PD Opportunity at 95.7 CRUZ FM – Backgrounder

This afternoon we received word from ‎General Manager, Harvard Broadcasting – 95.7 CRUZ FM & Hot 107 Edmonton Tamara Konrad that she is on the hunt for a brand new PD for 95.7 CRUZ FM.

From Tamara’s E-mail: Tim Schutz who has programmed CKEA for the past 2 years has given us notice that he will be leaving at the end of August for personal reasons. Tim is one of the good radio guys, and I will definitely miss his great sense of humour.

From Tim’s E-mail: Hi PSR. It was a personal decision to step away. My time at Harvard has been fantastic. Both Tamara, Christian and the staff have been very supportive. Good people. It was time to look after myself and decided now to take the step.

95.7 CRUZ FM is a relatively new station in the Edmonton market; after a few branding and format flips it seems to have found a home with the CRUZ brand which started in Saskatoon under the watchful eye of Andy Ross.

CKEA has had an interesting path to it’s current brand and format. It started out in September 2010 as 95.7 The Sound, A Triple A formatted station that sounded great, was imaged well, the announcers we’re knowledgeable music guys, and PD Sara Parker knew her stuff after working at The Zone in Victoria for a long time. But Edmonton just wasn’t ready for it.

Harvard saw a hole in the market after after Astral had dropped the “At Work” AC format on Ez Rock to re-brand it as Virgin. So Sara, and her team took on the task of re-branding and re-formatting The Sound to become Lite 95.7. Not long after Harvard bought HOT107 from John Yerxa and proceeded to relocate that station into the Harvard facility in Edmonton.

It’s important for smaller companies like Harvard to have 2 stations in a market, it makes it easier to sell nationals and multi buys to clients. With that purchase Sara Parker moved from LITE to HOT107 to become PD, and Tim Schultz came in as PD for Lite, then spear headed the re-branding to CRUZ.

In the February to May PPM numbers for Edmonton, CKEA came in at a 2.3 share in the A2+ numbers. The numbers for their target demographic may be vastly different, so it’s hard to judge if a station is hitting their target demo’s based on such broad numbers, but internally they’d know if things are working or not.

The station is on the right track with a few radio heavy weights on air with with Scott McCord & Ryann Bradley on Mornings  & Drive with Edmonton legend Gary James. Plus the ongoing station promotion “The $10,000 No Repeat Workday” that can; if done right, build great TSL for the station, but what they really need is to build cume. Harvard need to commit to this brand to make it work. 3 format & brand changes in 4 years creates brand and listener confusion in the market.

The CRUZ brand is clean, well thought out and could stand to work well for them.  Some say the Edmonton launch was poorly executed as they didn’t have their morning show in place at the time of going to air, but mistakes will always be made, not everything can go according to plan. So there’s a great opportunity now for a PD to come into this vacant role and help Harvard achieve their Edmonton goals. See the job ad here

Dead Air Dave.