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The Breeze Blows Out of Town

RoddyFreeman said:
Not necessarily. I can speak only for Atlanta, but northeast and northwest of Atlanta, La Raza (102.3 & 107.1) has been run by a non-Hispanic GM, most of whose career was in Spanish radio, since day 1, and he has had enormous success selling the station to Hispanic and general market advertisers. His biggest billing salesperson is not Hispanic.

Over the years, most of the salespeople calling on me from iHeart's Latino stations have not been Hispanic. At one time, my salesperson was Hispanic. But sellers at iHeart sell all stations in the cluster.
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Following up on Roddy's excellent post: The real issue here is that you need Hispanic sellers for most Hispanic businesses. But in the markets with less sizable and developed Hispanic communities, there are not that many Hispanic clients and few if any Hispanic agencies. Most ad sales is to general market clients and agencies... so managers and sellers can be of any ethnicity.
 
Miguelito said:
So 106.1 has aired Beautiful Music; Hot AC; Mainstream Top 40; "Hot Hits"-style Top 40; back to Mainstream Top 40; Smooth Jazz; then (as "Philly's 106.1/My 106.1/Mix 106.1") they seemed to go from Rhythmic AC, to Hot AC, back to Rhythmic AC, and then back to Hot AC; then Rhythmic AC (as "Real 106.1"); Soft AC; and now whatever it is they're cooking up. Has any other station in Philly had this many formats?!
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In New York City, the station on 101.9 FM has undergone probably more format changes than any other station in the Northeast. From 1971 through 1988, WPIX-FM went through 11 different formats. Wikipedia has a list of those formats. Then, in 1988, the station became smooth jazz station WQCD. The smooth jazz format lasted nearly two decades.

PTBoardOp94 said:
I think there is probably a correlation:
Smooth jazz became unviable, and wasn't directly replaced by something new, so stations which formerly aired smooth jazz usually had to compete with another station, often an established station, in the same format.
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By 2008, the audience for smooth jazz had declined, so it changed its format to alternative rock with the call sign WRXP, thereby filling a void that was left by WXRK in 2005. In 2011, it became NYC's third all-news station, with the call sign WEMP. That didn't last long, so in July 2012, it reverted to alternative rocker WRXP. Finally, in November 2012, the station, which was being sold to CBS Radio, began simulcasting all-sports station WFAN (660 AM) and changed its call sign to WFAN-FM.
 
CassChopper96 said:
Is Urban AC a popular format amongst Hispanic audiences?
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No, urban AC, with a couple of exceptional stations, is generally about 90% or more Black in its listener base. Urban, on the other hand, does very well with Hispanic 18-34 and even 25-44 persons who are relatively assimilated. But, since urban stations tend to focus mostly on Black artists, air talent and even promotions, Hispanics find reggaetón more of a cultural match... even those Hispanics who are more proficient in English than Spanish.
 
CassChopper96 said:
I think its too costly and risky for iheart to change two of it's philly stations at once. That's why i think the other 4 music stations are staying put
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Remember, changing two stations in Philadelphia will have an impact on the cluster, but will not cause any significant problem when looked at from a corporate perspective.

In fact, today is a good time to do needed major changes, as companies can still blame under-performance on the pandemic.
 
CassChopper96 said:
Is Urban AC a popular format amongst Hispanic audiences?
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Sure there are Urbans like KRRL that have some non-black personalities, but Urban AC superserves black listeners a lot of the time. Loads of people of all stripes like Throwback Hip-Hop, but genres like Neo-Soul have less popularity among non-black listeners, hence why they are not played on Throwback stations like WNYL or the Real iteration of WISX.
 
and wasn't the reincarnation of WRXP gaining momentum in their short run before the plug was pulled, because they had a wide, unsafe playlist the alt audience loved, if they kept that format they may of scored big. I thought the breeze would of been on 106.1's HD2 as soon as the Rumba flip took its place, with a mention of tune to HD2 for the breeze sound but it seems like they wont let go of the smooth jazz format, they must have some listeners...as of midnight they are still SJ.
 
>>> I thought the breeze would of been on 106.1's HD2 as soon as the Rumba flip took its place, with a mention of tune to HD2 for the breeze sound but it seems like they wont let go of the smooth jazz format, they must have some listeners...as of midnight they are still SJ.<<<

I would guess that "The Breeze" format will be found on an HD subchannel on one of the Philadelphia iHeart stations eventually. You can hear it in all of the top 10 markets, except for San Francisco, Boston and Houston. San Francisco has an iHeart Soft AC Breeze station on the regular FM dial. In Boston, an Audacy station does Soft AC on HD. Not sure why Houston is missing, since it doesn't have a Soft AC outlet, either on analog FM or HD. The closest Breeze station to Philadelphia is 95.1 WZZO-HD2 in Allentown.

But I hope 106.1-HD2 keeps its Smooth Jazz sound. It has a heritage on that site and it would be a loss if it went away. It still calls itself WJJZ on the air, even though those call letters have nothing officially to do with that station anymore. Maybe 106.1 will keep Smooth Jazz on HD2 and add The Breeze to a new HD3 signal.
 
Gregg. said:
I would guess that "The Breeze" format will be found on an HD subchannel on one of the Philadelphia iHeart stations eventually. You can hear it in all of the top 10 markets, except for San Francisco, Boston and Houston.
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iHeart turned off most if not all of its Breeze HD2 channels beginning in February. See these threads:

Gregg. said:
San Francisco has an iHeart Soft AC Breeze station on the regular FM dial.
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There's also one in Sacramento. Are those the last two? Soft AC appears to be on life support just like most of its audience.

One exception, somehow it's doing well in SFO where it reportedly ranked #5 25-54 in the Jan PPMs. I always thought the Bay area had more energy than that. :sleep:
 
Theater of My Mind said:
Soft AC appears to be on life support just like most of its audience.
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Low blow! They're not playing Great American Songbook artists or big bands. The format isn't primarily appealing to people likely to be "on life support" (80+?); it's just that more 55+ folks are listening than advertisers would like.
 
WLIT is also the only AC station in Chicago with a Sears Tower facility, so there is no B101 equivalent to split listeners with.
 
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