It's there for the taking. For those who have leisure time, they'll tune in more and get into it. For those that work, it'll be less. Tune in for the interest, tune out if your busy. Just like any other day of the week. And besides, it's weekend programming, fewer are listening anyways, so not all is lost.
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The old KRTH
- Thread starter David Shapiro
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It's there for the taking. For those who have leisure time, they'll tune in more and get into it. For those that work, it'll be less. Tune in for the interest, tune out if your busy. Just like any other day of the week. And besides, it's weekend programming, fewer are listening anyways, so not all is lost.
How do you know? All you know is you MIGHT tune in. If it was on at a convenient time, and you didn't have anything else to do. You can't speak for anyone else.
You want what you want, and you don't care or don't know about anyone else. If you want something, take your own personal record collection and play it back in order on your own time, rather than force everyone else to hear what you want.
Has it been tried before in L.A.? No. They are being too safe. Is it being tried on WCBS and other markets today? Yes....year after year.
A concert experience is totally different. I've been to two Elton John shows since 2003 and I heard most of his hits with a few album cuts mixed in that I never heard before. Did 1/3 of the audience leave when lesser album songs played? No. It was great and I'll return if I get a chance.
Exactly! How do you know when someone tunes out when a lesser song airs? For the vast majority of listeners out there without PPM meters? That's right! YOU don't know.
Here's a question for you:
Why should a successful station change their format?
Why should a successful station change their format?
Actually we DO know. You don't. We know what works. You know what you want. Two different things.
Elton John doesn't do his songs in alphabetical order. He wouldn't consider that to be creative. I trust his idea of creativity more than yours.
You don't live in LA any more. Why do you care what they do?
Actually K-Earth can keep their current lineup of songs for their new audiences, I'm all for it. All I've suggested is that they bring back some of their prior weekend methods, jingles (which have worked for them before) of playing their new music for their new demographics. Besides 90's at nine (which consists of three songs at the top of that hour), they aren't doing much....above and beyond.
Without PPM's, how do you know? assumptions, statistical outcomes from the tiny fractions who use them? It's doesn't work that way. For all I care, a station might be playing Debby Boone and you'll never know who tuned out, if they even do for three measly minutes.
Here's your simple answer:
In the 70s and 80s, we did a lot of stuff we've since learned doesn't work. I thought A to Z was genius when I first heard it (which is why I stole it from KLOS)---only to find out that the novelty, even with the Beatles, wore off somewhere around the fourth song and they went to their next favorite station for most of the weekend.
We misunderstood how people (and this phrase is key, which is why you see me use it a lot) use the medium. They don't passively listen to whatever you serve up, they actively use the medium.
Bob Hamilton was PD at KRTH from 1977 to early 1986, when Phil Hall took over, shortly after Bob flipped the station from an Adult Contemporary station with significant gold content to a pure Oldies station. Phil lasted until 1991 and Mike Phillips (a hot shot Program Director, not Music Director). Let's see how all that went:
Bob Hamilton:
1977: 3.0 share---tied for #10 with KLAC and KFI.
1978: 2.8 share---#11 station in the market.
1979: 3.6 share---tied for #7 with KLAC.
1980: 3.4 share---#9 station in the market.
1981: 3.1 share---#9 station in the market.
1982: 2.9 share---#12 station in the market.
1983: 2.8 share---tied for 11th with KMPC.
1984: 2.7 share---tied for 11th with KKHR.
1985: 2.9 share---tied for 11th with KMET.
Phil Hall:
1986: 3.8 share---#8 station in the market.
1987: 3.8 share---#8 station in the market.
1988: 3.5 share---tied for 7th with KTNQ.
1989: 2.9 share---#10 station in the market.
1990: 1.9 share---tied for 20th (yes, 20th) with KODJ.
So the best Bob or Phil did was tied for 7th. And they both did a lot worse.
Now let's look at what happened with Mike Phillips and a focused approach:
1991: 3.8 share---#6 station in the market.
1992: 4.0 share---#4 station in the market.
...and until Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele died, KRTH stayed comfortably in the mid to upper 3s and solidly in the top 10.
Today? Consistent Top 5 performance in an infinitely more competitive market....with shares consistently between a 4.5 and a 5.0 (a larger percentage of a much larger listening audience, as Southern California has grown a lot in 40 years).
