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WOGL Should Change Call Letters

A

AM/FMRAINMAN

Happy St Patricks Day to all!! I just think that WOGL should change their call letters. I feel like, everyone and I mean everyone I talk to call WOGL, Oldies 98. So people that are in the demo are not giving this station a chance. I feel like if they are going to go all in on 80s, just do an 80s Hot Hits station. That is what Philly remembers from the 80s. Use all of those JAM Jingles and talk up the songs.
I also feel like, the station should go live and local. People know that the station is mailing it in but voice tracking. They used to be live, when Tommy McCarthy was programming director(as late as 2016).
They also need to play much more variety. Yes, they can play their pop songs, but they need to start to play some slower jams(even though WISX plays these) and also play more 80s rock(even though Ben plays these). They need to take some songs from both stations as they have been losing to both for about 6 months now.
I think the new music and program director is a good start, but need to go all in.
I am not sure if anyone else feels the same way. Any ideas?
Btw, love this website. It's really nice to have an opinion about radio stations. Thank you.
 
Not sure the issue is people not giving a station a listen because of call letters. They're going to call it oldies 98 if they're so disposed to do so because that's what they think of the brand. (Worth pointing out that WMGK isn't exactly soft A/C anymore? WIP isn't full service MOR?). They've managed to evolve well (overall, all things are relative) into the '80s music and beyond, dropping the Oldies name. Some people won't let go of it no matter what they do, so the letters would be...I don't know...a futile effort if there's not a lot more involved?
 
TheBigA said:
To what? WCAU-FM? What difference does it make?

People change as they get older. Should they also change their name?
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BigA if you would read my comments I said everyone recognizes WOGL as oldies 98. Obviously it’s not working what they are doing. Most who listened to 80s at the time, listened Hot Hits. I just thought if they did a moniker change especially since Glen Kalena is now at WOGL, it may work. It was just a thought.
 
Power 99's call letters are still WUSL, leftover from their "US 1" country days in the late 70s. The calls have never been an issue for them (though when they thought they were going to call themselves "Kiss 99," I believe they applied for WPKS). Once the not-yet-on-the-air WKSZ 100.3 laid claim to the Kiss moniker - they had already sent out 'Kiss' promotional material - Kiss 99 became Power 99 and just kept the old calls.

10 years later, WKSZ tried to call themselves "Z-100" when they adopted a hit format, but that's another story...
 
AM/FMRAINMAN said:
Happy St Patricks Day to all!! I just think that WOGL should change their call letters.
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Call letters are anachronistic. They are a residue from ancient early 20th Century point to point communications and the era when most of America needed a logbook so they could hear stations 100, 200, 500 or more miles away because there was little or no local radio.

In most of the world, call letters were never used. Stations have names.

Think of it as whether you'd like to call your friends by their social security number or their name.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Call letters are anachronistic. They are a residue from ancient early 20th Century point to point communications and the era when most of America needed a logbook so they could hear stations 100, 200, 500 or more miles away because there was little or no local radio.

In most of the world, call letters were never used. Stations have names.

Think of it as whether you'd like to call your friends by their social security number or their name.
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I also never quite understood the perceived need for some stations to change their call letters every time they switch formats (which can occur relatively often with some stations), in order to have the calls align with some nifty positioning slogan. Were I grew up, there were a few storied stations that had been on the air, using the same calls and format for years. Now when I go back to look at the Nielsens for that area, I need to do a web search to figure out which station is what, because some have changed calls 2 or 3 times in recent years with format/slogan changes. Meanwhile, others have made drastic changes (from broadcasting country for decades to a sudden swap over to news/talk) yet kept the same call letters since they were so well known in that area.

Maybe I'm wrong, but a change in call letters every few years when a new format comes along just seems like a lot of extra, burdensome paperwork for a change that may not matter to most listeners?
 
That seems quite fair. Does it matter that The Breeze is still WISX? Just a thought.

WOGL is playing oldies. They may not use the name, but it’s still decades old music. I’m not one who gets offended that the music of my youth is oldies. That is what it is. But I get it doesn’t resonate with many of my contemporaries. Oh well.

There’s some humor that they’ve now reached the point of playing music newer than when they became oldies and courting the audience that they left behind. Time marches on and all that.

They’ve invested in the WOGL branding. Sure you could change it up, but that’s not without risks of alienating and confusing the existing listeners who know the current branding. And for it to be effective requires investment they may not be in a position to make.
 
DavidEduardo said:
Call letters are anachronistic. They are a residue from ancient early 20th Century point to point communications and the era when most of America needed a logbook so they could hear stations 100, 200, 500 or more miles away because there was little or no local radio.

