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There's a new morning drive team - "Cliff & Co." - delivering the type of chatter-with-the-platter commentary and news reporting that KSON-FM 97.3 executives are confident will keep the country radio station high on both revenue and listener charts.
Veteran disc jockeys Cliff Dumas, Morgan Thomas, and Bill Tanner debuted in the all-important 5 to 9 a.m. morning slot April 7. They replaced Tony Randall and Kris Rochester, who were lured away after a decade at the longtime country station in January by Clear Channel Communications San Diego, which boosted their pay to host the morning show for start-up KUSS-FM 95.7.
No one is saying how much Randall and Rochester were offered to join Clear Channel's new country station, nor what it took to hire the new KSON trio away from their old jobs. Darrel Goodin, vice president and general manager of the local Jefferson-Pilot operation, insisted "the tenor of the negotiations," not the money it would have taken to try to retain Randall and Rochester, was the key reason they left.
Goodin said a report from Miller, Kaplan, Arase and Co., a group of Los Angeles accountants that independently track broadcast industry revenue, shows KSON FM's 7.8 percent first-quarter gain outpaced the local market on the whole, which had a gain...