Multiple "Formats" on 1 Station (depends on time of day/week)

[gr8oldies]

I guess I can mention WOWO in their golden years. 5-7am was The Little Red Barn with Country music and farm reports (including a Song of Inspiration). 7-9am Bob Sievers with normal Hot AC, top 40 full service format. 10am Jack Underwood (normal format with a large percentage of spots being farm advertisers. 11:30 "Dinner on the Farm", farm news and talk, then with Jack Underwood, Chris Roberts and Carol Ford with the normal top 40 format.
WOWO's music presentation wasn't a stodgy MOR format, but almost every top 40 hit. Sometimes they rocked harder than their top 40 competitors. (They tried to mellow out in 1968 and were beaten by 500 watt WLYV

 

[anotherguyTN]

With stations like KSUD 730, mentioned above, were like a station I managed. The music was just to fill unsold time. We always had some afternoon slots open each weekday, not so much in the morning.

In the stations I mentioned WGSF was probably the best because they were more CHR compared to KSUD, which was AC, and they depended the least on programs until their last year or so when they added more. That was probably a sign that there were problems. KSUD tended to be the worst about allowing anybody on for a buck and even running infomercials in the middle of the music times. They were eventually bought by EMF along with their FM station, which was more music, but I couldn't get them where I lived. But it opened the door to K-LOVE and Air 1 eventually coming into West TN at a time when no other Christian stations would give CCM a chance.

 

[Rusty Muck]

We've been discussing this on the Dallas board, where it appears that the Mavericks basketball play-by-play will be moving to the city's only rock station The Eagle. This will mirror something iHeart has done in Cleveland, where WMMS is the official station of the Indians baseball team. In NYC, the all news station WCBS breaks format for NY Mets games.

There are many examples in history but one that comes to mind was with NY's beautiful music station WVNJ. When the city's only commercial jazz station flipped to country, WVNJ brokered its evening show to Les Davis (a DJ at WRVR), who played jazz at night. They became "W-V-N-Jazz." Of course all that changed when the station was sold, and it became Z-100.

WMMS actually DOES daypart significantly. They are hot talk in drive times with Rover in the morning and Alan Cox in the afternoon, plus Indians Guardians baseball and Cavaliers basketball at night (they normally don't broadcast games during the day, that's WTAM 1100/106.9's domain). All other hours -- middays, evenings and overnights, and the bulk of weekends -- are active rock.

They still brand as "Cleveland's Rock Station" but it's largely become a formality. No, they don't do the "Talk That Rocks!" line, either. But the dayparting works, WMMS has been a ratings power, especially in mornings.

 

[TheBigA]

They still brand as "Cleveland's Rock Station" but it's largely become a formality.

They're consistently a Top 10 station in the market. I'm sure sports more than makes the station profitable.

BTW the baseball team is still officially the Indians. At least through the end of the season.

 

[Rusty Muck]

They're consistently a Top 10 station in the market. I'm sure sports more than makes the station profitable.

Rover's been a massive draw in younger demos since he joined WMMS in 2008 (Lanigan on WMJI was always the top ratings winner overall, and his successor Mark Nolan held those ratings until his show was rebooted). Splitting the Indians and Cavs flagship rights with WTAM helped get the play-by-play over to a younger audience that wouldn't ever listen to Ancient Modulation.

BTW the baseball team is still officially the Indians. At least through the end of the season.

Lol I know, I'm just practicing for my sake

 

[TheBigA]

Rover's been a massive draw in younger demos since he joined WMMS in 2008

The catch is that rock stations, even ones that get good ratings and demos, tend to underbill their potential. Sports fills that void.

 

[crainbebo]

Speaking of Bishop CA, KSRW 92.5's old Sierra Wave format was similar to 'blocks' of programming. Bob Todd's morning show (RIP) was mostly oldies, '60s-'70s, and local interviews, news, and trivia every morning at 10:20. Then they went into their normal format of obscure adult contemporary, Gulf & Western rock, smooth jazz, singer-songwriter, and occasional oldies. This stayed on all day except for when they would go to local news hours at noon and 5. Weekends featured a jazz show on Saturday night (straight jazz I believe, not SJ), two hours (IIRC?) of classical music on Sunday morning with the now-late Bennett Kessler, former owner of the station, and four hours of Spanish programming on Sunday afternoon.
I still miss that station - what a unique station it was and it played some of the most obscure music I've ever heard on an 'adult contemporary' station.
I wonder if there are any AC or full-service stations left that have a similar 'filler' approach to music - just running obscure oh wow's outside of normal air shifts?

