THE INTERNET JOCK
STATIONS AROUND THE WORLD CAN BUY FOUR-HOUR SHOWS; FROM THIS OREGON
AIR TALENT - AND DOWNLOAD THEM FROM THE WEB
Steve Woodward * 02/01/99
The Spokesman Review
SPOKANE
(Copyright 1999 Cowles Publishing Company)
Bob Ancheta - The Big B.A. - is Bend's No. 1 radio disc jockey
during weekday afternoon drive time.
No mean feat, considering that Ancheta, geographically speaking,
is nowhere near Bend.
"I'm up skiing last week," Ancheta recalled recently in his
Beaverton, Ore., home office/studio, "and I hear myself on the radio
while sitting in the parking lot."
Credit his mysterious double life to the magic of a Web site, MP3
audiotechnology, $5,000 worth of gear, a major-market radio voice and
a 9-month-old business called The Internet Jock.
"They can put me on from 12 midnight to 6, and I don't care --
because I'm not there," said the 37-year-old blues aficionado.
Ancheta's 29-year radio career nearly hit dead air during the past
three years, when he was fired, twice, by a Pennsylvania radio
conglomerate that bought seven Portland-area stations.
Determined to stay in radio, Ancheta and engineer friend Jack Edin
hatched an idea that, according to a leading national researcher, is
new to the radio industry.
They would create customized, four-hour shows, complete with
station breaks, announcements and current weather reports. Ancheta
would prerecord the shows as digital files and upload them each day
to a Web site. Clients would download them into their station
automation systems, which would play Ancheta's voice and music at the
proper, preprogrammed times.
"We will make it sound like we're sitting at your control board in
your city," Ancheta declares on the company's Web site
(www.internetjock.com).
No more live disc jockeys. No more big salaries. No
long-distance phone calls or tapes to mess with. No more grumping
about music playlists.
* "It can be Bavarian folk music as far as I'm concerned," Ancheta
said. "I can do it in my bathrobe."
So far, only one station has become a believer: Rock 98.3, a.k.a.
The Twins, in Bend.
But it's a strong believer. The latest ratings place Ancheta's 3
to 7 p.m. show significantly ahead of the competition for adult
listeners age 25 to 49. And the station's switchboard continues to
light up as listeners call in with song requests for The Big B.A.
All for only $500 a month.
"It gives me unprecedented control over programming," said The
Twins' program manager, Ron "Air Guitar" Alvarez, who also does a
live morning drive-time show with Ancheta's former Portland on-air
partner, KC Caldwell. Alvarez can drop in listener requests and his
own preferred songs between Ancheta's recorded introductions.
"It makes it affordable for us in a smaller market to hire big-
market talent," he said. "The first day he was on the air, we got a
ton of calls saying, `Hey, B.A.'s here.'"
But B.A. was not "here." He was in a spare bedroom of his
Beaverton split-level home while he recorded that and other shows.
Surrounded by a collection of 1,400 CDs and dozens of celebrity
photos, he spends a mere 20 minutes each weekday morning recording a
show that runs four hours, including music.
Ancheta said he needs only half a dozen daily client stations --
out of about 6,700 potential client stations -- to produce a
comfortable income. That means he's not particularly worried about
the competition that's almost certain to materialize.
"A lot of radio groups are planning to do the same thing
themselves," he said. "Word of mouth is what's going to make this
work."
