Looking at the dallas and Los angeles Markets where Audacy owns both the Classic Hits and Jack FM station. It's too late now but I think Jack fm could have worked in the largest radio market in the country had it not replaced the classic hits WCBS -FM format and it aired on a different signal
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Jack FM
- Thread starter CassChopper96
- Start date
Lol, Bruce. That indeed is water going under several bridges and over several tunnels.
I do have a retrospective question, though. What target demo / gender was Jack-FM in NYC trying to reach ?
IIrc, they showed up fair enough in the Middlesex-Onion-Somerset book, but that was about all.
I do have a retrospective question, though. What target demo / gender was Jack-FM in NYC trying to reach ?
IIrc, they showed up fair enough in the Middlesex-Onion-Somerset book, but that was about all.
25-54, particularly 35-54. And by about its 3rd book, it had exceeded the ratings in that group that the "oldies" format had generated.
The change from oldies to Jack was sound. The change from Jack to Classic Hits was motivated by the initial Philadelphia PPM test market results where CBS saw that modernizing their oldies station there was getting excellent PPM results.
I dont think jack played adele.
I thought the worst format change was flipping classical WNCN to rock WQIV. That really angered a lot of people, caused the creation of a group that petitioned the FCC, and ultimately caused the owner to reverse the change back to classical. Of course that station is now known as Q104.3, New York's Classic Rock. So the rockers finally won.
In Buffalo, Townsquare flipped their Jack station to rock, and the ratings have gone in the tank, leading some locals to think they would have done better to stay with Jack.
The move was at WCBS-FM to "Jack" was neither completely smart nor sound. Had format options been researched properly in the first place, WCBS-FM would've remained a personality oriented station with an updated playlist to better calibrate song age with desired demos.
I completely agree it was necessary to evolve CBS-FM's programming, but "Jack" was not the right solution.
I completely agree it was necessary to evolve CBS-FM's programming, but "Jack" was not the right solution.
Keep in mind that Jack was a relatively new idea at the time, and CBS Radio was being run by a guy (Joel Hollander) looking to cut costs. He made a group deal with Sparknet that got Jack on CBS stations in a bunch of markets, not just New York. So you have to look at this as a corporate programming move, not strictly one in NYC. And as the OP points out, the format has been a long term success in several major markets. When Joel was replaced by Dan Mason, one of his first moves was to replace Jack at WCBS.
And yet David just told us that Jack was doing better than WCBS-FM!
JACK in Buffalo never had great ratings considering it has an excellent FM signal. It was in the mid 2 to 3 share range. Now the Classic Rock format has a 1.5, so yes it has tanked. Townsquare is trying to force its Syndicated "Free Beer" Morning show on the public with no success. The next move will probably be selling the station to the Religious guys to generate some cash...
The WNCN to WQIV flip is arguably the most notorious format change ever. Sure got a huge amount of press and chatter at the time, quite amazing in the pre-internet age.
However, is it the worst format change ever? Set aside all the blowback from Classical fans. Given the NYC radio landscape at the time, was WQIV a bad idea? Was it a bad station? Had it replaced some format that nobody cared about and had stuck around, would we have thought differently about it? I would love to hear an extended aircheck of WQIV, or at least read a lengthy playlist sample.
I guess what I am saying is that WQIV had too many distractions that prevented objective evaluation of the station.
I found it interesting 20 years later when WNCN finally died for good, and without any apparent drama switched to WAXQ. I suppose a large portion of its listener base had moved to retirement communities in Florida, or had taken up permanent residence in various Tri-State Area cemeteries. Of course, the remaining Classical audience still had WQXR (was there a major "difference" between WQXR and WNCN, and what made Classical fans choose one over the other...just curious...I am only familiar with WQXR.)
I know we're talking about almost half a century ago, but I would be interested to hear from anyone who was in NYC at the time and remembers WQIV.
Just seeing Mr. Hollander's name made me throw up in my mouth a little; thanks a lot!
Indeed, I do remember 104.3 in Chicago, 93.1 in Los Angeles and 100.3 in Dallas flipped to Jack around the same time. Cannot recall if 96.5 Seattle was in the fold; I'm thinking that switch might've occurred a little later (I could certainly be wrong about timing). The classic rock format on 93.1 in L.A. that preceded Jack was an extremely boring take on Classic Rock. In the instance of Los Angeles, the move proved to be wise. I wonder if anyone misses KCBS-FM as a classic rock station?
Larry Miller was the original PD. Al Bernstein did mid-days. Rosko at night. Jim Cameron. Dave Mallow. Good airstaff.
Townsquare is in pretty good financial shape, don't need to sell something just because of bad ratings.
Infinity (at the time) was very close to flipping their then owned WGRR in Cincinnati to Jack, even domains were registered. Something made them change their minds at the last minute. WGRR somehow continued on and has continued to be an evolved, successful classic hits station under Cumulus.
Jack was working much better than the "old" CBS-FM oldies format. Jack was starting to be much more significant in 25-54.
As I said before, the NYC format was changed not because Jack did poorly but because CBS corporate became aware of (and frightened by) the rise of their own FM in Philly which moved from oldies to what we call classic hits today. No, not a full 100% move, but a very definite increase in sales demos.
There was a group of the more ratings-knowledgable radio people and folks from ad agencies and Nielsen (when PPM was still a joint project) who were members of a committee that attended meetings and got the PPM data from around 2002 onward from Philly and, later, Houston before the PPM went live.
I was invited to join that group and I saw what was happening in the PPM. While not all stations encoded, the changes in WCAU-FM were obvious and we could see the change as they sort of created a 70's core classic hits format 20 years ago. While the CBS folks did not comment, all of us knew when they went to classic hits in NYC it was because they did not want anyone else to get that format before they did, particularly since they owned a positive image.
Were the PPM test in Atlanta or Denver, that scenario would not have happened. But Arbitron and Nielsen wanted a test that was a relatively fast drive or train ride from their Columbia or NYC headquarters, and Philly it was.
Before going to Jack, the CBS-FM folks did not envision either how PPM would work or how their format might evolve. It was not until the Philly tests showed that the PPM was going to work and how it would affect some formats more than others that they made a strategic decision to anticipate the PPM with a format that would win in that new ratings service.
And that was because Mason was one of the "insiders" on the PPM development right from the beginning.
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