THE ZOO KZEW RADIO PROJECT

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Lets talk about the elephant in the room.

Posted by: Billy W on 9/18/2024 3:08 PM

Zooloo the ZOO elephant has arrived and he's looking for his birthday cake, or at least some Häagen-Dazs ice cream. For those who don't get it, it was 51 years ago today when WFAA-FM changed it's format from beautiful music to progressive rock. At 6am on September 18, 1973 Ken Rundel played Simon and Garfunkel's At The Zoo to the horror of little old ladies across North Texas. It began as WFAA 98FM The ZOO and remained that way for a week.
They had applied for the KZEW call letters, but were delayed due to objections from station KEZT. On Tuesday September 25, 1973 the FCC granted the KZEW call letters and the rest is history.

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11 Replies
Added by GerDon

Good to know. Thanx!
Happy 51st Anniversary Zooloo
Added by GerDon

Or should I have said happy birthday Zooloo?
Added by bostonfrog

Truly great moments in history
Added by Angela

Oh the days of seeing Zooloo the Elephant on bumper stickers all over DFW. So glad he's back!
Added by GerDon

Maybe not. I’ve got an old one and a new one on my car. Trying to spread the news. I could use some help? Get some stickers and help me. Every once in awhile I get some remarks about my stickers. I tell them that the Zooloo lives again.
Added by Wildcard

GerDon -Yes, the first thing we will do when we have any promo money is to spend it on tons of stickers we can give a away. We always hand out some at events but it's limited. Would be great to have a "street team" that took stacks and handed them out all over. We will get there.

We are working behinds the scenes to connect local venues, artists, and media together to rebuild the ecosystem outside of the reach of the corporate overlords. It has to make financial sense and that's a tough road based on the rules that bind us.

That's what ruined it for the fans the first time around - big business.
Added by Wildcard

Billy W - Yes, happy birthday to the zoo. I remember Ira saying that when the station first started, it was an FCC rule that the station had to notify all the other local stations of the call letters they intended to use to be sure there were no objections.

Ira mailed the notices to the other stations with the new call letters, K Z E W, and included a kazoo, so the stations wouldn't connect the concept of "THE ZOO". They thought, those dorks at WFAA-FM are creating a station called "the kazoo". Very clever.
Added by JD from Big D

Thanks for sharing. DIdn't know that kazoo story.
Added by GerDon

I’d love to be in the “Street Team”.
Added by Wildcard

Street Team engaged!

Let's do this! Here's how easy it is to help:

1) Send an email to all your friends (and grown kids you may know) that love rock music and tell them to listen and spread the word. Follow up and ask them what they think about it.

2) Subscribe to the zoo. Still only a fraction of regular listeners contribute.

3) Order some wall tapestries from our shop, they are only $12 each and get them hung up in your local pub, auto shop, motorcycle club, live venue, college campus, office, etc. Anywhere you go, other rock n rollers will go too and they will find out about us.

4) Order zoo gear to wear it all the time and people will come up to you everyday and go WTF!?! The Zoo!? And you say, "Hell yeah"! I can have "Street Team" shirts created if you will purchase them.

5) Order zoo gear for the office and as gifts for your friends and college age (kids) you know. (Christmas is coming up and my whole family already knows what they always get from me! LOL)

Right now I am still subsidizing the zoo station since I purchased it in March of last year. My goal to reinvest any profits into promotional giveaways, support live remotes, and eventually live concerts for new artists that we play on the station. The music business is broken. Artists make too little and fans pay too much for tickets. Let's fix it.

Make no mistake, it will be an uphill battle against the establishment, they charge streaming stations exorbitant fees to keep us from attempting this. But, we are an underground station again, lean and mean, just like the beginning in 1973. The difference is that there is no corporate parent to derail us like the first time, society is ripe for another counter-cultural revolution, and we have worldwide reach now. Let's do something with it.

Us old-timers need to band together our time, talent, and resources and rebuilt this thing for the younger generations. It's more than a radio station, it's a lifestyle, and our legacy to pass to them. And they are the engine that will ultimately make it successful.

Who's in?
Added by Wildcard

I created a new thread for this discussion: https://thezoorocks.com/forum/street-team
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