KUZU IS NOW ROCKING DENTON • KATHY MERRITT MOVES BACK TO CPB • WBFO ADDS 25,000 NEW WEEKLY LISTENERS IN BUFFALO

Denton, Texas has a new local radio voice.  KUZU FM 92.3 [link] came to life on Saturday (7/15) at High Noon. KUZU kicked off with 24 hours of music entirely from local artists from North Texas. The station combines Triple A, rockabilly and Texas twang. 

The station is a homegrown effort. Peter Salisbury, now the chairman of KUZU’s Board of Directors founded Real Waves Radio Network, the nonprofit behind KUZU, in 2013. They applied and eventually were granted a LPFM license after four years of waiting and planning.

KUZU-FM COVERAGE AREA

According Board Member Paul Slavens, KUZU’s local music focus was inspired by Triple A KKXT, Dallas, where Slavens used work weekends. Denton is about 40 miles north of Dallas. In recent years, Denton has become an exurb of the DFW Metroplex.

Slaven told the Denton News [link] that a dream was finally becoming a reality:

“We all knew today was a great challenge — emphasis on the word great. We learned a lot, and a brand-new animal has emerged out of the cocoon. Now we just have to get the butterfly to fly.”

And fly it did, and it is flying 24/7.

Volunteer Bruce Burns summed up the enthusiasm for KUZU this way:

"You don't have to be an expert at whatever you're doing. It's all about passion and not the money."

All of us in public media should find a bit of that passion.

KATHY MERRITT NAMED SENIOR VP OF JOURNALISM & RADIO AT CPB

Kathy Merritt

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) announced that public radio veteran Kathy Merritt is now CPB’s Senior Vice President ofr Journalism and Radio. She replaces Bruce Theriault who left the job in 2016. Merritt previously was VP of Content Strategy & Development at Public Radio International (PRI).

Merritt was CPB’s Senior Direction of Program Investments in Radio before moving to PRI in 2013. She will be in charge of developing journalism collaborations and strengthening public media’s role as a trusted news source.

NPR NEWS IS UP IN BUFFALO AND RICHMOND; DOWN A BIT IN ROCHESTER

We continue our tour of Nielsen Audio’s Diary markets today with a look at legendary NPR News station WBFO. In the Spring 2017 sweeps WBFO added almost 25,000 estimated weekly cumulative listeners, a jump of 18% over Spring 2016. WBFO’s cume of 127,300 is likely a record. Sister station Classical WNED was also up.

WBFO and WNED also have a substantial number of listeners in Ontario, just over the falls.

NPR News also is performing very well in Richmond. Hometown WCVE and Roanoke’s WFFC and WVTF (via repeater WVTW) were all up in the Spring 2017 estimates compared to Spring 2016. The survey was conducted prior to format changes at the two Roanoke stations. WFFC continues to be all News/Talk. WVTF is now fulltime Classical music.  It will be interesting to see if the changes have any impact of dual-format WCVE.

All four subscribing stations in Rochester lost cumulative weekly listeners between Spring 2016 and Spring 2017. All four stations are operated by WXXI.      .