 

[michael hagerty]

You are right. Fregoso took over daytime hours approximately in 1971 and switched to Spanish. Unfortunately, there is a lot of urban legend "facts" about the Wolfman, ranging from XERB being 250,000 watts and XERF 500,000 to date and airtime inaccuracies.

Amalia González began at XEPRS in early and Wolfman was still there in evenings; when she moved from traffic to on-air, her show ended and Wolfie began. The transition was seamless since it was all done on tape from Rosarito. That would put the departure from XEPRS almost simultaneous with the filming of Graffiti.

A combination of WorldRadioHistory-dot-com and some other stuff pulls together this timeline:

Summer, 1971: XERB becomes XEPRS.

December, 1971: Story in Billboard about Wolf turning over his "exclusive sales rights" to XEPRS (it suggests the call letter change may have been because Wolf's sales rights were in the name of a company he owned called XERB, Inc., and that he would retain ownership of that company (which, without the sales rights, was essentially nothing).

April 15, 1972: Wolfman does his last show on XEPRS.

April 16, 1972: Wolf begins a live 7-Midnight weeknight show on KDAY (1580).

June 26, 1972: Filming begins on "American Graffiti".

August 1, 1973: "American Graffiti" is released in theaters.

August 6, 1973: Wolfman Jack begins a live weeknight show on WNBC, New York.

 

[michael hagerty]

Speaking of Bishop CA, KSRW 92.5's old Sierra Wave format was similar to 'blocks' of programming. Bob Todd's morning show (RIP) was mostly oldies, '60s-'70s, and local interviews, news, and trivia every morning at 10:20. Then they went into their normal format of obscure adult contemporary, Gulf & Western rock, smooth jazz, singer-songwriter, and occasional oldies. This stayed on all day except for when they would go to local news hours at noon and 5. Weekends featured a jazz show on Saturday night (straight jazz I believe, not SJ), two hours (IIRC?) of classical music on Sunday morning with the now-late Bennett Kessler, former owner of the station, and four hours of Spanish programming on Sunday afternoon.
I still miss that station - what a unique station it was and it played some of the most obscure music I've ever heard on an 'adult contemporary' station.
I wonder if there are any AC or full-service stations left that have a similar 'filler' approach to music - just running obscure oh wow's outside of normal air shifts?

I can't imagine.

KSRW, which launched in---what, the early 90s?--- and ran for several years as KDAY, before Muerelo wanted the calls enough to pay for them, entered a very different Bishop radio landscape than existed in the mid-late 70s, when it was KIBS, KIOQ-FM and a translator that I'm not sure was legal that rebroadcast KIIS-FM Los Angeles over about a 10 mile radius from downtown.

KIBS had a new owner who bought KIOQ, flipped it to Country and put satellite oldies (and Rush Limbaugh) on the AM, which got the new calls KBOV. KUNR-FM, the NPR station in Reno, had a translator in Bishop. So did KMMT-FM in Mammoth.

Bennett had to find a hole in the market. So she went old school. A lot of what she did early on was what she told me she had wanted to do with her first radio station, KNYO (600), which went on the air in 1975 and, according to Scott Fybush's site, stayed on the air until the late 80s.

Now there are even more stations, as well as choices having nothing to do with radio. As odd a fit as Alternative (though Hans once told this group "Alt" didn't strictly mean Alternative music) might seem, positioning it as the station younger outdoors enthusiasts would listen to and trying to sell that to advertisers is probably a pretty shrewd move.

