Tucson gets a new talker

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KEVTTalker Jim Parisi, who last summer told the Tucson Weekly he was pursuing efforts to operate a radio station, has come through on that promise. Parisi, who previously aired on KTUC, KTKT, KJLL (now KWFM) and KVOI in that market, launches Power Talk (Sports and Talk) KEVT 1210 AM on 2/17. To do so, he’s LMA’ing One Mart Corp.’s (Armando Zamora) 10-kW Spanish Christian “Radio Vida 1210.”


Parisi will be the station manager. “I’ve come to a point that the only way to be happy is doing what I believe in. I’m not doing anything that doesn’t reflect how I truly feel, so it will be the most genuine station I can be a part of,” he told Tucson Weekly. “We should have more local programming than most anyone in town. We want to be as local, but as budget conscious, as we can so that we don’t go away.”

Parisi is attempting to build a local lineup weekdays from 5 a.m. to 7 p.m., and he’s off to a strong start. Steve Kass will begin the morning with a two-hour Tucson-focused show, even though he’s located in Providence, RI. Parisi will take to the airwaves from 7 to 10 a.m. And John C. Scott has been resurrected for an afternoon slot from 3 to 5. Nights and weekends go to Fox Sports Radio.

“We looked at three stations, two of them very seriously,” Parisi told the paper. “We were talking with money folks for a while, but it was tough to get it going and get everybody to shake hands and get it done. A lot of people don’t get the business done because they’ll haggle over what I think is a relatively small amount of money in the big picture, so I think the reason we finally got something done is maybe we’ll pay a couple grand more than the last group that tried to get it done. I would rather drive the car than not, and we’re in a situation where we can have some success.”

See the Tucson Weekly story here