Yet KYSR is off by nearly 30% in the last five months compared to the first months of the year. Maybe it is everything: the format, the songs, the changes in the market.
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Kroq billing
- Thread starter 30james
- Start date
There’s actually been some fantastic work being released in the alternative rock and punk rock vein this year from Manchester Orchestra, Rise Against, Foo Fighters, YUNGBLUD, Maneskin, Lumineers, Jack White, Wolf Alice, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Willow Smith, KennyHoopla, nothing.,nowhere, The War on Drugs, and other artists. So yeah the music is actually really good there right now. I’ll even slap a playlist together if nobody here has heard any of it.
We’re even getting some Active Rock staples crossing over like Papa Roach (with their best song in years), Volbeat, and Bring Me The Horizon.
It’s subjective, of course. If you don’t like alternative rock and pop-punk in general nothing here will change your mind. But it feels like to a long-time fan of the genres they bounced back this year from a mixture of veteran and newer voices.
The problem, as I have said before, is that the Alternative core is actually not a core at all... it is several separate taste groups, with only small overlapping commonality. Most songs will be liked by one group, tolerated by another and hated by a third group. So what happens is that little new music has broad appeal and alternative stations have to depend on established, old hits
In your opinion. Yet there are self-identified alternative fans who won't like those songs and some others that are indifferent to them.
And greater fragmentation and polarization.
Top 40 split into separate formats of AC, Top 40 and Rock in the early 70's. But each group was big enough to sustain one or more stations in each market. Alt was never as broadly appealing a genre, and splitting it several ways means it is not viable for terrestrial radio.
I missed this but why don’t you tell us what you would do? Why ask us general public types? You’re in the industry and have access to the special data we don’t get to see, after all.
I've already given my opinion. I ask the general public types because I see conflicting information being posted.
If you remove the music from the discussion, what is left at the radio station?
Maybe KROQ should just throw in the towel, change its call letters to KNX-FM and make a lot of commuters happy.
I doubt it. KNX indexes very, very (did I say "very"?) low among Hispanics and African Americans? FM would open the door for younger listeners, but in those under 49 the market is now over 80% ethnic and first generation immigrants.
How long does this conversation have to go on before somebody finally acknowledges the fact that LA really can' t support two alternative rock stations anymore?
A good portion of the KNX audience is already familiar with the term "KNX-FM" and it doesn't refer to news on the FM Dial.
Nothing stays the same and radio (sadly) often doesn't respect its own heritage, so it's not like that can't change. But for a lot of people in my age group, a "new" KNX-FM would mean the return of Grover Washington Jr., Poco, Boz Scaggs, the Alan Parsons Project and Joni Mitchell.
Nope. But the texture of the proven gold tracks would've been a better fit, in my view, with the audience with whom Kevin & Bean's appeal was greatest (read: middle aged men).
That morning show + a playlist heavy in Portugal. The Man, Panic! at the Disco, Lorde, Blink 182, etc. were not a good combination. Audience retention / recycling from mornings into subsequent dayparts was likely on the weak side during the final several years of the Kevin & Bean era.
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Classic rock was not useful for Audacy, and wasn't profitable for Cumulus, which is why KLOS was sold.
Los Angeles has supported two alt stations for over ten years. I doubt either of them will go anywhere. I can't say much for Kroq morning show. It just isn't very good. Woody show on alt 98.7 is much better
And it was a stand-alone FM with no "cluster mates". Not efficient or profitable today.
But over those 10 years, the total audience for alternative has declined. Right now, it is at its lowest ever, and the total AQH audience of the two combined is down by over 25% just this year.
KLOS may not have been putting up huge profit margins, but it was definitely not losing money. It's cluster mate KABC (which Cumulus still owns) on the other hand... Sorry BigA, the logic is flawed. Having just emerged from BK, with a board of directors installed to represent the debtors interests, Cumulus would have sold EVERYTHING had they been able to find a sucker, er, I mean a buyer. They got what they could get while they could get it for the most attractive stations in the major markets.
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Maybe 1% would remember and associate the call letters with that long-dead and gone format. And I think I am overestimating the percentage.
And you are exaggerating the number of rock fans in the market. In any case, adding an FM to the news format would be to increase the 35-54 appeal, not to get more 55+.
Heritage in radio lasts about as long as fresh fish does on the kitchen counter.
Most of the population of LA was not here when KNX-FM played what you mention. And the chance that many who would listen to the all news format would even remember an FM forma that is long gone and associate it is next to zero.
I don't think it was profitable. The billing was way down and the expenses quite high.
You would be mistaken. Yes, expenses were high, particularly on the very pricey talent contracts for KABC's no ratings lineup. That's what hurt the clusters bottom line more than anything.
David, you make this point frequently, and the weakness in this take is that most formats have disparate cores: Rock has metal and classic rock; classical has symphonic and opera; AC has soft and hot; country has legacy and modern; CHR has pop and rhythmic; just as Alternative has various groupings too (as has been discussed in this and other threads). A station's P1s learn to tolerate the "others" because they know their preferences are in the station's mix too.
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