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Would a soft AC work here in LA?
- Thread starter 34james
- Start date
Agreed. The Wave is soft AC for the 20s.
The era of playing Chuck Mangione, Peter Cetera, and old 1970s Chicago tracks are over. Just as dead as playing adult standards from the 40s.
Actually, I heard Bill Withers today on The Wave.
Michael Bublé and Harry Styles are the new Sinatra and Cetera of AC stations
Nice! Good to hear there's still a bit of gold on The Wave.
Isn't Soft A/C a hard sell? Didn't iHeart abandon (most of) their Soft A/C brands because it was a hard sell?
In the Salt Lake City market, they did a translator-based Soft AC called "Easy 99.1" that was pulling respectable numbers (maybe a 1.0 share?) for a translator. Even voicetracked a few local jocks on it. It wasn't bad.
Then some corporate edict came down and they yanked it off the air. Just runs Bloomberg Business News 24/7. I don't even think it shows up in the ratings now.
So you may be on to something, leethanweapon.
Soft AC is a difficult "sell" because the listeners tend to be predominantly over 55. Even local direct accounts that are reasonably knowledgeable about both customers and existing customers will evaluate the age groups they appeal to and the response to advertising.
About the only things San Diego has in common with Los Angeles are statehood and climate.
The largest single ethnic group in San Diego County in the 2020 census is Non-Hispanic White at 44.9%. Hispanic second at 34.3%. Asian third at 16.9%. Black fourth at 5.73%. 22.9% of San Diego County residents were born in another country.
In Los Angeles County? Hispanic 44.6%. Non-Hispanic White 28.5%. Asian 11.6%. Black 8.4%.
34.3% of L.A. County residents were born in another country, compared to 22.9% of San Diego County residents.
90% of San Diego County residents are U.S. citizens. 81% of L.A. County residents are.
The median household income of San Diego County is $20,000 higher than Los Angeles County.
The one I know of is The Breeze in Philadelphia, which they flipped to a Spanish language format.
The station got good ratings but terrible billings.
The Breeze is still on and doing well in San Francisco and Sacramento, though they’re not as soft as they were in the beginning.
It seems The Wave fills the role of a Soft AC in Los Angeles. While KTWV doesn't sell itself that way, the Soul of Southern California has the softest and oldest playlist of just about any large market FM station you can think of. Sure, KTWV plays some mid-to-uptempo songs too. But these days Soft AC stations play some mid-to-uptempo songs with adult appeal as well.
Name another station that regularly plays Anita Baker, Sade, Sting, Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Norah Jones and Luther Vandross. Even an occasional 1960s song from Aretha, Marvin Gaye and the Temptations. I heard "So Far Away" by Carole King the other day on The Wave.
Yes, most of those names are African-American artists. But all are core artists on a Soft AC station. I doubt a mainstream Soft AC would be able to find a niche with The Wave having a 35-year head start.
Name another station that regularly plays Anita Baker, Sade, Sting, Gloria Estefan, Stevie Wonder, Lionel Richie, Norah Jones and Luther Vandross. Even an occasional 1960s song from Aretha, Marvin Gaye and the Temptations. I heard "So Far Away" by Carole King the other day on The Wave.
Yes, most of those names are African-American artists. But all are core artists on a Soft AC station. I doubt a mainstream Soft AC would be able to find a niche with The Wave having a 35-year head start.
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Blowing up Kroq into soft AC or for that matter anything won't happen and besides Kroq wasnt far behind Kysr in december. David did say they billed similar numbers before I believe.
Can you imagine hypothetically speaking if Kroq was blown up into soft AC??? What a disaster that would be. You would go from making a profit to never making money. A hypothetical disaster.
Can you imagine hypothetically speaking if Kroq was blown up into soft AC??? What a disaster that would be. You would go from making a profit to never making money. A hypothetical disaster.
I can’t imagine. It would be a huge mistake for Audacy to make any changes to their fms in la, especially kroq. There’s no guarantee the next format would do well. I don’t see any kind of format change in la for many years to come
KOST 103.5
Just cause something works in one market doesn't mean it works in every market. Just like a person good at one medium doesn't mean there good at all of them.
For instance Jillian barberie whom was great on Fox 11 morning show good day live well several years ago she was paired with John Phillips on 790 Kabc. She was awful sometimes just sounded and talked about silly school girl things when John was off. Not that Kabc is a ratings powerhouse but sometimes with her on the station they get .03 .04 I noticed when they got rid of her they got .09 the occasional 1 share but my point not everything will work everywhere.
I don't know what radio station in San Diego you are talking about, you didn't even give us call letters or frequency.
98.1 is doing a softer version of classic hits.
96.5 is a normal adult contemporary station like KOST.
Neither of these fit the definition of soft ac, but in 2023 what is soft ac?
Looks like there is Adult Contemporary and every station of this format adjusts their currents, recurrents, and gold songs percentage of playlist based upon their own specific market conditions, that's market demographics, the competition, and their own cluster strategy.
Then the subjective how soft or loud are they. But then many of these stations daypart.
As mentioned, you don't put on a station that w ok would completely cannibalize your own, so I guess you want to blow up the Wave too? So Kroq becomes K-Lit, and KTWV? You wanna maybe change them to Rock. Lol
Maybe 94.7 could become the latest and greatest American clueless version of EDM where it's specially programmed to do such a niche format as awfully as possible where as if it was done would need to be executed flawlessly. Yeah that happened on 103.5 in New York in 1996, and within 5 years they changed it.
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