It’s been a week since Jeff Kinzbach bid goodbye to NE Ohio rock radio fans he has been entertaining for the greater part of 50 years. The kid who grew up with a ‘Plastic Silver Nine Volt Heart’ attached to his ear, listening to those big voices on those blowtorches back in the day—WKBW, WCFL, WABC, WLS, CKLW—telling Radio Ink he knew it was time to move on.
“Well, I’m 67. I think I started thinking about this when I turned 65. My wife is a couple of years behind me, and we started talking. You know we have been married for 31 years, we’re not going to live forever, you know nobody gets out of here alive; and it would really be nice to push away from the table and go out and do a whole lot of things we wanted to do on our terms and not having to be back Monday morning at 4am.”
“There is an old saying ‘Know when to get off the stage’, and I think it’s my time.”
But oh, what a time it’s been for the kid who’s mom bought him a little, 3 inch reel to reel tape recorder when he was 9. For the teen who got to twist the knobs at Cleveland mainstay WIXY-1260 when the late night jock didn’t show up for work.
“I worked at WIXY-1260 in Cleveland as a phone answerer. One night the guy who was suppose to come in for his late-night shift didn’t show up. The PD told me–‘You know how to work everything, I know you know how to run everything, I want you to run the station from 10 until 2. Do you want to do it?’ I said absolutely. He said, ‘Don’t say nothing on the mic.’ So here I was a 16 year old kid, running the board; running the station. What that taught me was never to be late and not show up for a shift.”
A Summer trip to Saginaw, Michigan and a stop at WSAM, landed him at job doing overnight weekend newscasts.
“It helped me really clarify how important it is to write and to prepare and to have something in you hand to fall back on if you start doing the porky pig thing (Mel Blanc imitation). It also taught me the three important rules of radio: know how to get into something, how to present the something, and most importantly; how the hell to get out of it.”
And then in 1973 a bunch of radio friends were working at WMMS in Cleveland, they needed a production guy, something right in Kinzbach’s wheelhouse. He was hired the day of the inteview and he never looked back. In 1976 Kinzbach and Ed “Flash” Ferenc took over the morning show. The Buzzard Morning Zoo was born.
“We had a lot of fun, it was a great group of people. Just a bunch of 20 year old’s building a radio station that WE wanted to listen to. Thank God everybody else did too. It was a great group of people. The chemistry was amazing, the music was incredible. We had no playlists. We all kinda of knew what we were going to play, what type of music tastes we each had. What had come out, what was important to play. It was a true progressive rock radio station.”
So could Buzzard type radio do a phoenix and rise from the ashes today?
“I think that you probably could make something like the Buzzard happen again. It would have to be on every different platform, but I think that you could do it again. It would have to be a bit different because of the times; but if it was personality radio with the right music, I think it could happen again. But you know what, nobody is willing to do that….its cut cut cut.”
“The problem with–quote…’the climate of radio today’–is that nobody cares about the product. (Sarcastic Tone) Hey lets cut the product and then we’re going to make a lot of money.”
“The truth of the matter is that you can’t sell advertising with a crappy product. Or something that is just a manila folder that is done up all across the country. That is why you see the decline in radio. It’s not local anymore, it’s the same thing in every market.”
After being out of the area for awhile, Kinzbach returned to the airwaves in 2013, taking over mornings at Akron’s WONE. He was paired with longtime NE Ohio radio vet Sandra Miller.
“It was a nice situation for me, because you know Tom Mandell is a local owner. He’s a radio guy who likes radio. When they hired me they basically took off the gloves and said do whatever you like.”
“I remember we had a meeting and they said we just have to figure out what we are going to do. I had a folder, I put it on the table and said here is the plan. Nobody said much after that. They just sort of let me go.”
Seven years later, he would turn off those early alarms, and walk away. Kinzbach, the consummate pro he is, closed out his swan song show, with Queen’s ‘Keep Yourself Alive’, urging listeners, “Keep yourself alive. We want to see you at the end of the parade.”
Being in the business for five-decades, Kinzbach is no stranger to the frailty of radio jobs. But what happen to Sandra Miller was a surprise.
“I think I was out the door by maybe one hour when they decided to fire her or had fired her. I guess I don’t want to say anything about who I worked for, or who I worked with. That was between them and not me. I was a bit surprised by it, I really was.”
“That was unfortunate, it really was. She had some ideas on how to carry on with the show and stay with the company. But the powers that be decided that no, they were going to go in another direction. It’s sad, you never want to see anybody lose a job. Evidently they feel there is another direction for them to go in. That’s their prerogative.”
“There has been some backlash, no doubt about it. People who listened to us are not happy about it. I can’t blame them. I’ve always been the type to try and transition to something. It makes it easier on the listener. But, like I said they have their plan and they are going to implement it.”
The station is currently looking for a new morning personality.
So what is Jeff Kinzbach going to do?
“I’m going to do a few things. I’m going to do some endorsements, which I have already been doing. You know have microphone will travel. You know the RV actually sounds better acoustically than my house; so I will be doing somethings from the RV.”
“Will I end up consulting or doing something like that? There is a possibility because you know, never say never.”
What about owning a radio station someday?
(Hearty Laugh) “No, owning the RV is about as big as I’m going to go.”
