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Radio rivalry plain as a billboardBy PAMELA DAVIS
© St. Petersburg Times, Don't believe your eyes. WQYK-FM 99.5's Skip Mahaffey does not have a goatee or a large gap between his teeth regardless of how he looks on a new billboard that advertises him and the radio station. The fake features were spray painted on the morning personality's face by employees of WRBQ-FM 104.7. Members of the A.W. Pantoja Morning Show defaced WQYK's billboard not long after it went up in Tampa where westbound Interstate 4 merges with southbound Interstate 275. The radio stunt, which aired live last week, took WQYK's and WRBQ's station management by surprise (both the stations and the billboard company are owned by Infinity). A.W. Pantoja agreed to pay $1,000 to replace the billboard because the bit was his idea. A new one will be up in a few weeks. There are five other Mahaffey/WQYK billboards in the Tampa Bay area. Only one was defaced. "They're our buddies," WRBQ morning show co-host Cowhead said. "We're the Eddie Haskell of the two country stations and Skip is Wally." Though pleased with the attention he received on a competing station, "I can't believe they actually got someone to climb up that thing," Mahaffey said. "But I wish it were gone." NATIONAL SPOTLIGHT: Allowing Tampa's Blake High School senior class president to read her commencement speech on the air at WFLZ-FM 93.3 Tuesday morning got the radio station national media attention. After Lissette Stanley was removed as class president for placing condoms into prom gift bags, morning show host MJ Kelli invited her to read the speech she would have given to her classmates on his show last week. Not only did Stanley take Kelli up on his offer, but she also plugged the station in an interview with Good Morning America. Before Stanley read her speech about 6:40 a.m., she was interviewed in WFLZ's studio via satellite by Good Morning America co-host Charlie Gibson. The taped segment aired later that morning on TV. WFLZ's logo was prominently displayed on Stanley's T-shirt during the interview. When asked by Gibson if she would read part of the speech, she told him he would have to listen to it on WFLZ. "Large national exposure makes a lot more people aware of what we do," Kelli said. RADIO NEWS AWARDS: WUSF-FM 89.7 was the big winner at the recent 2000 Society of Professional Journalists Mid-Florida Chapter Awards. Reporters Bobbie O'Brien and Tom Parkinson won 10 awards for the public radio station including awards of excellence in spot news, consumer reporting and single story general reporting. Bill George, Sheila Daughtry and Dave Lassa of community radio station WMNF-FM 88.5 won an award of excellence in serious feature. WFLA-AM 970's Valerie J. Ingram-Hinkley won an honorable mention for single story general reporting. WORTH A LISTEN: Paws that Refresh, a public service show about pets, has been on WHNZ-AM 1250 only since April. It airs Sundays at 7 a.m. and is hosted by Roger Schulman, the news director for WMTX-FM 100.7 (Mix) and WDAE-AM 620. All three stations are owned by Clear Channel Communications. The half hour, commercial-free program gives representatives from humane societies and the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and other animal groups the chance to talk about pet issues.
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From the wire |
