No more than two minutes of commercials, guaranteed. When this was introduced at 107.7 KNDD in Seattle, ratings spiked.
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ALT 92.3's Two Minute Promise.
- Thread starter leethalweapon
- Start date
Even with no advertising at all, a station needs to play music that will appeal to sufficient listeners to make the format attract ratings and advertisers. Alternative rock in the age of rhythmic, and in one of America's most hardwired for rhythmic markets, is not that music. New York and Seattle are so demographically different as to make the comparison of KNDD and ALT 92.3 invalid. There just aren't enough alt fans, proportionally speaking, in the market to make a ratings spike significant.
ALT 92.3 is actually one of the alt stations that leans most heavily to indie pop, which is the only type of alternative music managing to cross over into pop/top 40 with any consistency at the moment. Yes, there's some alternative rock on the station, due to there being too many gold tracks from when alternative rock was king to ignore, but the majority of the currents and recent recurrent/golds are all indie pop. They're notably one of a very few alternative stations that's playing rising "bedroom pop" star CLAIRO as well.
If a heavily indie pop/electro-skewing alt station can't make it in NYC nothing alternative can.
Considering many who listen to modern alternative frequent streaming services, trying to emulate these services is not a bad idea. The “two minute promise” I don’t think has evolved beyond Seattle (a place where the station could afford to only run 4-6 commercials and still make decent income).
92.3 doesn’t have the history that the End does (basically everyone out in Washington knows what music 107.7 has played for nearly 30 years). In addition, totally different market demographics.
I wish them luck.
92.3 doesn’t have the history that the End does (basically everyone out in Washington knows what music 107.7 has played for nearly 30 years). In addition, totally different market demographics.
I wish them luck.
Co-owned 96.5 the Buzz in Kansas City did this for a while back in the mid-late 00's. I don't recall for how long or if it had much of an affect on the ratings at the time.
Listeners are happy, Management is happy, Suits are happy, Madison avenue is happy, they are making money, they are the only game in town and have thousands of loyal listeners. They are going no-where, no matter what the haters speculate, a few over crowded formats in town are more likely to implode before them.
Don't assume they're making money. The cluster is making money. This station is the weakest link in the cluster. Not a lot of advertisers demanding this station. What they can do is filter out a lot of the national spots, the bulk buys, that aren't targeting this audience. So they only keep the full price spots. Then they do NTR, non traditional revenue. KROQ has been doing that for years. But we'll see what happens in the fall. The format is in a low point musically. They really need to create excitement for the music for it to have any impact.
They were alternative all last year and were 15th in market billings. That's not a happy number.
They likely sold much of that by tagging along on the buys for stronger members of the cluster.
They did beat WPLJ... by a little... in revenue and we know what happened to that station.
It is not, on average (multiple books) in the top 10 in the two core sales demos of 18-49 and 35-54. It performs best in 25-34 men, but agencies (alias "Madison Avenue") buys the sports stations first for men, not alternative.
Yes, it is likely the format will last, but they have to be looking for ways to make it perform better.
I'll tell you a little story and see if you find the moral of it:
Many years ago, I took over a totally failed station in a top 20 market. It was lower than last, despite a marvelous signal.
So we went off the air, and rebuilt, coming back as a new station. In the market, which was about 90% agency driven, the ad shops all asked for "bonus spots" on Sundays. So stations were sold out on Sundays with free spots.
I decided that we would go back on the air with a feature called "non-Stop Sundays" and ran no spots at all. Since we did not sell spots, agencies could be cheerfully turned down when they asked for free Sundays.
We had no spots at all. It sounded to an out of market radio person like we were going out of business. We had our highest shares on Sunday, and the spillage into the following week was immense.
The amount of spots a station runs is irrelevant. What matters is how much is paid for each one.
I'm confused.
Weren't you and others, Mr. Eduardo, defending that type of performance for Entercom's 104.3 The Flounder in Miami?
One of your comments on that thread was as follows:
As far as 92.3 in NYC is concerned, reduced spot loads won't help performance much. The music the station plays has limited appeal. There is little upside potential. The now defunct station run out of a broom closet (New Rock 101.9, which was nothing more than a temporary placeholder format) had a better playlist.
I was not defending the Miami station, just saying that there may be no alternative for a larger cluster in English language programming in a market like that, so they have to do averaging of the better performers with the lower ones.
NYC is getting to a similar point, and groups like Entercom do not seem to favor doing Spanish language formats, so they have limited options in NYC and Miami.
There is an article about ALT 92.3 in today's NY Times.
It indicates that Alternative is a tough format to do successfully in New York, or many other places. But Entercom asserts that they reach desirable demos in their early 30's, apparently making it worth the heavy lifting.
Interesting to read that the station avoids using the word, "rock."
Lots of folk music: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/arts/music/rock-radio.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
It indicates that Alternative is a tough format to do successfully in New York, or many other places. But Entercom asserts that they reach desirable demos in their early 30's, apparently making it worth the heavy lifting.
Interesting to read that the station avoids using the word, "rock."
Lots of folk music: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/18/arts/music/rock-radio.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
That's because a lot of what they play is Indie Pop, not Rock: Panic At The Disco, Of Monsters And Men, Lana Del Rey, Twenty One Pilots, Bastille, the Lumineers, etc.
OM&M's latest single definitely qualifies as "rock" in my book (which is why I'm pleasantly surprised at how well it did), but otherwise I agree. Most of the stuff they play from the '90s is rockier though. A bit of a disorienting mix for my tastes, but I guess it's no different from an AC station going from Phil Collins to the Black Eyed Peas. The audience wants what it wants.
If commercials were that bad, non-coms would consistently have high ratings.
Play what people want to hear!
Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
Heard this morning on WNYL: "Last week, KTU played 1167 more minutes of commercials than Alt 92.3".
That sounds like a lot, but it averages to about 7 more minutes of commercials per hour.
That sounds like a lot, but it averages to about 7 more minutes of commercials per hour.
What remains is to see if they can hold those numbers. Buyers who use ratings generally look for multi-book averages, not just one.
And seven minutes per hour is the difference between "listenable" and "unlistenable".
If stations are averaging two 7 minute breaks an hour in PPM markets, then what WNYL is doing amounts to running half the spots load of major competitors.
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