It wasn't programmed correctly at all.
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Alt 92.3 to Become WINS Simulcast
- Thread starter atthestars
- Start date
The interesting thing is - New Rock 101.9 provided a template of the type of alternative format that was capable of commanding decent shares in New York (the relative ratings success of New Rock 101.9 occurred by accident, more or less!), yet the brain trust at Audacy decided to go in a completely different direction from that template.
I do think 92.3's music mix in recent months has improved, but impressions of the station were already firmly entrenched in sampling listeners' minds, and I think a lot of potential listeners gave up on the station long ago.
I do think 92.3's music mix in recent months has improved, but impressions of the station were already firmly entrenched in sampling listeners' minds, and I think a lot of potential listeners gave up on the station long ago.
Again, though, shares/ratings are a secondary consideration when it comes to some musical genres. Alternative rock, like country music, is a tough, tough sell in New York. Even stations that post what would be acceptable numbers for pop or urban formats find themselves in trouble on Madison Avenue, where ad agencies and their clients have a negative opinion of the sort of people who listen to them. As we are seeing with 92.3 and saw before with 94.7, even a format with significant barriers to overcome -- too many similar stations in the market in 94.7's case, appeal to the "poison" 55+ demo in 92.3's case -- is still viewed as having more bottom-line value in New York City than country or alt.
New Rock 101.9's "beauty pageant" numbers may have appeared OK on the surface, but the only way to truly judge the station's success would be to compare its billing with other stations in the market posting similar 6+ numbers.
101.9 I think had a perfect mix of new and old Alternative. However, this was 10+ years ago.
"New Rock" had essentially no billing after FM News failed because Merlin wasn't really interested in making WRXP a success. They wanted to cash out by that point.
Define “programmed correctly” when there is no consensus on the format’s musical direction and the vast majority of the gold library (almost entirely sourced from the Seattle Sound) is 30+ years old and increasingly incompatible with the newer artists.
Scapegoating Mike Kaplan misses the ACTUAL crisis in the format at large. Not that I’m terribly surprised.
Because a proper sale staff to "sell" New Rock 101.9 never existed, such a comparison would be pointless. The programming was never intended to be more than a placeholder. PTBoardOp is correct.
Nationally, the format certainly isn't healthy when it comes to FM radio. That's certainly true. But there's more to programming than just music, and many of the stations where he had his hand in the batter sounded disjointed and flat out lousy for quite a long time. He put a terrible morning show (Cane and Corey) on the air in multiple markets, had automation issues galore, rolled out the two-minute promise in the most poorly executed manner imaginable, etc.
John Allers has done a decent job improving KVIL, and look at some of the iHM stations such as WEND Charlotte, which following some programming modifications, has seen phenomenal ratings this year.
So it's been announced that he will leave the company at the end of the year. That part of the story is over. The challenge is for the format to find a core and rebuild. That will take more than radio people. That will take a coalition of artists, labels, and fans. Other formats have been able to do it in ways that benefit the music. Based on what I'm seeing, I'm not hopeful with this one.
Below is the URL to the countdown to the launch of the simulcast of WINS on 92.3 FM, which is scheduled for Thursday at 9:00 am.
www.tickcounter.com
Launch of WINS FM Simulcast on 92.3
Countdown timer showing how much time left until Thursday, October 27, 2022 9:00:00 AM in timezone Eastern, US (UTC-04:00)
www.tickcounter.com
As someone who listened to modern/active rock radio from 93-present, here are my rankings for who did in best and in what era:
1) K-Rock 96-97 (pre-"Rock Radio" imaging)
2) 101.9 RXP v2
3) LIR 96-03
4) Q104.3 "Pure Rock" 93-96
5) K-Rock 03-05 (ditching the "Rock Radio" imaging)
6) K-Rock 97-03 (active rock hybrid)
7) Alt 92.3
8) Z100 alternative era
9) RXP v1
10) K-Rock "Great Rock Period"/07-09 revival
1) K-Rock 96-97 (pre-"Rock Radio" imaging)
2) 101.9 RXP v2
3) LIR 96-03
4) Q104.3 "Pure Rock" 93-96
5) K-Rock 03-05 (ditching the "Rock Radio" imaging)
6) K-Rock 97-03 (active rock hybrid)
7) Alt 92.3
8) Z100 alternative era
9) RXP v1
10) K-Rock "Great Rock Period"/07-09 revival
NYRadioFan22
Banned
I still don't understand, if they knew they were flipping to the WFAN simulcast, why would they give us a temporary rock station they KNEW we'd fall in love with?
It was not that simple. Merlin apprently had plans to keep the alternative format. However:
"Merlin Media was faced with a high debt load from recent purchases and the cost of its failed news format. Additionally, one of Merlin's investors was seeking buyers for the company's stations"
Consequently, Merlin sold the station to CBS Radio, which converted it to a simulcast of WFAN.
WFAN-FM (Wikipedia)
There's no way to know how RXP 2.0 would have performed (sales wise). I understand why certain rock fans cling to the fantasy that RXP 2.0 would have been the "cure all" for the format since it wasn't around all that long and there's no concrete evidence either way. It's short shelf life is not statistically significant. If I had to guess, it probably would have underperformed similar to most other attempts at more current based rock formats.
If it's as simple as you make it out to be, why hasn't anyone done it or plan to do it now?
^ what luperm said. Remember, Alt 92.3 had a 2.8 share 6+ early on (with one book in the top five 18-34). Within a year, their ratings began to erode into the low 2s, and that was before Kaplan’s injection of Alt-adjacent hip hop.
If I had to venture a guess, I’d imagine the ratings for RXP 2.0 would have done similarly once the various partisans got sick of half of the playlist.
If I had to venture a guess, I’d imagine the ratings for RXP 2.0 would have done similarly once the various partisans got sick of half of the playlist.
And there still would have been the same negative stereotype of the alt listener to be overcome in selling time on the station.
Alt 92.3 is playing songs (including album cuts) from each year each hour starting with the year 1994. I'm glad Audacy is at least doing a tribute to alternative rock before the plug is plugged. Someone earlier in this thread said right before music formats are blown up the music library is usually expanded to the point it sounds really good for a few days. This is definitely the case right now for Alt 92.3. I'm a huge alternative fan yet I never heard some of the songs they played in the last hour.
Because the alternative (pardon the pun) was to file an STA to remain silent for six months. 101.9 was a stand-alone and had nothing to fall back on, no sister station to simulcast, no HD2 format to plug in, nothing. It needed to remain on the air somehow while Merlin tried to offload it to someone, anyone.
That a few people “fell in love” with a format 100% programmed and voice-tracked out of Chicago was entirely coincidental.
101.9 RXP Version 2 was around at a time when the alternative format was relatively healthy in the early '10s, when artists like MGMT, Muse, Mumford & Sons, Modest Mouse (a lot of Ms!) were big, and was the right balance of indie vs. mainstream, old vs. new, and tightly focused vs. freeform. If I recall, RXPs numbers went up in the last several months when their playlist became more focused and more in line as an alternative station. They disappeared for a while, so when Version 2 appeared, fans were excited to get RXP back. Perhaps it was coincidental that they got some relatively strong numbers during that brief time, but they were tapping into something that didn't exist in New York at the time. Granted, the launch of Alt 92.3 was pretty good out the gate, but bad programming choices and corporate mentality got in the way, and one by one, Audacy's Alts are disappearing.
NYRadioFan22
Banned
You know what? Call me crazy, but with the date 10/27, it just hit me. What if they're planning to flip NEW 102.7 to alternative? They could've chosen to flip 92.3 to 1010 WINS today, but randomly on a Thursday?
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