The radio markets are separate. Only the Boston TV market ratings includes Worcester in their diaries.
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WAAF sold to EMF....
- Thread starter Time Traveler
- Start date
The radio markets are separate. Only the Boston TV market ratings includes Worcester in their diaries.
OK, for those of you who live in the Boston area:
Compare the signal ranges of 96.1 WSRS and 107.3 WAAF. Which one has better general coverage of the Boston metro?
I'd be willing to bet it's 96.1 WSRS!
Their current facilities are very similar to WAAF's original facilities, prior to Entercom making the goofy decision to move WAAF eastward and directionalize the signal.
I'd also be willing to bet EMF finds a way to improve 107.3's signal in the Boston metro within the next 24 months.
Compare the signal ranges of 96.1 WSRS and 107.3 WAAF. Which one has better general coverage of the Boston metro?
I'd be willing to bet it's 96.1 WSRS!
Their current facilities are very similar to WAAF's original facilities, prior to Entercom making the goofy decision to move WAAF eastward and directionalize the signal.
I'd also be willing to bet EMF finds a way to improve 107.3's signal in the Boston metro within the next 24 months.
The decision wasn't "goofy." WAAF wanted to maximize its audience in the Boston market so it could position itself as a Boston station and sell time to Boston advertisers at Boston prices. It made sense to dump Westfield for West Roxbury, Athol for Allston. What Entercom didn't see coming was the death spiral of current rock as a label priority and an audience preference. Fifteen years after the move, WAAF had nothing to sell its Worcester OR Boston advertisers and there were no lucrative format holes to fill. WCCC, WBRU and now WAAF -- if that doesn't tell you something about the state of rock 65 years after "Rock Around the Clock," I don't know what does.
Worcester is a $10 to $12 million dollar radio market. Boston is a $250 million dollar market.
At last time that I even able to get a look at all of Arbitron (now Nielson, of course), which was at least 20 plus years ago, The Worcester Market size was #110 or so, with Providence being #30 something or so.
So, here begs the question, EMF has repeatedly said that they wanted to get their signal into the Boston Market. So, now they quite a bit closer, but by no means a full market signal though. You still can't get 107.3 on a wimpy clock radio, unlike both WSRS and WXLO.
So is EMF going to position themselves as a Boston frequency? You gotta admit that EMF has a quite strategic tactic in acquiring its stations. As far as ratings, etc. Is a moot point. They have a very niched market, and can actually get away with playing only a dozen titles or so.
As far as Entercom in all of this, I am quite surprised that they did let WAAF go. It could've very easily argued that they gave on the station when they split off the simulcast on 97.7.
While I happy, albeit a little saddened too that Entercom sold to EMF, I am still quite of the opinion that FM radio needs to start thinking outside of the box, and start experimenting with new yet to be tried formats.
Then again, there are so many different avenues to deliver music now, that maybe it isn't really worth trying anymore.
That's just my 4 cents anyway.
It was an engineering failure that prompted Entercom to literally buy & flip a format of another radio station (97.7) to better serve Greater Boston. On this message board and others, I saw not even ONE post remarking how that tower move made a meaningful improvement in signal strength and I saw SCORES of posts complaining about degradation in the signal.
Being a "below the line" station didn't seem to matter for decades, and they could've easily changed the COL from the Paxton site if they so desired.
It tells me Hartford isn't a good market for rock, it tells me Providence isn't a good market for Alternative (94 HJY gets MONSTER ratings there), and it tells me WAAF due to a crummy signal and crummy programming has difficulty outperforming a MANCHESTER station in the Boston ratings.
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G
Groove1670
Guest
Poor ratings, poor signal, a format and brand that has aged out. It was time to move on. If the core audience really loves it, they will seek the HD signals. According to the website only two personalities and a few weekend specials remain on the lineup.
What makes you sure sure Boston is still a rock town? Signs would indicate that it isn't.
Theres 2 classic rock stations. 3 rhythmic/hip hop stations, 2 pop stations. So zero modern rock.
