"The Morning Mayor" Dave Pratt has been claiming his return to the airwaves is imminent for, oh, about three months now.
Now, Dave says, it's really, really imminent. The announcement came from an e-mail dispatch last night and was followed up by a story in the Republic today. Pratt gave the "scoop" to The Arizona Republic's longtime music writer Larry Rodgers -- Pratt, as mentioned briefly in the sixth-to-last paragraph, also writes for the paper's website -- in a long piece about his internet radio venture.
The story repeats the same info the e-mail did: Pratt will distribute a show called Dave Pratt Live, through the internet from 6 to 10 a.m. on weekdays. He has hired a co-host named Kassi Jayde who used to work for KISS-FM (104.7) and graduated from ASU last year -- she's a part-time model nearly 30 years his junior. (Check out some pictures of her here.) They will talk and play music of various genres. Pratt wants to line up a traditional radio affiliate within a few months.
"I refused to leave Arizona, and I never will," Pratt also said,
which is good because there's probably not a huge market for 50-year-old
dudes who people in other cities have never heard of on their radio
stations. But, hey, who knows.
Listeners will be able to hear the show on their smartphones or the good old interwebz at his site.
According to his e-mail, "we will likely accept an incredibly warm invite from an FM radio affiliate in the next 30 days."
That could prove interesting.
The plight of local morning shows figured prominently in my recent cover story about upstart Low-Power FM station KWSS. In short, such shows have been hammered by the economy but may make a comeback as people crave more localism on radio. Contacted then, Pratt expressed some misgivings about the value of paid personalities on music radio.
Gotta hand the Prattster this: He's still super quotable.
