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Power 96 shifts to gold-friendly CHR

101tm said:
radioinsight.com

Power 96 Moves To Rhythmic Gold Focus

Right after Audacy CHR "B96" WBBM-FM Chicago moved to a gold based Rhythmic focus last month, it was also joined
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com

Power 96 made a music tweak recently similar to its sister station in Chicago which has seen headwinds for a while. It looks like it’s gone back in to a rhythmic CHR type direction with 90s and 00s tracks mixed in with currents.
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I revised the column to make it more clear, but with only 4 currents/recurrents per hour I would not call it a CHR anymore. Rhythmic Hot AC isn't fair either. Needs something new, which I have posited to a few others.
 
lanceventa said:
I revised the column to make it more clear, but with only 4 currents/recurrents per hour I would not call it a CHR anymore. Rhythmic Hot AC isn't fair either. Needs something new, which I have posited to a few others.
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I’m a bit surprised they made this move. From what I’ve read on here, Power was still billing fairly well as a mainstream CHR even if the ratings were stagnant. It would make a bit more sense if 97.3 hadn’t made a similar move a while back, although they’re playing much more new stuff. Then there’s 93.9, but they change directions every few months it seems so I’m not sure what they’re doing now…
 
lanceventa said:
I revised the column to make it more clear, but with only 4 currents/recurrents per hour I would not call it a CHR anymore. Rhythmic Hot AC isn't fair either. Needs something new, which I have posited to a few others.
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Might I suggest Millennial Hits? Maybe Rhythmillennial?
 
exdjted said:
Might I suggest Millennial Hits? Maybe Rhythmillennial?
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As someone who coined the first term in 2019 when I and a programmer were developing "2K1" as a pop based 1997-2012 based "Next Generation Classic Hits" format until the pandemic threw our plans astray, I'm hesitant to repurpose that for anything other than that. But it does come close to filling that term.
 
I’m starting to enjoy WPOW’s new direction. As I mentioned earlier in other posts I wouldn’t be surprised if Audacy use it in other markets.
 
I also don't understand the nostalgia factor. I love hearing the older songs on stations like Z100. However, what about today's Gen Z's and teens what about artists who are from their generation making music? 🤔 We keep playing 25 year old songs instead of embracing new music and artists that could change our music industry and society.
 
It seems like songs are hanging around too long on the CHR's. It's not uncommon to hear 20 year old songs on CHR's. Maybe the FM audience is aging and the CHRs are getting more oldies-friendly in response to that?
 
How much music overlap exists between Power 96 and Hits 97.3 now?

When Hits 97.3 dropped most if not all of its currents to go with a (mostly) library driven format, I felt at the time it was an opportunity missed for Power 96.
 
CentralFL said:
It seems like songs are hanging around too long on the CHR's. It's not uncommon to hear 20 year old songs on CHR's. Maybe the FM audience is aging and the CHRs are getting more oldies-friendly in response to that?
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That is mostly a symptom of not enough high-testing new stuff to fill a playlist.
 
MVB13 said:
I also don't understand the nostalgia factor. I love hearing the older songs on stations like Z100. However, what about today's Gen Z's and teens what about artists who are from their generation making music? 🤔 We keep playing 25 year old songs instead of embracing new music and artists that could change our music industry and society.
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It's the music industry's job to promote new music.

Radio plays new stuff that ends up, shortly after, with good research results. Radio's experience, going back five or six decades, is that too much new music causes listener loss. That's why even in the 60's and 70's, Top 40 stations added, perhaps, five or less songs a week... and when stations got more specific research starting in the later 70's, we found 3 or 4 new songs a week was even better unless we had a couple more from that moment's superstars.
 
Last year there was a thread in the NYC board about Z-100 cutting back the number of spins for currents and adding more deep gold (going back to the early 90s). They only did it for about 6 months before returning to previous standards. We may be seeing the same thing happening to Audacy's CHRs in Chicago, Miami, and Philadelphia. As of now, all three stations are still listed by Mediabase as Top 40.

Here's the thread about Z-100:

 
Paul1033 said:
Or even WFBC B93.7 for that matter.
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I hope not. I’m not a fan of what WPOW and WBBM-FM are doing at all, but they weren’t good CHR’s before compared to their competition. It wouldn’t be bad if the golds were more balanced as far as genre.
 
101tm said:
I hope not. I’m not a fan of what WPOW and WBBM-FM are doing at all, but they weren’t good CHR’s before compared to their competition. It wouldn’t be bad if the golds were more balanced as far as genre.
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In case you are not aware of the demographics of those two markets, both are heavily Hispanic and the younger generation is predominantly English speaking; they look for a rhythmic CHR and that is what those two stations are doing.

Both of those stations did very well several decades ago when they were not straight CHRs but rather, rhythmic CHR without being pure Churban. The model was Bill Tanner's Power 96 in Miami, which principally targeted Hispanics. It worked well enough to be #1 most of the time he was involved with it, through the end of the 1990's.
 
TheBigA said:
Although looking at Mediabase, there are more of what I'd call rhythmic songs being played on WPOW than B96. Especially among the most-played.
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Which seems logical as Chicago has a lower percentage of Hispanics and is, of course, not "in the tropics" as anyone who has been there in January knows well.
 
DavidEduardo said:
In case you are not aware of the demographics of those two markets, both are heavily Hispanic and the younger generation is predominantly English speaking; they look for a rhythmic CHR and that is what those two stations are doing.

Both of those stations did very well several decades ago when they were not straight CHRs but rather, rhythmic CHR without being pure Churban. The model was Bill Tanner's Power 96 in Miami, which principally targeted Hispanics. It worked well enough to be #1 most of the time he was involved with it, through the end of the 1990's.
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Oh, yes - I just don’t want Audacy to go adding a bunch of gold hip hop tracks to a station like (my local) WFBC (which fortunately I believe is unlikely). I get the reasoning in Chicago and Miami, just not my cup of tea personally. Straight up Rhythmic CHR’s in general seem to work best in markets with a large Hispanic population, and on the other spectrum, very white markets where a straight up hip hop/urban contemporary may not garner enough listeners.

I’m a 31 year old male, so I’m not sure if CHR even wants me these days - probably not. LOL
 
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