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Mike Kaplan named PD of WRFF

A

atthestars

Per RadioInsight. Amber Miller remains as APD/MD and nights.

I'm sure people from the LA board will have some opinions on Kaplan ;)

radioinsight.com

Mike Kaplan Joins Alt 104.5 Philadelphia As Program Director - RadioInsight

iHeartMedia has named Mike Kaplan as Program Director of Alternative "Alt 104.5" WRFF Philadelphia. The move marks a return to iHeart for Kaplan where he programmed "Alt 98.7" KYSR Los Angeles from 2013-17. He most recently was with Audacy as Senior VP of Alternative Programming and PD of "Alt...
radioinsight.com radioinsight.com
 
101tm said:
I hear the haters approaching….

Interested to see what he will do with WRFF.
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WRFF does not really have a ratings problem. It has a sales problem and has for a decade or more.. It's power ration (the comparison of ratings to revenue) is horrible and they just can't seem to monetize the ratings. They have about a 0.6 power ratio and never have gotten above that level.
 
DavidEduardo said:
WRFF does not really have a ratings problem. It has a sales problem and has for a decade or more.. It's power ration (the comparison of ratings to revenue) is horrible and they just can't seem to monetize the ratings. They have about a 0.6 power ratio and never have gotten above that level.
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Is that mostly because of the power of stations like WIP and WMMR to pull in major male numbers?
 
atthestars said:
Is that mostly because of the power of stations like WIP and WMMR to pull in major male numbers?
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That's obviously a big part. But alternative rock has an image of being great for bail bondsmen and pawn shops but not much else.
 
This is a different job for Kaplan. When he was at Audacy, he was in charge of everything: The music, the talent, the imaging, and everything else company-wide. In this case, there are limitations. iHeart is a bit more top-down in terms of what its stations can do, Kaplan will carry the Woody show, regardless of his views on it. Of course, Kaplan was directly involved with the show when he ran KYSR. Now he's just another local PD without much to say about the show. What he might do is try to get more localized content from the show. But as for music, there are format captains above him who oversee music strategy. He used to have that job at Audacy, but not at iHeart. So we'll see what he does. I agree that the problems this station has are not in areas that Kaplan can fix.
 
uhaul396 said:
Why keep this station alive. There are other format options for 104.5. They shouldn't be stuck with a format that's mediocre
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It fits their cluster strategy by complementing the demos of their other stations.
 
wibgradio99 said:
Would be nice if Miller (soccer mom chicken Alternative MD) left, she moved the station in a different direction
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Judging from his track record, Kaplan isn't likely to move the station away from that direction, regardless of Miller's presence. The Audacy stations under Kaplan were more "soccer mom" sounding than WRFF has ever been. Besides, I think iHeart corporate dictated the direction of the station more than anything.

I personally think it would be best for WRFF to either go straight-up Classic Alternative, or to a version of AAA that's more mainstream and younger-skewing than WXPN. They could bring back the "Radio 104.5" branding for either of those.
 
mjb1124 said:
I personally think it would be best for WRFF to either go straight-up Classic Alternative, or to a version of AAA that's more mainstream and younger-skewing than WXPN. They could bring back the "Radio 104.5" branding for either of those.
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Again, remembering that this is a business, do you really think "it would be best" for them to do one of your suggested formats? Or would you just prefer that they do one of them? I'm interested to find out why/how you think either of them could make better business sense than what the station is currently doing.
 
mjb1124 said:
I personally think it would be best for WRFF to either go straight-up Classic Alternative, or to a version of AAA that's more mainstream and younger-skewing than WXPN.
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What we're seeing in Seattle is that it's very hard for a commercial AAA station to compete with a heritage non-commercial AAA. The format is just better suited to a platform that doesn't have to reach sellable demographics.

Seattle's KPNW is getting killed by the non-com KEXP, especially in younger demos, even though both stations play a lot of older music.
 
DavidEduardo said:
It fits their cluster strategy by complementing the demos of their other stations.
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You are an amazingly patient person.

I feel like we should create an automated response with just a link that opens 300 browser tabs, each containing various threads from this very site where it's already been explained that...
  1. WRFF's ratings aren't the problem; it's that advertisers don't want to buy them.
  2. The format works within iHeart's current cluster.
 
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