Maybe it's because I live where there's an audacy alt, but I don't know why competition would try to mirror kaplan's stations in any way, including that song.
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Entercom's alternative experiment not a success?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
The songs only go up if the play on those stations increases into power rotations. And songs don't "go power" unless direct audience research indicates that most listeners "love" (not just "like") the song.
And the charts that include or are based on airplay weight each station by its audience size as well as total plays and things like play in dayparts when people actually listen.
I've seen songs in power like ava max my head and my heart before a very bad callout which removed it from stations playlists. There wasn't a callout do it before that.
Alternative has a history of randomly picking up Hot AC and pop songs. "Breakfast In Bed" and "Wild Wild West" were in the top 10 of the very first Alternative chart in 1988. "Steal My Sunshine", "Crazy" (Gnarls Barkley), "Rehab", "Hey Ya!", "I Kissed A Girl", "Lights", "Wake Me Up" (Avicii), and other major pop songs have charted on Alternative, some hitting the top 10. It's rare for them to hit #1, though that has happened as well like with "Tubthumping" and the Alex Clare smash "Too Close". The Kid LAORI's "Without You" is another song in that tradition, but he did get a pretty substantial shove by Audacy to help with takeoff.
It's a quirk of the format that has existed since Rick Carroll's "Roq of the 80's" format at KROQ way back when. I can't explain it.
That being said, the contention I feel is whether such quirks should be the main bread and butter of the format.
The general procedure is to have a song in a new release category, maybe at around a 4 hour rotation for around 36 to 48 plays a week (often excluded from AM Drive). Several weeks are waited before testing as it's considered that around 124 to 148 plays are needed (depending on TSL) to get a real sense of the song. In the first week, we may consider the score as a reference point and if it goes down or does not grow in the second week of testing, it is gone. If it soars, it may move up to a current, and if it explodes it may be powered.
Every once in a while, a PD will believe in a song and playlist it right out of the bag. Most of us don't do that often, as we have been proven wrong enough times for us to be gun shy.
I missed this earlier but I might as well respond anyway - branding and image changes happen all the time in the business world. I don't understand why you have trouble believing that Kaplan is attempting one for his stations and hoping to drag the format into the image change. Especially since Audacy is itself a rebranding and image change from the previous name, Entercom.
Image changes are always rough sailing - you only do one if you believe you can sail through the rough waves. Kaplan and David Field and the rest of Audacy were probably expecting an initial hit to the ratings by doing this. They're hoping for dividends later on as the new audience they want to court tunes in.
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Because he's not responsible for the entire genre. He's only responsible for his stations. And he's facing tough competition in several of his largest markets. And those competitors see opportunity in his actions. If his ratings stay down, his stations will be weighted lower, and he'll have less impact in the chart. And if the genre doesn't like what he's doing, they have the ability to market other artists better than those being favored by Audacy. Remember that this is not play time. This is business.
Could you stop talking down to me every other reply? I know this is business. And I know everything Audacy has done with Alternative took months to plan and research. This was a deliberate decision and they knew full well they would eat short term losses and effectively give up their older listeners. They baked that into their expectations.
They did it anyway because they felt it was the best way to keep their stations and the alternative format alive in the longer term. Just because I think it was flawed conceptually does not mean I think they were playing around. Right now the format isn't biting but who knows they might later this year or next year. There's no way to know until we look back on this five or ten years from now.
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Seems like they kind of want to keep those too though. Where I live, they still play honeybee by the head and the heart, which was a current last summer before they switched and part of their "old" sound and knrk still plays old shins songs.
I've noticed that some of the West Coast stations have been granted more leeway in recent weeks, particularly KNDD, who took perhaps the biggest ratings hits of all the stations after the changes. KNDD has just added the new Weezer (so has KROQ), and KNDD also added the new Rise Against single. This is only light airplay and in daypart (at night they have literally the same broadcast as WNYL and the other East Coast stations).
I think some of the ratings hits were steeper than they anticipated and they had to try to stabilize the stations before they went into outright freefall like KITS and KVIL, who are still barely above a 1.0 and haven't been granted the same leeway.
As I've said before, I understand why Kaplan decided on these drastic moves, but his big errors, to me, were 1. firing long-time talent almost with abandon in favor of now-overworked "regional" talent that are complete strangers to the markets, and 2. not keeping continuity with long-time listeners by running indie and staple rock artists. Rick Carroll knew this when he started his revolutionary "Roq of the 80's", he kept old Led Zeppelin songs around on KROQ for a few years, and ran currents by The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty on KROQ as well. Kaplan, as he is KROQ's programmer in addition to WNYL's, probably should have read up on KROQ's history before deciding to do sweeping changes with no warning.
Now Audacy is trying to keep from losing what listeners are left or trying to lure them back, and it's much harder to do that than not losing them in the first place.
Kndd sounded good today when I listened to it. Mainly an indie-alt mix, and though dated music, an overall good sound. Quite a bit different than krbz in kc which is mainly worn out pop songs.
