Albuquerque Journal from Albuquerque, New Mexico • Page 30

BUSINESS OUTLOOK WEEK OF MONDAY, JULY 23, 1990 Page 4 Station Owner Makes Childhood Dream Pay Off By Mary Jo Comber JOURNAL CORRESPONDENT i As Wiv 11 5 Wnmwim "III 1 If I'' l. Xr va I id "I didn't have any capital at that point," he said, "so I put it (the station) back on completely automated and ran the station myself with a portable telephone. I was it until late August '89. I brought on a salesperson and then we made a major leap and got a phone. We've grown slowly, but surely, since then." Davis now has four employees and airs several local programs, which have developed their own following, including "Car Facts," with Dave Herzstein, and "Know Your Rights," a call-in show about legal questions.

Davis recently began broadcasting daily traffic reports and he simulcasts KGGM-TV's "Live at 5" news show. Davis hopes to add hourly news reports with an emphasis on business and finance. The central emphasis of the station won't change, however. "We don't want to be chasing ambulances," he said. "Our listeners don't use us for that type of information.

We need to make our local business-oriented news coverage a little bit stronger. We've found something that works. We are real good at what we do, and I want us to keep doing it better and better." Moser attributes a part of the station's success directly to the fact that Davis is actively involved in the operation of the station. "So many of the radio stations now throughout the country are corporate-run radio stations where you don't have an owner like Don who's right here in the station," Moser said. "As general manager, I don't have to answer to a corporate officer somewhere on the East Coast or in the Midwest who doesn't understand the Albuquerque lifestyle." Davis agrees.

"Of the 38 or 39 (station) signals you can pick up in your car now (in Albuquerque), only a small handful, maybe three or four, are locally owned," Davis said. As KMBA grows, it appears Davis' childhood ambitions are being realized in a business that Moser claims "eats its young." Davis quips: "It doesn't treat its old too well, either." DON DAVIS is living out his childhood dreams and running a successful business at the same time. Davis is owner of KMBA Business Radio (1050 AM), Albuquerque's only radio station with a business, all-talk format. Since April 1989, KMBA has flourished in a media market that some claim is alredy saturated, but Davis says he survives by filling a niche with his business programming. Most of the station's 24-hour programming is provided by Business Radio Network, based in Colorado Springs.

Locally produced shows are aired evenings and some weekend hours and include business and finance reports and general interest call-in shows. Because all of the network programming is fully automated and doesn't require a live announcer or disc jockey, Davis is able to keep bis staff small and his costs low. The format also allows him to be more flexible in the amount of time sold to advertisers. Jamie Moser, general manager of KMBA, explains: "Being all talk, we have the flexibility of doing things other people don't do." While the station can sell the customary 30-second or 60-second commmercials, it can also sell a 3-to-60-minute time block to either educate the consumer about a product or talk about issues facing an industry. Because KMBA's all-talk business format is unique in Albuquerque, Davis says his station is "outside the radio war." The road to radio station ownership has been long and difficult.

"I grew up with it on the brain," Davis said. "I've been interested in radio since I was six or seven years old, hanging around remote broadcasts." While still in high school, Davis began a part-time job at an Albuquerque station and has been in broadcasting ever since. In 1987, Davis obtained his license and MARK HOLM OUTLOOK KMBA owner Don Davis: "We've grown slowly, but surely Davis went off the air in July 1988, his cash reserves exhausted. In April 1989, he returned with KMBA This time, however, he became a Business Radio Network affiliate and was able to cut operating costs significantly. went on the air with a big-band music format.

"It didn't work at all," he said. "The station was much too expensive to operate and it got lost in the herd of music stations in town." Next Up in Automation: Machines That Will Rent Cars By Tom Belden KNIGHT-RIDDER NEWSPAPERS testing a version of the new service, called a "remote transaction booth" or RTB, for 18 months at four locations in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The test has been successful enough that Budget plans to install the devices by the end of this year in permanent locations in Dallas; Fort Worth; Minneapolis; Fort Lauderdale, Raleigh-Durham, FIRST THERE was the automated-teller machine, or ATM, the handy device that has changed the way millions of people bank. Then, major airlines and nearby parking space for the cars themselves. The test sites in the Dallas-Fort Worth area were at Sears auto-service centers in shopping malls.

But eventually, a booth may be located in an office building or any other site with parking nearby, said Kevin McShea, Budget's senior vice president, technical services group. The only requirements are for the location to have two telephone lines, electricity and parking for the rental-car fleet, he' said. Anywhere from four to IS cars are usually parked at each remote site. The 3-by-5-foot RTB is only a little more complicated to use than a bank ATM or an automatic ticketing machine. A customer sits down, picks up a telephone connected to a regular Budget rental office and speaks to a reservation agent.

The customer looks into a video camera and displays his driver's license, so the rental agent can verify that the renter has a valid license. Then the renter runs a credit card through a magnetic-stripe reader, and a rental agreement is printed out for the customer to sign. After the agreement also has been displayed to the video camera, keys to the rental car drop from a slot For Budget, installing RTBs is much simpler and less costly than a staffed location. The RTBs can be transported on the back of a flatbed truck, installed in a few hours and taken out again if the location turns out to be a dud, McShea said. The company also will use the remote machines to gauge whether there is sufficient demand at the site to justify opening a staffed office, with a higher level of service and larger selection.

"You can do demographic studies to try to determine if there is sufficient demand, but it's hit-or-miss where you put it," McShea said. Amtrak began experimenting with ticketing machines operated by aN.C; San Francisco; Seattle; Hon- credit card. oluiu ana Vancouver, Bntisn loi- Now, it's only a matter of time umbia. Initially, the RTBs are being placed in indoor locations, in suburban malls or inside the car-repair departments of major department stores that have ample until you'll be able to rent a car from a machine, using your driver's license for identification and a credit card for billing Budget Rent aCSr haSobeen.