Q99-7 Revamp

[RoddyFreeman]

Rodney Ho is reporting on Q99-7's plans for middays and afternoon drive following the departures of Rachel Ryan and Adam Bomb.

Yvonne Monet, who worked at 99X years ago, will host middays. This surprised me until I thought about how CHR's demos have become older, something I see when buying radio. PD Louie Diaz said he wants a lot of content in middays and gives various types of mix shows as examples.

Afternoons will be handled by current evening jock Jade Jones, who will be joined by Bert Show cast member Moe Mitchell. (Mitchell will still be on the morning show.)

Diaz told Rodney that the moves are being made to counter music-intensive streaming services like Pandora and Spotify. I wonder if Corporate PD Brian Phillips had a hand in the changes because they smack of his creativity.

I applaud their trying this approach. We radio junkies often say what made radio successful was live local personalities to whom the listener could relate, and that element is now missing from music radio except for mornings. I hope Cumulus tested the concept of 2-person shows with a lot of non-music content. The ratings should provide an idea of whether adding live personalities and features is really what listeners want, or whether they prefer mainly music except for AM drive. The iHearts, Cumulus's and Entercoms of the world program like listeners want music and little else.

I have liked Mr. Diaz's formatics and can tell from listening that he knows what he's doing. But I can't listen to Q99-7 for more than 10-15 minutes because the processing grates on me.

 

[secondchoice]

At one time there were rumors that Cumulus was trying to sell their Major market clusters. Are they still trying to concentrate on smaller markets where the competition is not as hard?

 

[davideduardo]

At one time there were rumors that Cumulus was trying to sell their Major market clusters. Are they still trying to concentrate on smaller markets where the competition is not as hard?

The suggestion was that the clusters that were not "full" with 4 to 5 FMs might be gone soon. The issue today is that there are no buyers at the prices those stations are likely on the books at.

 

[RoddyFreeman]

I don't think the intent ever was to sell major markets and concentrate on the smaller ones. Cumulus' owners, who are its debtors, have wanted their money back. The fastest and easiest way to start recouping that money was to sell stations in major markets where, as David said, Cumulus had too few stations and competitors needed stations. As David also mentioned, selling major market stations at today's prices would be like giving them away (although that's kind of what they did in the EMF deal).

 

[MarkW]

Good thing the decision makers decided to rebrand "Q100" as "Q99.7" a couple years back! Clearly, that was the magical silver bullet toward generating great ratings! LOL

 

[TheBigA]

The ratings should provide an idea of whether adding live personalities and features is really what listeners want, or whether they prefer mainly music except for AM drive. The iHearts, Cumulus's and Entercoms of the world program like listeners want music and little else.

It depends on the format. When Entercom made WNSH's Katie Neal the national midday host for the country format, they promised a more content-oriented show, with a country artist as her co-host, and more conversation that the traditional mid-day music intensive show. The idea had been done at Saul Levine's KKGO, where he has a different artist hosting his mid-days every month.

Perhaps that's the idea behind Yvonne's show. The question is where can she get the content for this show, given pop stars aren't as accessible as country stars.