Bottom line: KRTH today is the most successful it has ever been.
You won't make a station with what you do on the weekends, but you can break it. If you're playing something a listener doesn't want to hear, they don't say "oh, it's a weekend". They say "ugh" and change the station. Do that enough times and you create the impression that your station isn't playing what they like anymore---even if you are the other five days per week.
A: Yes, it has been tried before in L.A. That's what started this whole thing. K-Earth did it when K-Earth was less successful than it is now.
B: At eighty bucks a ticket, nobody's walking out on Elton John in concert unless he does something outrageous. A radio listener doesn't have that investment to lose. It costs them nothing to push the button.
Weekend methods: Specials involving songs that they don't usually play (with good reason).
Jingles: For a generation completely unused to having call letters or advertising messages sung at them (apart from 1-800-Kars4Kids, which will kill any urge to hear any jingle ever again).
Here's what they're doing above and beyond: Getting ratings and making ad revenue above and beyond anything they've done before.
It does work that way. As long as advertisers buy based on the PPM, it works that way. And KRTH is (I believe) billing somewhere north of $25 million a year. David, do you have recent BIA Kelsey numbers?
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Thanks for that info...very precise and quite a jump from 90 to 91! Do you have the year ratings post 1992 as well, in addition to the ones you gave above? I believe there's additional Mike Phillips period, followed by Jay Coffey, Jhani Kaye and onward. I'd like to use it for comparison's sake to the 1977-1992 you provided.
Interestingly, the period I grew up with, has the lowest ratings, except for 86-88. But the specials were sure memorable.
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K
KayJayJay
Guest
Between Oldies, Vinnie and (in response) Big A, I keep seeing the word "creativity" used. To me, at least, "creativity" is a very subjective word. Like beauty or art, it exists in the eye of the beholder. What may be "creative" to one or two, may or may not be to the majority. And in a world where our every move is tracked and recorded for posterity, some things become obvious. We begin to easily see where we have changed, evolved, adapted, assimilated.
I grew up in house where the golden age of radio was cherished. Fred Allen, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre of the Air, Vic and Sade, the Shadow...that was the kind of radio my parents loved. I grew up listening to the old MOR AM stations, the ones that played the safest of pop music combined with a heavy dose of information and personality. Other kids my age were listening to the Doobies, the Eagles, Rod Stewart. My eight-tracks included the Carpenters, John Denver, and Dawn.
Was Welles creative? The Eagles? The production style of Richard Carpenter? In all cases, yes. I'd rather listen to Welles' 1938 radio version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" than experience any of the endless movie, stage and television productions. I'd rather listen to "Superstar" or "Rainy Days and Mondays", than "China Grove" or "Take it to the Limit."
But does that mean that radio should still play a Mercury Theatre drama or the Carpenters or John Denver? Not at all. I'm first to admit that my ideal of "creativity" may not match the ideal of the majority. And while I wish it were different, I can live with that. I can live with the fact that the very successful MOR radio station I loved as a child is now a news talk radio station that I might listen to once a month. And it's still number one in its market. One can easily argue that it is far more successful today than in the 1970s.
What happened? Was that radio station more creative then than now, or now than then? If they were to somehow bring back NBC Monitor and Million Dollar Weekends, would anyone truly suggest that they were somehow being "creative" in doing so? I'd love it. And I truly think that the audible cries of "what!!!!" combined with the multiple clicks of radios being turned off would necessitate my turning up the volume on my one of maybe a dozen radios still tuned in.
The owner of that radio station can show you research supporting my belief. But even if no research existed, he could still tell you what would happen. Because he sees and hears daily how people now choose to be entertained, how they now choose to glean information and make decisions on everything from politics to fast food. It's a faster pace than 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. We have to process far greater input arriving more quickly than it did "back then."
Do I see much of that as "creative?" Not at all. And that disappoints me. But I have to live with it. And the crazy thing is while radio may not satisfy me today as it once did with those MOR AM stations, or as the "golden age" did my parents, I truly believe that forty or fifty years from now you'll still have large groups of people in their 50s and 60s nostalgically bemoaning the fact that radio just isn't "creative" in the same way that Ryan Seacrest or Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars once were.
Because what is "creative" to one or many in one era just may not be "creative" to the majority in a future era. And frankly, all it takes is open eyes and open ears to understand that.