 

[atthestars]

One commercial station I didn't see mentioned scrolling through... WKXW Trenton. New Jersey 101.5. Talk during the week, but on the weekends "The music comes out to play" and they roll a classic hits format

 

[firepoint525]

A lot of CCM stations had different formats depending on the time of day, especially locally owned ones, and some still may be doing that. In Memphis WMSO 630/640, KSUD 730, and WGSF 1210 in its later CCM years had times during the day with preachers, some of which were the dollar a holler type. In some cases you could hear CCM at one minute and then be hearing some anti-CCM preacher 5 minutes later. Also WVIM 95.3 would run Spanish language Christian programming at night.

If you were lucky enough to have a CCM station that was mostly music, some of them would go AC during the day and play Christian rock nights and/or weekends.

My last station (where I worked overnights) was a lot like that, EXCEPT that they were (supposedly) not licensed to play music (except for Spanish-language music during the Spanish-language program, leading me to wonder if maybe that was just the GM's "fiction"). You could hear almost anything on that station, especially during overnight and weekend hours. I occasionally got listener complaints about the off-hour programming, but what could I do about it? I just aired whatever the log called for. Weekends were REALLY a grab bag. Infomercials, sports-talk programming, you name it. They no longer carry the Spanish-language programming, so I don't know what they fill the evening hours with anymore. And I noticed that last year, they became a University of Memphis football affiliate.

Some of the listener complaints (that I alluded to above) were that the programming was not "Christian" enough. The USA radio network (our network) routinely fed old-timey radio programs, so we carried many of those. Our "Christian" network fed us those programs.

This was also the only station (that I was ever familiar with) that carried the weekend presidential address, along with the other party response. The station set aside 15 minutes for this programming, but it rarely ever took more than 10, so I usually filled the remainder with weather from NOAA weather radio.

 

[crainbebo]

I can't imagine.

KSRW, which launched in---what, the early 90s?--- and ran for several years as KDAY, before Muerelo wanted the calls enough to pay for them, entered a very different Bishop radio landscape than existed in the mid-late 70s, when it was KIBS, KIOQ-FM and a translator that I'm not sure was legal that rebroadcast KIIS-FM Los Angeles over about a 10 mile radius from downtown.

KIBS had a new owner who bought KIOQ, flipped it to Country and put satellite oldies (and Rush Limbaugh) on the AM, which got the new calls KBOV. KUNR-FM, the NPR station in Reno, had a translator in Bishop. So did KMMT-FM in Mammoth.

Bennett had to find a hole in the market. So she went old school. A lot of what she did early on was what she told me she had wanted to do with her first radio station, KNYO (600), which went on the air in 1975 and, according to Scott Fybush's site, stayed on the air until the late 80s.

Now there are even more stations, as well as choices having nothing to do with radio. As odd a fit as Alternative (though Hans once told this group "Alt" didn't strictly mean Alternative music) might seem, positioning it as the station younger outdoors enthusiasts would listen to and trying to sell that to advertisers is probably a pretty shrewd move.

The Alternative music is definitely trying to target Mammoth Lakes (on their 96.5 translator) rather than Bishop and Lone Pine. The skiers and outdoors-y folks in Mammoth (+ travelers from Los Angeles and Reno) aren't wanting to listen to a B-side Jimmy Buffett, Aaron Neville, followed by Boz Scaggs and a smooth jazz cut. They want indie, alternative-type music, or current pop music. That is likely why 92.5 flipped formats in 2015. Keep in mind, even when I taped airchecks from that mono 16kbps stream, a good chunk of advertising was for Mammoth Lakes restaurants and events in Mammoth.
There were a lot of B-sides and strange instrumentals in their adult contemporary hours. I remember hearing them once play the ER theme song as a transition to the national newscast at the top of the hour! Other times it was Jeff Golub, Boney James, or even 'Children of Sanchez' by Chuck Mangione. They played a lot of Bonnie Raitt album cuts, James Taylor (I love 'Line 'em Up', from his Hourglass album...and that KSRW stream introduced me beyond How Sweet it Is and Your Smiling Face), Van Morrison too, I have 'That's Entrainment' from '08 on one of the airchecks I recorded. Steely Dan AND solo Donald Fagen too. I heard about half of the 'Morph the Cat' songs on that station.
Pretty sure they weren't using any type of TM Gold discs - just spinning the most random CDs they could get on autopilot. If a B-side played, whatever.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

I don't think many stations consider themselves to be "block programmed".
But how many stations have music formats, but a show in drive times that is essentially a talk show, with limited music or no music?