BTW, due to KPNT's second straight 8.3 for March, I decided to compare their March and April adds to WNYL (who managed their first 2.0 in a while). WNYL is Entercom's flagship Alternative, and their playlist is the foundation for the nationalized "Alt Select" block that runs for 11 hours on every Entercom station., 7p-6a.
*=dropped
KPNT March adds:
1. Mike Shinoda - "Happy Endings" (WNYL added it in February)
2. nothing, nowhere - "Fake Friend" (WNYL added it in January)
3. Royal Blood - "Typhoons"
4. Greta Van Fleet - "Heat Above" (they run a custom edit and not the official radio edit, interestingly)
5. Meg Myers - "The Underground"
6. The Offspring - "Let the Bad Times Roll"
7. Papa Roach - "The Ending"*
8. Blame My Youth - "Fantastic"
9. Imagine Dragons - "Follow You"
10. Grouplove - "Deadline"
11. Rise Against - "Nowhere Generation"
12. Badflower - "F*** the World"
13. Black Pistol Fire - "Look Alive"
14. Weathers - "C'est La Vie"
KPNT April adds:
1. All Time Low - "Once in a Lifetime"
2. Twenty One Pilots - "Shy Away"
3. Alice Merton - "Vertigo"
4. Arkells & K.Flay - "You Can Get It"
5. Beach Bunny - "Cloud 9"
6. The Smashing Pumpkins - "Ramona"
WNYL March adds:
1. girl in red - "Serotonin"
2. Black Pumas - "Colors" (KPNT added it in February)
3. Post Malone - "Only Wanna Be with You"*
4. St. Vincent - "Pay Your Way In Pain"*
5. The Band CAMINO - "1 Last Cigarette"* (this drop is bizarre as it looks like it's gonna be a hit)
6. All Time Low - "Once in a Lifetime"
7. Maggie Lindemann - "Crash and Burn"*
WNYL April adds:
1. Imagine Dragons - "Follow You" (they were the last major Alt to add it)
2. Twenty One Pilots - "Shy Away"
3. CHVRCHES - "He Said She Said" (they're not playing it despite reporting it)
What I see here from the adds is that KPNT has added 20 songs over the last seven weeks and only dropped one ("The Ending"). WNYL added half that number, dropped 4 of them before April was over, and the CHVRCHES song they may not be playing either despite reporting it.
Something's wrong with this picture. It's admittedly only part of the picture but KPNT holding onto 19 adds out of 20 and WNYL only keeping 5-6 out of 10 is a really damning statistic.
*=dropped
KPNT March adds:
1. Mike Shinoda - "Happy Endings" (WNYL added it in February)
2. nothing, nowhere - "Fake Friend" (WNYL added it in January)
3. Royal Blood - "Typhoons"
4. Greta Van Fleet - "Heat Above" (they run a custom edit and not the official radio edit, interestingly)
5. Meg Myers - "The Underground"
6. The Offspring - "Let the Bad Times Roll"
7. Papa Roach - "The Ending"*
8. Blame My Youth - "Fantastic"
9. Imagine Dragons - "Follow You"
10. Grouplove - "Deadline"
11. Rise Against - "Nowhere Generation"
12. Badflower - "F*** the World"
13. Black Pistol Fire - "Look Alive"
14. Weathers - "C'est La Vie"
KPNT April adds:
1. All Time Low - "Once in a Lifetime"
2. Twenty One Pilots - "Shy Away"
3. Alice Merton - "Vertigo"
4. Arkells & K.Flay - "You Can Get It"
5. Beach Bunny - "Cloud 9"
6. The Smashing Pumpkins - "Ramona"
WNYL March adds:
1. girl in red - "Serotonin"
2. Black Pumas - "Colors" (KPNT added it in February)
3. Post Malone - "Only Wanna Be with You"*
4. St. Vincent - "Pay Your Way In Pain"*
5. The Band CAMINO - "1 Last Cigarette"* (this drop is bizarre as it looks like it's gonna be a hit)
6. All Time Low - "Once in a Lifetime"
7. Maggie Lindemann - "Crash and Burn"*
WNYL April adds:
1. Imagine Dragons - "Follow You" (they were the last major Alt to add it)
2. Twenty One Pilots - "Shy Away"
3. CHVRCHES - "He Said She Said" (they're not playing it despite reporting it)
What I see here from the adds is that KPNT has added 20 songs over the last seven weeks and only dropped one ("The Ending"). WNYL added half that number, dropped 4 of them before April was over, and the CHVRCHES song they may not be playing either despite reporting it.
Something's wrong with this picture. It's admittedly only part of the picture but KPNT holding onto 19 adds out of 20 and WNYL only keeping 5-6 out of 10 is a really damning statistic.
