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Yet ANOTHER Market PD for iHeartCheapChannel?

L

LITTLEBOYBLUE

iHeartMedia seems to have mastered the art of announcing (usually 4 times in one year) the bold expectations for the latest hire in the same position (with no mention of what happened to the PREVIOUS hire in the same position). Another VP/Programming for Seattle cluster...this one is Rich Davis from Minneapolis.

Suggestion: Don't sign any apartment lease longer than six months.
And...WELCOME!
 
LITTLEBOYBLUE said:
iHeartMedia seems to have mastered the art of announcing (usually 4 times in one year) the bold expectations for the latest hire in the same position (with no mention of what happened to the PREVIOUS hire in the same position). Another VP/Programming for Seattle cluster...this one is Rich Davis from Minneapolis.

Suggestion: Don't sign any apartment lease longer than six months.
And...WELCOME!
Click to expand...

Couldn't agree more. I think IHM is in panic mode with all that debt, but that is there own fault for being license greedy. I have no sympathy for greed when it comes back and bites really hard. Some day there will be a fire sale, but by then will the money demos be listening? I think not.
 
All the people who created the debt are long gone. One of them already bankrupted Tribune. And even if they fired the entire staff, it wouldn't even begin to deal with the debt. The "fire sale" has been going on for years, and no one wants the stations they need to sell.
 
Yay. Another PD who will force a 300-song playlist on every station. One of many reasons why I HATE most major-market radio markets, because it's all CBS/Crapuless/iCrapMedia. Huge companies with corporate greed.

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
Yay. Another PD who will force a 300-song playlist on every station. One of many reasons why I HATE most major-market radio markets, because it's all CBS/Crapuless/iCrapMedia. Huge companies with corporate greed.
Click to expand...

You forgot one of those oh-so-cute names for Hubbard. You know, the owners of the #1 CHR in town? Hate to break it to you, but they're number one with a playlist much, much less than 300 songs. But I'm sure you already knew that.

Edited to add:
crainbebo said:
....that corporate-200-song-playlist.
Click to expand...

See the corporate playlists are growing! Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
 
Last edited:
AQH said:
You forgot one of those oh-so-cute names for Hubbard. You know, the owners of the #1 CHR in town? Hate to break it to you, but they're number one with a playlist much, much less than 300 songs. But I'm sure you already knew that.

Edited to add:


See the corporate playlists are growing! Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Click to expand...

CHR = Contemporary Hit Radio
Contemporary = "...existing, occurring, or living at the same time; belonging to the same time."

And there you have it, the logic for why the playlist on KQMV/KUBE/KBKS is so compact. What would it be if they weren't playing the popular songs of today?
 
CHR can keep their 100 song playlist.
What I meant by 300 was all the other formats. The same 300 burnt-to-a-crisp classic hits songs, the same 300 country songs, the same 300 soft rock songs, you get the point. There are two stations I will still touch that are based in Seattle - Jack FM and Warm during Christmas time. Jack FM has a bigger 800 song playlist...maybe. KRWM's music we only hear 1.5 months out of the year. And to that matter, I don't think I've ever heard another station in America that ever plays that sounds-like-a-lullaby version of "The Christmas Song" that Kenny Loggins sang around 1998. But KRWM plays it quite often. Same with "The Christmas Song"; Gloria Estefan's jazzy version produced in 1993. The others can keep spinning the Nat King Cole (and I don't mind his version either, but it gets played way too often), but I like a mix of other artists.

-crainbebo
 
crainbebo said:
Yay. Another PD who will force a 300-song playlist on every station. One of many reasons why I HATE most major-market radio markets, because it's all CBS/Crapuless/iCrapMedia. Huge companies with corporate greed.
Click to expand...

The funny thing is that you should direct your anger at the listeners themselves, not the PDs or the owners.

