Gnome wants to know what the future holds for the former Zed.

Standard Radio last week registered two domains which both could tie into the new format:

95crave.com
jazzinvancouver.com

Both domains bring up an error page right now on the icebergmedia.com server, which is a top Canadian webcaster owned by Standard.

We don’t know what exactly Vancouver is craving exactly, but it looks like there might be a jazz connection.

Coming to Phoenix?

We mentioned a few weeks ago that a few “Fresh” domains had been registered anonymously for potential use in Phoenix. It looks like we may have been sniffing up the wrong tree as at the same time 1015jams.com, 1015jamz.com, my1015jamz.com, and my1015jamz.net were all registered as well.

While snooping around the CBS webserver we found the logo above uploaded around 9:00pm EDT this evening. While we have no idea if/when this format change will take place, if we had to bet we’d say it could be as soon as this weekend. KZON is currently one of CBS’ floundering Free-FM’s. Phoenix already has two other Rhythmic CHR’s in Riviera’s Power 98.3 KKFR (which last fall moved from 92.3 when Emmis sold that frequency to Bonneville) and Clear Channel’s Rhythmic leaning104.7 Kiss-FM KZZP.

For further information keep posted to our Phoenix board.

Surfing In San Diego, Phoenix Update

While we await the official launch of 101.5 Jamz in Phoenix, another one of CBS’ Free-FM stations seems headed for a spot at the Format Change Archive.

Earlier today, SDRadio.net and AllAccess.com both showed us 1037KSURF.com with the logo plastered above. The domain is registered to a Judith Joseph of Cape Coral, FL but redirects to a subdirectory at cbsradioSD.com. The one thing that we’re questioning is the fact that those sites are NOT hosted by the company that runs all of CBS Radio’s web sites.

I want to say this is to throw people off the scent, but I’m not willing to put my money where my mouth is. If anything this could be a play off of the KSCF calls.

UPDATE 6/22 9:00am: The aforementioned site has now been pulled from the server. We’ll stand by our call that K-Surf was indeed a rouse, but now put our money on it. We still expect a change at KSCF in the next couple of weeks.

There are two other domains registered to CBS Radio in the past week: vivalaluna.com and stellafm.com. Not sure what they’re for, but they could be in play here.

Meanwhile, back in Phoenix, KZON is now stunting as “Free Paris Radio” playing a loop of tracks from Paris Hilton’s CD while “Renaldo” hypes an announcement for Friday at 5:00pm Phoenix time. We’ve heard from a number of people in the Phoenix sales community confirming that 101.5 Jamz is in fact the planned format. Hopefully we’ll know for sure tomorrow afternoon.