Or how many stations air a music formats but have sports play-by-play at night?
Or how many air a music format but have religious services on Sunday?

I imagine it is pretty rare now, but it used to be common for stations to have extended newscasts once or twice a day, and air music at other times. I only know of a couple stations that still air long-form newscasts and do not have a news/talk format today.

 

[Rusty Muck]

The catch is that rock stations, even ones that get good ratings and demos, tend to underbill their potential. Sports fills that void.

WMMS had the Browns from 2001-12 (when the split flagship for the Indians and Cavs took place) so it's not like it was anything new, plus they always had acted as "spillover" on WTAM's behalf whenever both the Indians and Cavs played at the same time. Still do.

Likewise, WNCX has been propelled to the highest ratings they've ever had, and that's saying something, thanks in large part to the split Browns flagship arrangement between Audacy and Good Karma.

 

[TheBigA]

WMMS had the Browns from 2001-12 (when the split flagship for the Indians and Cavs took place) so it's not like it was anything new,

Lots of FM rockers ran football in the 90s. WYSP in Philly, WBCN Boston. Several others.

 

[gr8oldies]

A combination of WorldRadioHistory-dot-com and some other stuff pulls together this timeline:

Summer, 1971: XERB becomes XEPRS.

December, 1971: Story in Billboard about Wolf turning over his "exclusive sales rights" to XEPRS (it suggests the call letter change may have been because Wolf's sales rights were in the name of a company he owned called XERB, Inc., and that he would retain ownership of that company (which, without the sales rights, was essentially nothing).

April 15, 1972: Wolfman does his last show on XEPRS.

April 16, 1972: Wolf begins a live 7-Midnight weeknight show on KDAY (1580).

June 26, 1972: Filming begins on "American Graffiti".

August 1, 1973: "American Graffiti" is released in theaters.

August 6, 1973: Wolfman Jack begins a live weeknight show on WNBC, New York.

Was Wolfman still "Bob Smith, General Manager" of XERB/XEPRS through 1972?

 

[b-turner]

I would consider a format to be programming targeting a certain group of radio listeners. For example, a station playing country music, say in the morning and classic hits in the afternoon and beautiful music at night to be a station targeting three different groups of listeners with little to no overlap. A Classic Hits station that carries an hour of the Beatles on Sunday morning or includes a 30 minutes local and world news break at, say 7am and noon or high school football Friday nights are examples of what I would not personally consider a format change because the programming likely appeals to that Classic Hits listener (as well as others).

I have seen what I would term associated formats on a single station. In Austin, Texas, an FM ran blocks of classic rock and blocks of Sports Talk. I figured many of the Sports Talk listeners might like Classic Rock. Needless to say, that did not last long.

An Americana station, heavy on Texas artists, runs a syndicated Blues show for an hour an evening each week and a couple of hours of jazz Sunday morning. The listeners I knew didn't consider this a format change and regularly listened to these special features.

A station I worked for is a Classic Hits heavy Adult Contemporary. They do a 30 minute call in show (Swap Shop style), do a 90 minute weekly local sports talk show, an oldies show each week at night, plenty of preachers Sunday morning, local high school and college football. Most listeners are interested in almost all the deviations solely because it is all local. I think it can be called music intensive full service...a minute of national network, a minute of state network news, two weather forecasts and two community announcements hourly...radio station.

 

[gr8oldies]

When I started at KIBS in Bishop, California in 1971, it was the only radio station in a town of 3,500 people and it felt the need to be all things to all people, so it was block programmed:

6:00 a.m.-7:00 a.m. Country music.

7:00 a.m.-7:30 a.m. ABC Network News, local news, Paul Harvey News and Comment. The block included school lunch menus.

7:30 a.m.-9:00 a.m. Country music.