Playlist size in any format has its basis in music research. The playlist is as long as the number of acceptable, consensus songs allows it to be. No PD and no corporate dictate says that a station should be playing fewer songs; in fact, every time every station that tests conducts a project, they try out many, many "what if" songs to see if the list can be expanded.

Except for non-profit organizations, companies of any kind exist with the objective of taking some money, creating a business and making a profit doing so. Just because a company is big does not necessarily make it "greedy" as the pursuit of profits is not per se greed.
 
David that's a very insightfull post as always. My issue with big companies isn't really the size of the playlist as much as the content. I've mentioned this several times on this board, but KISC in Spokane was doing very well in its market before January 2012. It wasn't too aggressive of an AC, and it was mostly live and local. Then corperate had to come in and gut the station and look where it is now. Back on this side of the mountains, something similar, though much more gradually, has happened with KBKS. Granted, they were the only game in town for CHR prior to 2010, but they still sounded great. Since iHeart took over a few years ago, they've gradually gotten worse to the point where they're almost unlistenable and the ratings agree with me. KBKS iis nowhere in the top 5 18-34, where KQMV is solidly on top. I'd have a lot more respect for these big companies if they wouldn't screw with something that's working so well.
 
bobdavcav said:
David that's a very insightfull post as always. My issue with big companies isn't really the size of the playlist as much as the content. I've mentioned this several times on this board, but KISC in Spokane was doing very well in its market before January 2012. It wasn't too aggressive of an AC, and it was mostly live and local. Then corperate had to come in and gut the station and look where it is now. Back on this side of the mountains, something similar, though much more gradually, has happened with KBKS. Granted, they were the only game in town for CHR prior to 2010, but they still sounded great. Since iHeart took over a few years ago, they've gradually gotten worse to the point where they're almost unlistenable and the ratings agree with me. KBKS iis nowhere in the top 5 18-34, where KQMV is solidly on top. I'd have a lot more respect for these big companies if they wouldn't screw with something that's working so well.
Click to expand...

And your post is equally insightful, too.

There is no excuse for damaging a working station that way, but there may be reasons...

The most obvious would be naming a new PD who finds themselves beyond their area of competence. The national PD at another larger broadcaster told me in his experience, about half of PDs made the move upwards with success. The other half was equally made up of people who didn't know what to do, did nothing and stagnated the station or people who had to put their mark on a successful station by changing everything and ruined an already well running operation.

Then there are cases where the market economy has become so bad that it can't sustain the current operating model, so costs are cut. I've seen this in a number of "middle markets" where national is way off and the "big boxing" of retail has reduced the local customer base so that there just is not enough money in the market. Often, the station cut-backs simply drive the available revenue to another station as listeners reject the "lite" version of a good format.

There is also the issue of competence. We know iHeart has very good, successful station in markets like LA and New York, so they do know what to do. But at 800-plus stations, how far can the expertise that creates those successes reach?

Under the concept that nobody, not even Cumulus, sets out to have a bad radio station, we have to look at why some stations just are not very good. Rather than saying that iHeart bites, which ignores the fact that they have some very good stations, we have to look at where their system goes wrong. Your examples certainly point to a failure at some level.
 
You are absolutely right. Looking at the billing figures you sent me for Spoane last year, it looked to me like the two stations they gutted were actually up slightly but the cluster as a hole lost money due to a steep drop at thlive and local KKZX. IHeart wins in Portland and they've only made one minor change I'm not too happy about.
 
RAMP reports Ex-VP/Programming Keith Cunningham is now with Cumulus as PD or KLOS/LA and "Classic Rock Format Captain". Maybe the prospect of that job was why his time was so short in Seattle?
 
Unregistered said:
RAMP reports Ex-VP/Programming Keith Cunningham is now with Cumulus as PD or KLOS/LA and "Classic Rock Format Captain". Maybe the prospect of that job was why his time was so short in Seattle?
Click to expand...

Nah, it's more fun to say things like "Cheap Channel" and "IHateMedia" than it is to come up with substantive, logical thoughts.
 
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