But his new boss, Bill Marshall, has no qualms about the new kid in town.
"I fell in love with the guy after the first 10 minutes of the interview," said Marshall, operations director for Clear Channel's six-station Toledo operation.
"He does a very positive show, which we've been lacking in the morning for the past two years," Marshall said, adding that Big Z's show is "very feminine-friendly."
Judging from the Toledo station's Web site, he'll be working as "Andrew Z in the Morning," the same handle he used for four years in Saginaw, Mich. That was his last stop before landing at KZPT.
It's also a return to "cold country" for the Los Angeles native, who spent much of his 15 years in radio working stations in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin.
MORE PROMOS
Last week, we looked at the Arizona Daily Star's drink-and-a-paper promo deal with Circle K and wondered how that goes over with the Audit Bureau of Circulation, which verifies "paid sales"--the numbers used to prove to existing and potential advertisers that "Yes, Virginia, we have paying customers."About a month ago, we checked out a similar deal the Star occasionally runs with Bruegger's Bagels. It's not quite like the Circle K deal. Instead, buy something from the breakfast menu--a bagel sandwich, or the big bag of bagels--and get the paper for free.
It wasn't exactly customer service at its best. In the past, there've been posters in the store explaining the promo. This time, no poster in either store we visited--a real pisser, perhaps, for someone who bought a paper from the outside rack only to find out inside it's free with a breakfast purchase.
But would they have found out? If the two stores we checked were any example of the process, maybe not. At the two stores we visited, the only mention that the Star was free came AFTER I asked the cashiers "How much for the paper?"
STARNET'S FATHER RESURFACES
New-media guru Bob Cauthorn (the journalist formerly known as Arizona Daily Star film critic Robert S. Cauthorn) apparently landed on his feet following last year's departure from the veep for digital media gig at the San Francisco Chronicle.Last summer, he became president of new-media startup City Tools LLC.
And he still mounts the pulpit and homilizes on the joys of Internet publishing and how newspapers for the most part still aren't getting it right.