Major market vs. large market. New York is often the last station to add a song in most formats. And they don't add a lot of new songs. The labels gripe about that all the time. Also when you have an 8 share, that gives you more freedom to experiment than a station with a 2 share. If you go back a few years, you'll see there were many weeks when WNYL didn't add ANY new songs. That's changed. I'm sure the labels are taking any adds as a success.
Except it's not just wnyl. It's every audacy alternative. There are almost no adds to any audacy alternative. Krbz under lazlo used to pride itself on having the most adds anywhere. Not so these days. He should add more if kaplan wants the alt-pop thing to take off, or rely more on a back catalog, which is often slim as well. It kind of reminds me of the cumulus chrs years ago under dickey where they'd be very sparse about any adds.
I counted 12 adds for KRBZ this week. What's wrong with that?
Really?! Look at their playlist though. Worn out pop songs all the way. I haven't heard much of anything new on there.
Then maybe the flagship station shouldn't be in New York City because the conservatism is hurting the rest of the stations; many of them can afford to be more aggressive. Also, I have to question the wisdom of the programmers here. Ignoring the low-hanging fruit of adding a Papa Roach song to an Alternative in 2021 (and it presumably backfired), when KPNT adds a song they clearly pick stuff their audience wants to hear because they don't do sudden course corrections. If WNYL is dropping stuff right away they're messing something up.
I don't know what you saw but I just checked for myself and they added no new songs this week. Their playlist is virtually the same as WNYL's with identical heavies.
Mediabase
We have to remember, these Entercom/Audacy alternative stations are part of a cluster. It's all about marketing and delivering demos. It's about synergy.
If the alt-station was a standalone, and they're pulling 1.5 and 2.0s, yes, the operator would flip, and be nuts not to. Back when "new wave" the rage and KROQ earned a national rep for their (then groundbreaking) "Rock of the '80s" format (it was the same Top 40 format, really, only with new wave tunes), other stations across the U.S followed suit. While it worked for MTV, it did not for many of those stations. They were gone within 1 to 2 years. ("New Wave" was "alternative," back then.)
But E/A sells their stations as a group, in that, "we can give you X demo, Y demo, Z demo" and your spots will reach, this, this, and this. And, if there's a "listen while you work" outlet in the cluster at the top of the ratings, it floats the lower-rated station (or the sports AM, if any). And, you'll notice E/A purged a lot of their talent on the alt-stations; so they;re jockless most times or VT (local or elsewhere) with little to no local talent on them.
I get the music fans' frustrations with the format. Their points are valid. You have an idea of what "alternative" is, you remember MTV 120 Minutes and The Cutting Edge and remember the "college radio" sound of the '80s and '90s -- and wonder why the Soul Asylum, Screaming Trees, The Replacments aren't "golds" in the format. And you're sick of the Ramones being the overplayed "Bon Jovi" of the format (or Hendrix of old; "Purple Haze," again?!). You get perturbed when you hear songs on your local "alt-station" that are also played on the local "Hot Adult Contemporary" or "Top 40" outlet. Hey, even I said to myself, "Halsey?" "Elle King?"
And scroll through the posts for the points about the alt-format fragmenting. We thought, post-Cobain and the "Year Punk Broke" as the media outlets raved, was going to be this whole new "rock 'n' roll world." And they thought the same about AOR/hair metal. And that's gone, too.
If the alt-station was a standalone, and they're pulling 1.5 and 2.0s, yes, the operator would flip, and be nuts not to. Back when "new wave" the rage and KROQ earned a national rep for their (then groundbreaking) "Rock of the '80s" format (it was the same Top 40 format, really, only with new wave tunes), other stations across the U.S followed suit. While it worked for MTV, it did not for many of those stations. They were gone within 1 to 2 years. ("New Wave" was "alternative," back then.)
But E/A sells their stations as a group, in that, "we can give you X demo, Y demo, Z demo" and your spots will reach, this, this, and this. And, if there's a "listen while you work" outlet in the cluster at the top of the ratings, it floats the lower-rated station (or the sports AM, if any). And, you'll notice E/A purged a lot of their talent on the alt-stations; so they;re jockless most times or VT (local or elsewhere) with little to no local talent on them.
I get the music fans' frustrations with the format. Their points are valid. You have an idea of what "alternative" is, you remember MTV 120 Minutes and The Cutting Edge and remember the "college radio" sound of the '80s and '90s -- and wonder why the Soul Asylum, Screaming Trees, The Replacments aren't "golds" in the format. And you're sick of the Ramones being the overplayed "Bon Jovi" of the format (or Hendrix of old; "Purple Haze," again?!). You get perturbed when you hear songs on your local "alt-station" that are also played on the local "Hot Adult Contemporary" or "Top 40" outlet. Hey, even I said to myself, "Halsey?" "Elle King?"
And scroll through the posts for the points about the alt-format fragmenting. We thought, post-Cobain and the "Year Punk Broke" as the media outlets raved, was going to be this whole new "rock 'n' roll world." And they thought the same about AOR/hair metal. And that's gone, too.
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