Why would you not hire a PD at the inception of such an
enormous task of switching a top 5 market radio station from "Active Rock" (
which it wasn't) to TALK?
It was public knowledge in September of last year that this was going to happen. There were rumblings Months before that. I'd ASSUME that some of the brass locally knew probably in January-March. So lets think about that, they knew, or they were tinkering with the idea - went ahead with it -
and here we are 16 months later and they're just now hiring a PD - who's never lived in Dallas. Awful decision. If it were almost any other format, great, but not with this.
They put all their eggs in the Rhyner basket, which I knew wasn't going to work from the jump. They thought that by hiring him it would instantly create a brand. I think what it really did was just piss off Ticket listeners and made them more loyal to The Ticket. ZERO Ticket listeners have gone to 97.1. ZERO. In fact, I think it's safe to say that more Eagle people went to the Ticket and Alt than anything.
@TheBigA - you wrote, "they're monetizing their personalities, which is a good thing. When you don't have ratings, sell the demos. When you don't have demos, sell the talent, and that's what they've done." We don't know how well that's working numbers-wise. However, to your point, yes they are obviously selling the personalities, but it's at a MAJOR cost to programming. Have you heard the length of the stopsets? Have you heard how many recorded endorsements there are in one break? A station like that, typically, should have TSL through the roof. You can have incredibly low cume with high tsl and rake in the ratings.
This happened in Detroit when I worked at WKRK which was a MALE TALK station. They sold all these endorsements and loaded up the stop sets, and not only did the ratings go down drastically, but all of those sponsors were extremely short-lived because they weren't effective at all. At all. At all.
At all. If you're the 12th spot, how effective do you think it's going to be. I'll never forget, they sold MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL to a nightclub which typically played dance music. So a TALK SHOW (us) every Monday went down and did a show from the night club on the main stage - and we did it for the entire season. There was never more than five people that showed up. We sat there embarrassed as Hell every Monday night. The station got paid, but do you think they ever did anything with the station again? And with social media now - if you flub something like that up - that badly - people will know.
This post is way too long. As I've said more than once on my posts, these are just my
opinions. I am not the God of radio.
radioinsight.com
