“It’s great to be associated with some fun,” said Ty Tyler, president of Tyler Media, who oversaw the format change from Radio Disney to 24/7 Comedy. “It helps put people in a good mood, and there’s certainly nothing like it in Oklahoma City.”
The brainchild of 24/7 Comedy is George Gimarc, a Dallas dj noted for having started one of the nation’s first punk-rock radio shows. In 2008, he developed the all-comedy radio format and launched it two years later in California. By 2012, his Donkey Comedy Network had 20 stretching affiliates across the U.S. and Canada. Eventually, it became 24/7 Comedy.
Tyler met Gimarc at a radio conference in Dallas late last year. By March, Tyler had switched KEBC’s format to comedy.
“We air two and a half- to three minute snippets of comedy, and it’s really a fun and different format,” he said.
“They’ve got thousands and thousands of [comedy] cuts, and they’re getting new material all the time because there are so many new comedians. There’s not a lack of new material.”
Clear Channel Communications now owns the 24/7 Comedy network while Gimarc is its comedy-brand manager. At least three stations in the Lone Star State carry the network, including stations in Dallas, Austin and Beaumont. Others are located in the Southwest region in Denver and Baton Rouge, La. “The network is doing very, very well in other markets,” said Tyler. “We’ve started marketing it in Oklahoma City, and we’re launching a website and already have some great comments about it.”
Don’t expect to hear R-rated material from the likes of Sarah Silverman or Daniel Tosh on KEBC. With the Federal Communications Commission monitoring content closely, Tyler said, the comedy material is cleaned up for terrestrial radio.
“A lot of the curse words that you might hear live or on CDs are removed from the material we air,” he said, adding that the editing is so seamless that listeners won’t even notice what off-color language has been removed.
His 24/7 Comedy decision is another sign of Tyler’s belief in some type of talk-radio format on AM.
“There are some surveys that suggest AM is going to die, but I don’t believe it,” he said. “There’s an AM revival out there.”
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