In most of the world, call letters were never used. Stations have names.

Think of it as whether you'd like to call your friends by their social security number or their name.
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Terrible analogy.
BTW, WCAU should be reinstated on both am and fm. It is a legacy. The current am call letters are horrible. So was WGMP once. Jesus.
 
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Big Weed said:
Terrible analogy.
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Actually, it is not. A study was done long ago when most stations still used call letters for everything... either as letters or as "Wixy" for WIXY and the like. Folks in such a market were asked how many stations they could name. A parallel study was done in a market outside the US where nearly no stations used call letters but had names.

The result: in the place where names were used, people could remember twice as many stations as where calls were used.
Big Weed said:
BTW, WCAU should be reinstated on both am and fm. It is a legacy. The current am call letters are horrible. So was WGMP once. Jesus.
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It's a legacy for people over 60 and for radio geeks like all of us. But for the "money demos" it is meaningless.
 
MRBIboredop said:
In a PPM world, call letters mean nothing, your positioning imaging is everything

The only place calls are used is on FCC documents and the T.O.H. legal ID
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Even in diaries, only a few percent of entries are done by call letter, and those are for old-line stations, almost all AM's, that use them out of tradition. KFI, WGN, WOR, WBZ, WSB.

Dial position and name for OTA listening, name for streaming listening.
 
JBraddock said:
Power 99's call letters are still WUSL, leftover from their "US 1" country days in the late 70s. The calls have never been an issue for them (though when they thought they were going to call themselves "Kiss 99," I believe they applied for WPKS). Once the not-yet-on-the-air WKSZ 100.3 laid claim to the Kiss moniker - they had already sent out 'Kiss' promotional material - Kiss 99 became Power 99 and just kept the old calls.

10 years later, WKSZ tried to call themselves "Z-100" when they adopted a hit format, but that's another story...
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Z100 in New York also on 100.3 sued. Still I have no clue why 100.3 and 101.1 are both so close to the Z100 and CBS FM in NYC. Why was that allowed why not 100.5 or 100.1 or 100.9 or 101.3?
 
bizzle13 said:
Z100 in New York also on 100.3 sued. Still I have no clue why 100.3 and 101.1 are both so close to the Z100 and CBS FM in NYC. Why was that allowed why not 100.5 or 100.1 or 100.9 or 101.3?
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The Philly 100.3 and 101.1 signals squeezed in very late in the game. By the time they came on in the early 1960s, 100.5 was impossible for what became 100.3 (100.7 in Allentown had been on that channel since 1949 and was way too close for first-adjacent spacing), while 101.3 was unusable for what became 101.1 because of co-channel WGAL-FM (now WROZ) in Lancaster and first-adjacent 101.5 in Trenton. 100.1 had a co-channel in Lebanon and first-adjacent WEEX-FM in Easton on 99.9 - and both 100.1 and 100.9 were reserved at the time for class A stations, which at the time were limited to just 1 kW.

The spacing rules that took effect in 1964 left those short-spacings grandfathered in. Keep in mind that at the time, 100.3 "New York" was actually in Livingston, N.J. with relatively low power, while WCBS-FM on 101.1 was an afterthought.

It's one of those "it is what it is" scenarios now. The pairs of 100.3 and 101.1 signals have pretty much maxed out against each other, and they accept the interference zone that sits over central Jersey. It ends up being mostly outside both of the rated markets, though the NYC stations lose a little of the Middlesex County.

(And keep in mind that pretty much everything in that corridor ended up at least somewhat short-spaced once the 1964 rules went into effect - WBLS and the 107.5 in Boyertown and 103.5 NYC/WPRB/WNNJ-FM were the other really bad ones, but there are plenty of ugly first-adjacent shorts, too.)
 
Big Weed said:
Ok. I can respect that.
But yes. I am a dinosaur. I go back to Joel A Spivak and Dominic Quinn days.
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As a matter of fact, in the diary world you are more likely to see an entry for a "big" morning host than the call letters.
 
Our semi-local WODE Allentown has stayed as 'WODE' through thick and thin ; through Oldies and Hippies. They have been Classic Rock for quite the time now. Maybe ten years.

I forget what they call themselves ,,,, the Scorpion? The Goose ? The Hawk ?

Whatever name they use as a slogan, it's working. In fact, WODE showed up in the latest *New York City* book.
 
Incidentally, David :

One has to wonder what Howard Stern's numbers would have fared under the PPM methodology. IIrc, the fellow left OTA radio before the PPM's started.

(By the way .... that avatar picture is not of me. That's Ernie Kovacs. Pretty good likeness, though)
 
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