From Tucson Lifestyle magazine’s beginning 26 years ago, Steve Rosenberg has been its longest running public business face, starting out as a sales representative. He was publisher until a couple of months ago when he was given the title of vice president of marketing. Now he’s gone from the magazine.
Details surrounding Rosenberg’s departure are sketchy. He didn’t return a message left on his cell phone. Editor-in-chief Sue Giles said she couldn’t offer much, except to say she is going to miss Rosenberg. She said she would like for readers to go to the magazine’s website - www.tucsonlifestyle.com - to see a farewell tribute to Rosenberg. The tribute will be printed in the magazine’s October issue, Giles said.
Staffers confided they weren’t told anything about reasons for Rosenberg’s departure, except that it was a resignation. He also hasn’t been in the office since it was suddenly announced two weeks ago.
 Steve Rosenberg |
Tucson Lifestyle is owned by Conley Publishing Group, headquartered in Beaver Dam, Wis., about 50 miles northwest of Milwaukee, where it has a major printing facility. James Conley is president of the company and his son Christopher Conley is executive vice president, and lately seems to be taking on more responsibilities overseeing the Tucson operation, according to the staffers.
Not unlike other media outlets these days, Tucson Lifestyle is facing a challenging environment for advertising. The magazine’s marketing consultants - known as advertising account executives at most other media outlets - have been told to pick up the pace contacting potential clients. They’ve been told they should make 30 phone calls in the morning and at least five face-to-face calls in the afternoon.
But Tucson Lifestyle has weathered better than some others. Three years ago, it faced two new competitors in the local monthly glossy magazine market when a division of the Gannett Co. and a Scottsdale-based company, Media That Deelivers Inc., launched their own publications targeting high-income Catalina Foothills residents. Gannett’s Foothills publication was shut down this year and a separate magazine was expanded to focus more on the Marana and Oro Valley areas. The Meedia That Deelivers publication, Arizona Foothills Tucson, now publishes every other month.
KSAZ goes Real Country
Four stations playing adult standards music was at least one too many by Mike Barna’s calculations. So Barna, who is general manager of KSAZ 580-AM, switched his station’s format to "Real Country" music as of Sept. 1.
He said the decision to make the change came after he commissioned research to try to figure out if there were any format voids in the market. That research found three possibilities "but once we took into account the costs and what would work best on AM, the dead-on bullseye pointed to Real Country," Barna said.
He said he was forced into reconsidering the station’s future last year after plans by owner Bill Ehlinger to sell KSAZ fell through.
He said the buyers, AIM Broadcasting, had planned to convert KSAZ into a statewide all-talk station using Arizona personalities. But those plans were too expensive for a stand-alone station.
"So we had to look at this from a Tucson, entrepreneurial point-of-view," Barna said. "What does Tucson want to listen to?"
But it needed to change. Four stations chasing the 6 percent of the market listening to adult standards music wasn’t working, he said.
Country music is popular in Tucson with the only station playing that type of music, Citadel Broadcasting’s KIIM 99.5-FM, routinely ranked the No. 1 most popular station in the market.
Barna says he has no illusions of knocking off KIIM in the ratings. Instead he said he is targeting a segment of the country music audience that wants to listen to older country music.
"Most of what they play on KIIM is new country with maybe only one, two or three older songs in an hour," Barna. "On Real Country you’ll hardly ever hear us play a new country song, it will be almost all classic country."
For the first month, Barna says the satellite-format of Real Country KSAZ will maintain a heavy music format. The plan is to add CNN news reports later.
Contact David Hatfield at dhatfield@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4237.
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