9:00 a.m.-10:00 a.m. "Coffee With Virginia" (upbeat middle-of-the-road (MOR) music---Herb Alpert, Andy Williams---along with recipes and household hints. They called it a "Woman's Program")

10:00 a.m.-11:00 a.m. "Radio Bingo". Exactly what you're afraid it is. Listeners would go to the Ben Franklin store every week for a new set of bingo cards and for an hour every weekday, some poor dope (often me) would be going "B-9, I-15" on the radio for a full hour.

11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. MOR music.

12:00 p.m.-12:30 p.m. ABC Network News, local news, Paul Harvey News and Comment.

12:30 p.m.-5:00 p.m. MOR music.

5:00 p.m.-5:30 p.m. ABC Network News, local news, Paul Harvey News and Comment.

5:30 p.m.-6:00 p.m. MOR music.

6:00 p.m.-7:00 p.m. "Dinner Hour". Could be Classical, could just be soft instrumental.

7:00 p.m.-10:00 p.m. Top 40 Monday-Thursday, album rock Friday and Saturday.

We signed off at 10:00 p.m. Monday through Saturday and at 7:00 p.m. on Sunday. Sundays were religion and public affairs programming from 7:00 a.m. (an hour later sign-on than the other days) to noon, and MOR from noon to 7:00 p.m.

In the fall of 1974, I helped a friend launch an FM competitor and we were Adult Contemporary, live in the morning and automated the rest of the day. By summer of '75, KIBS dumped block programming and went Country.

My first station did Radio Bingo. For whatever reason the attorney general thought we were in violation of the state's Bingo laws. Go figure.

Ah yes, the "women's show". We had Janie's Corner. Recipes, household hints, whatever, for the 1950s woman, seemingly ( it was the 70s and 80s). Still, she had fun with it. She and her husband owned an antique store together, and her husband was a comic foil....."Fang" if you will. When you met Janie in person, she was delightful and not who you might expect. She could tell an off-color joke and have drinks with guys...I miss her. She passed in her 80s a few years ago.

 

[michael hagerty]

Keep in mind, even when I taped airchecks from that mono 16kbps stream, a good chunk of advertising was for Mammoth Lakes restaurants and events in Mammoth.

Even at KIBS (AM) in the early 70s, even with a signal that didn't reach Mammoth proper, Mammoth was a big part of the business equation.

We sold spots to businesses in Mammoth, Big Pine, Independence and Lone Pine on the strength of being the only radio station you could get during daylight hours (but only really between north of Independence and Crowley Lake---30 miles either side of the transmitter--- and that six million people drove U.S. 395 every year, most heading for Mammoth, the east gate of Yosemite, Lake Tahoe or Reno.

Come to think of it, we'd have a few accounts for casinos in Nevada (Hawthorne, Tonopah, Lake Topaz, Minden/Gardnerville and Carson City), too.

Now, it's survival to sell to Mammoth. Bishop business is a shadow of what it was back in the day, and much of what is there are chains that use national agencies and don't buy small market radio. The pandemic, drought and wildfires depress the tourism business, so you need to appeal to the locals. There's just more opportunity in advertising in Mammoth, I'd think.

 

[michael hagerty]

Was Wolfman still "Bob Smith, General Manager" of XERB/XEPRS through 1972?

Yes. He sold the airtime (both in programming blocks and spots), paid the owners south of the border the agreed upon fee, paid the few people he had working on salary and pocketed the rest.

Wolf's autobiography ("Have Mercy!") exaggerates in a lot of places and gets some facts and dates wrong, but he claims to have been clearing $500,000 a year before business people realized they should be making that money and not him.

Given that top drive-time talents in Los Angeles at that time were getting $100,000 a year or close to it, $500k is not terribly far-fetched when you consider that Wolfman sold every minute of every day (except the one hour required by the Mexican government for its own program every week) on that radio station.

If $500,000 is an exaggeration on his part, I don't think $350,000 would be. He made a lot of money. Which is why, when he took the gig at KDAY doing nights for $18,000, he needed to figure out a lot of stuff fast, including syndication. WNBC, "The Midnight Special" on NBC TV and "American Graffiti' came at exactly the right time, juicing his profile and helping him clear a lot of markets for the radio show.