Sync

A familiar voice is back on the radio in central Arkansas.

Fired from The Point 94.1 in January, Jennifer Trafford has returned to radio, joining up with longtime KSSN 96 personality Bob Robbins for the country music station’s morning show from 5 a.m. to 10 a.m. Trafford made her debut Monday.

It’s a different station and a different format, but the line is blurred when it comes to classic rock and modern country. Many of today’s country musicians were raised on classic rock and those big choruses are found in the power anthems of musicians such as Brad Paisley, Dierks Bentley and Zac Brown Band. And while Trafford admits an affinity for rock artists such as Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, she’s also versed on today’s country. She likes Keith Urban and Miranda Lambert, and the established country stars KSSN plays like Garth Brooks and George Strait.

“I like good music,” said Trafford the Friday before starting at KSSN. “There’s a lot of crossover. I’m not going to give up the [Bob] Dylan. Now I can be a little bit country and a little bit rock ‘n’ roll.”

“I’m excited and also a little bit nervous. But after six months of not being on the air I’m more excited than anything. It’d be different if I didn’t know Bob, and we weren’t friends.”

Asked if it might be difficult to share airtime after going solo for more than three decades, Robbins, the veteran KSSN personality, quickly replied: “I can share with her. She’s the sugar in my coffee.”

But it’s actually not the first time Trafford will have been on air with Robbins. She read the news for Clear Channel-owned KSSN (and three other stations that no longer exist, including the legendary Magic 105) in the morning for Robbins from 1997 to 1999, when she was fresh out of school at the University of Central Arkansas.

“She’s the only [co-host] I’d have,” said Robbins, a Country Radio Broadcasters Hall of Fame member, last week before Trafford officially joined him on air.

Trafford worked for The Point for 10 years before being fired Jan. 7, along with morning show co-host Eric Brown. (Brown is still awaiting the end of his no-compete clause before deciding what to do next, according to Trafford.)

It’s been a long six months for Trafford, a weekday morning presence for Point listeners as they headed to work. Trafford was also well-known for her charity work and community involvement.

“I’d never been fired before,” she said. “Then I found out I was pregnant a week later and I never got the chance to tie one on, so it’s been a sobering six months.”

Her Point severance ran out after three months and with her non-compete contract extending another three months, Trafford went to the unemployment office, an experience she likened to going to either a funeral or hospital. It was a depressing time, but she also got to spend more time with her husband Micah and 6-year-old daughter Madison, and work around the house.

“I realized why retired people have such nice gardens,” she said.

But she was always ready for a return to radio. A few stations checked on her status right when she was fired but she informed them of her non-compete contract. Her employment with KSSN came about rather quickly, going from discussions to employment within weeks. She told them upfront she was seven-months pregnant — it’s a girl — and KSSN hired her to be Robbins’ sidekick.

Now, after six months of not being at work at 5 a.m. every weekday, Trafford is back into her early-morning routine again. (And actually working an hour early, as Trafford and Brown took to The Point airways at 6 a.m. every weekday.) But even while she was unemployed for six months, Trafford was still waking around 5 a.m. each morning. (She awoke between 3:30 a.m. and 4 a.m. each weekday the first month after being fired from The Point.) She was able to stay up later than 9 p.m. though, watching such programs as Tosh.0 as they premiered instead of on DVR.

Brown and Trafford remain in touch, and Brown was one of the first people outside of Trafford’s family to receive the news of her hiring by KSSN.

“We get together and talk,” Trafford said. “Outside of my family, Eric was the first one I told [about the KSSN job]. I wanted his blessing, too.”

The local angle: Some radio changes driven by hometown demands.

As with any business, changes in radio can happen all the time. The difference is, because of the very public nature of the product, when they affect what people hear on the air, they can’t help but be noticed.

But like any business, there can be myriad reasons why general managers and programming directors opt to go in a different direction. Sometimes those are ratings related. Other times it’s advertising. Budgets and individual ambitions can have something to do with it, too.

Justin Acri, programming director for KABZ 103.7 The Buzz and co-host of the station’s midday sports talk show The Zone, said on-air changes are some of the hardest to make in the radio business. He described the debate over the station’s decision to drop the nationally syndicated Jim Rome Show for Sports Talk with Bo Mattingly, which was applauded by some listeners and disparaged by others.

“I was a huge fan [of Rome], so it was very difficult, personally, for me to make that decision,” he said.

Ultimately the station’s philosophy for local programming was a factor in picking up Sports Talk, as its Fayetteville origins guaranteed a heavy Razorbacks emphasis, something listeners expect. It’s also a high-quality show, Acri said, and it offered local business opportunities a national show didn’t.

Local is certainly a word that resonates with Kevin Clay, morning host for Big Rock 93.3. He said too often he sees changes made in radio because “they put accountants in control,” and the mission goes “from being the best product possible to being a passable product at the cheapest price.

“Lots of decisions in radio nowadays are not based on performance but on salary. Try to find the last time someone was let go and replaced by someone at a higher salary.”

Granted, he said, most stations’ revenues may be down, but the byproduct of cost cutting is often a lack of talent, and it’s local talent that keeps radio alive in an era when people can pick whatever they want to listen to on an iPod, he said.

“We’re not going to beat someone’s iPod head to head,” he said. “You’ve got to be able to give an audience local programming and local personalities, because everything else they can get on the Internet ... But big corporations don’t like to give up that control. They want to tell you how you have to do things, because you’re just in Little Rock, so what do you know.”

— by spencer watson