News coverage of the outbreak

Jeremy Levy back with you. I hope that everyone of my readers and followers is staying safe during this time.Today I wanted to write about radio during the Corona Virus.In my opinion KOA radio has been doing the best job with coverage. When the virus first started, I enjoyed listening to Dave Logan and Julie Browman on the Logan and Lewis show from 9 AM-noon on 850 a.m. and 94.1 FM. They kept the listener informed as to what Colorado’s efforts were and they also talked about some sports along the way.Mandy Connell’s show has been informative as well. She did talk some about the virus, but she also talked about other fun topics as well and she put some fun things on her blog. Mandy also has been featuring small businesses. Every day she has callers call in if they have a small business and she promotes them a little bit. People can e-mail these to her at Mandy@KOAnewsradio.com. KOA has stopped their national programming on the weekends for local coverage. On Saturdays from noon to 3 Ross Kaminsky is on with coverage. Then from 3 PM-6 PM is Mike Rice. From 6PM-9 PM Ryan Edwards and Benjamin Albright have been on. Sundays from 10 AM-noon is Lou from Littleton. It is so good to hear Lou From Littleton again on KOA radio. Mike Rice is on from noon to 3 PM and Jon Caldara is on from 3 PM-7 PM. KOA radio breaks in with every press conference and every President’s speech. You can hear it in its entirety.The station that has the next best coverage is KNUS radio. Stefan Tubbs has been my favorite host to listen to on KNUS. He goes to every press conference from the governor. He also does informative interviews. For example, he did one with the news director of WCBS radio named Tim Shelton, who informed listeners to the situation in NY city. He also did one with a reporter from KOGO radio in San Diego named Phil Faraar, with an update from that city. And he also has been interviewing Steve Fudderman from CBS news radio who had a national update. At the beginning of the outbreak, Stefan was having callers call in if they had a small business and they were still open to let the listeners know what the store or restaurant was doing. The other person that I think has been doing a great job on KNUS is Mike Boyle. On the KNUS website there is a list of restaurants that people can get grab and go meals at restaurants. Mike has broadcast from some of these restaurants to promote the deals that they were having. My favorite show was when he was at Pegasus restaurant.KOA radio and KNUS radio are the 2 stations that are making a real difference in the community. They are bringing people together. That has been part of their slogans for both KNUS and KOA radioSome people that want to be news anchors or radio talk show hosts are not sure that they want to cover disasters or important things that are going on. I have learned that radio hosts and live coverage is important to let the listener know what is going on. A radio drama that I listen to on Saturday mornings called Adventures in Odyssey had this lesson in last Saturdays show. In the show, a news reporter named Ted Humphries was trying to find the best stories to cover. He was getting a little bit tired of the stories he was already covering. He tried a couple of different stories, but the important story was the one that got him the viewership. It is really good to know that when there is serious stories that radio stations cover the stories.In my opinion it is amazing how technology has changed. Some of the radio people can do their shows from their house using remote equipment. That is what KOA and some shows on 630 KHOW have been doing with their shows. Altitude Sports 92.5 and sports radio 104.3 The Fan have been doing the same thing. The Fan has one host in the studio and one host at their house. Sometimes there are challenges with doing this with routers and the equipment but for the most part it has been working well. Mandy Connell on KOA has been doing her show from her house. She has her producer on skype on the computer while the other producer is in the regular studio. When I first started listening to the radio in 1996 they didn’t have this technology. When there was a snow blizzard the radio host had to call into the station over the phone in order to do their show. Wow! Technology has really changed for the better. .Thanks for tuning in.