I grew up in house where the golden age of radio was cherished. Fred Allen, Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre of the Air, Vic and Sade, the Shadow...that was the kind of radio my parents loved. I grew up listening to the old MOR AM stations, the ones that played the safest of pop music combined with a heavy dose of information and personality. Other kids my age were listening to the Doobies, the Eagles, Rod Stewart. My eight-tracks included the Carpenters, John Denver, and Dawn.
Was Welles creative? The Eagles? The production style of Richard Carpenter? In all cases, yes. I'd rather listen to Welles' 1938 radio version of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" than experience any of the endless movie, stage and television productions. I'd rather listen to "Superstar" or "Rainy Days and Mondays", than "China Grove" or "Take it to the Limit."
But does that mean that radio should still play a Mercury Theatre drama or the Carpenters or John Denver? Not at all. I'm first to admit that my ideal of "creativity" may not match the ideal of the majority. And while I wish it were different, I can live with that. I can live with the fact that the very successful MOR radio station I loved as a child is now a news talk radio station that I might listen to once a month. And it's still number one in its market. One can easily argue that it is far more successful today than in the 1970s.
What happened? Was that radio station more creative then than now, or now than then? If they were to somehow bring back NBC Monitor and Million Dollar Weekends, would anyone truly suggest that they were somehow being "creative" in doing so? I'd love it. And I truly think that the audible cries of "what!!!!" combined with the multiple clicks of radios being turned off would necessitate my turning up the volume on my one of maybe a dozen radios still tuned in.
The owner of that radio station can show you research supporting my belief. But even if no research existed, he could still tell you what would happen. Because he sees and hears daily how people now choose to be entertained, how they now choose to glean information and make decisions on everything from politics to fast food. It's a faster pace than 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. We have to process far greater input arriving more quickly than it did "back then."
Do I see much of that as "creative?" Not at all. And that disappoints me. But I have to live with it. And the crazy thing is while radio may not satisfy me today as it once did with those MOR AM stations, or as the "golden age" did my parents, I truly believe that forty or fifty years from now you'll still have large groups of people in their 50s and 60s nostalgically bemoaning the fact that radio just isn't "creative" in the same way that Ryan Seacrest or Taylor Swift or Bruno Mars once were.
Because what is "creative" to one or many in one era just may not be "creative" to the majority in a future era. And frankly, all it takes is open eyes and open ears to understand that.
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That's wonderful, and if you can find someone to pay for creativity, I'll be the first one to support it. But that's not what the advertisers are clamoring for, as you can see from what's on TV. There's a big disconnect in this discussion between what a handful of people want, and what the people who pay for it want. Our job is satisfying both, but primarily satisfying the people who pay the bills.
I guess you haven't read all the posts in this thread about music research testing. Go back and read them.
Mike Phillips (continued):
1993: 3.6---#7 station in the market.
1994: 3.6---tied for 6th with KABC.
1995: 3.6---#8 station in the market.
1996: 3.7---#6 station in the market.
1997: 3.8---#6 station in the market.
1998: 3.3---tied for 10th with KTWV (first full year without Robert W. Morgan and The Real Don Steele in morning and afternoon drive since 1992).
1999: 2.9---#12 station in the market.
2000: 3.2---#7 station in the market.
Jay Coffey:
2001: 3.1---#9 station in the market.
2002: 3.2---#10 station in the market.
2003: 3.1---tied for 9th with KLAX.
I don't have numbers beyond that, but if memory serves, it slipped into the mid-upper 2s and ranked around 12th. We know that Coffey was blown out in 2005 and the numbers were so bad, CBS considered killing KRTH outright. Instead, they hired Jhani Kaye, who turned the ship around and in his eight years at the helm, brought it back to being a consistent top 10 station.
In the three years since, Jhani's successors have modernized and refined the presentation and the music. And now, it's consistently a top 5 station instead of top 10 and is pulling numbers in the 4.5-5.0 range.
Thank you again Mr. Hagerty! Maybe David can provide post 2003 numbers, through 2015. But if Jhani Kaye was doing so great and essentially saving the station, why was he replaced? I didn't realize the situation was that dire in 2004-05.
This will answer your question about Jhani Kaye:
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?644284-Jhani-Kaye-Leaving-KRTH-KTWV
http://www.radiodiscussions.com/showthread.php?644284-Jhani-Kaye-Leaving-KRTH-KTWV
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