The MSA is actually DECREASING in median age (slightly) and the MSA is increasingly affluent and diverse. None of this bodes well for the rock format in Boston as many middle class native MA residents are leaving the state.
The demographic advertisers want is female and/or young. Rock is in a precarious and unenviable position.
Unsurprising
The core of their audience was quite literally dying off (or at the very least moving south/west). The station had maybe year left judging from the ratings. If that.
The core of their audience was quite literally dying off (or at the very least moving south/west). The station had maybe year left judging from the ratings. If that.
https://www.masslive.com/worcester/...ational-media-foundation-for-107-million.html
Worth more to EMF than it was to Entercom. The sale price made far more sense than trying a format flip or a dicey, expensive tower relocation. Times change.
As to comparisons with Manchester stations, Manchester is basically local for North Boston and suburbs like Lowell and Billerica. Not a surprise that a station with a COL of Manchester pulls in ratings and ad dollars from Boston.
Worth more to EMF than it was to Entercom. The sale price made far more sense than trying a format flip or a dicey, expensive tower relocation. Times change.
As to comparisons with Manchester stations, Manchester is basically local for North Boston and suburbs like Lowell and Billerica. Not a surprise that a station with a COL of Manchester pulls in ratings and ad dollars from Boston.
Sure it does, but it's not modern, which is what UT was writing about. In the '70s, I remember seeing Aerosmith logos and "Clapton is God" spray-painted on the walls of the Wonderland MBTA station in Revere. Aerosmith and Eric Clapton can still pack a venue in Boston and they still get played a bunch on WZLX. But most of their fans are now in their mid 50s to mid 70s, and their numbers are slowly dwindling and not being replaced. Boston was a GREAT rock town. On a smaller scale, it was a great folk town, too. I'm Boston-born, Boston-raised, I saw all that firsthand. But changes in demographics, changes in record industry priorities and changes in musical tastes have reduced almost all current non-rhythmic, non-pop music to a niche on commercial radio and it's hard to see the pendulum swinging back. Again, UT mentions the increasing diversity of the population -- that's only part of the story. When I hear loud hip-hop coming from a car pulling into a space next to me in a parking lot, the dude getting out of that car is increasingly likely to be white. Rock isn't the music of white suburbia today to the extent that it was when Clapton was God.
It would have made sense on paper, but it didn’t work! I know they had no need to cover Athol and Westfield, but there was no improvement in West Roxbury or Allston from the move! The reception there was, at best, the same as from Paxton in spots, and worse than from Paxton in many spots, in those Boston neighborhoods.
Slightly farther southeast in Boston in Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park, etc..., slightly farther into the null that WAAF had to project from Boylston to protect adjacents in New Bedford and the Cape, the signal went from marginal from Paxton to practically non-existent from Boylston. Granted there may not have been much of a rock audience in those urban neighborhoods, but I never saw any complaints about WAAF’s very faint signal there from Boylston being completely drowned out by adjacent pirates on both sides of it from the 1990’s on. It had been so weak there that no one missed it for the pirates.
Nowhere in the City of Boston was there any audible improvement in the WAAF signal from Boylston compared to Paxton, not even in the farthest west neighborhood Brighton, and it many places it was worse. The only areas I heard improvement in were well outside Boston in the outer Metro-Northwest suburbs outside Route 128/95 (such as Bedford, Concord, Acton, etc...) and the western inland Merrimack Valley (Lowell, Chelmsford, Billerica, etc...) where the previous signal from Paxton was already good and didn’t need the slight improvement it got there.
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Yeah, it's anybody's guess. Lord knows!
Well, it will either be K-Love or an Air-1 affiliate, albeit with a new set of call letters instead.
The call-letter change isn't a given (see WCCC), but yes, whether it's K-Love or Air-1 is the only real question remaining after the initial announcement. Depends, I guess, on how much of the coverage area is already served by WLVO's (ex-WBRU) signal. I don't think there's any overlap with WCCC.
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