• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Can B-96 be saved

101tm said:
The males I know around my age that listen to the radio regularly listen to country, active and classic rock, variety hits, sports, alt, maybe Hot AC surprisingly but that’s about it.
Click to expand...
Hot AC has basically become male-friendly pop in the last year and change. A lot more country and Alternative/Active Rock crossing over. I would say the generic Hot AC strategy right now is use the female-centric pop stars as anchors and surround them with male-friendly artists on medium rotation, and if one of them breaks out put them at heavy too.

Morgan Wallen and Luke Combs both hit #1 at Hot AC and Wallen barely reached #5 at pop despite how huge “Last Night” was and Combs peaked at #7 there. Jelly Roll reached the top 5 on Hot AC with “Need A Favor” but missed the pop top 10 with that song. Zack Bryan and Hardy have had mild success crossing to Hot AC as well, which is far better than what they’ve gotten at pop.

As far as rockers go, Shinedown peaked at #15, U2 just missed the top 10, Fall Out Boy scored a top 10 Hot AC hit (missed the top 20 on pop), Nickelback of all bands just missed the top 20. blink-182 is currently #15, 30 Seconds To Mars is literally right behind them at #16. Noah Kahan is just outside the top 10. Matchbox Twenty hit the top 20 twice. A few more Alt/Active songs from The Black Keys, Cold War Kids, Papa Roach, and Cage The Elephant are looking to cross to Hot AC as we get closer to spring too.

Hot AC also is getting some Christian crossover too. The format is definitely hashing out a more unique identity for itself over the last couple of years after a period of time where it was barely distinguishable from CHR/pop. Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo and Miley Cyrus still score big on Hot AC but a lot more artists friendlier to men do better here than they do on pop (if they’re even serviced to pop at all). Hot ACs also seem to generally do better in the ratings than CHR/pop stations do, including in Chicago. Makes you wonder.

TL;DR: if your Swiftie girlfriend/wife puts on the Hot AC station she’s happy with you, if she puts on CHR/pop she hella mad at you and you need to fix things!

EDIT: updated with more information.
 
Last edited:
macattack said:
Hot ACs also seem to generally do better in the ratings than CHR/pop stations do, including in Chicago. Makes you wonder.
Click to expand...
Hot AC's are sometimes "newer" than CHR's these days. At the moment, on Mediabase, if you look at the top 100 most-played Gold's on CHR vs. Hot AC in the past week: 48 of 100 on CHR are older than 10 years old. 42 of 100 on Hot AC are older than 10 years. It wasn't that long ago that 10 years back was about the oldest a CHR was willing to go. Now, there are even a few 1990's titles in that top 100!

Hot AC's of course play recurrents and golds a bit more than CHR, making them more familiar by default. To that point, WTMX is presently 33% current, 33% recurrent, 33% gold, based on Mediabase definitions. They have 1988's "Fast Car" by Tracy Champman in a current slot, smartly so, which is probably pulling the true current number down a bit and pushing the gold number higher.

CHR's and Hot AC's often cume many of the same listeners, though. A would-be CHR listener might be hearing a Backstreet Boys gold from 1999 on the CHR, or a Chainsmokers gold from 2016 on Hot AC. Yes, both are "gold", but which would a CHR listener in 2024 rather hear? Debatable, or as mac said: makes you wonder.

What many CHR's are doing right now is not working. For more than one reason.
 
radiofan86 said:
They have 1988's "Fast Car" by Tracy Champman in a current slot, smartly so, which is probably pulling the true current number down a bit and pushing the gold number higher.
Click to expand...

Nope. That version of Fast Car is the Luke Combs cover from the summer. It's in their Top 10.
 
TheBigA said:
Nope. That version of Fast Car is the Luke Combs cover from the summer. It's in their Top 10.
Click to expand...

They play both

WTMX was always a bit more edgy than most Hot AC stations though. Lot of Modern Rock for awhile. They were playing Eminem back in 2002, which was quite unusual for a Hot AC. The CHR and Alternative stations were also playing Eminem back then. Hot AC however would be the place to avoid Eminem. These days it's pretty common to hear Rap on Hot AC stations. Over time they evolved more toward traditional Hot AC and then more of an Adult CHR. It was initially Mainstream AC.
 
Last edited:
radiofan86 said:
Hot AC's are sometimes "newer" than CHR's these days. At the moment, on Mediabase, if you look at the top 100 most-played Gold's on CHR vs. Hot AC in the past week: 48 of 100 on CHR are older than 10 years old. 42 of 100 on Hot AC are older than 10 years. It wasn't that long ago that 10 years back was about the oldest a CHR was willing to go. Now, there are even a few 1990's titles in that top 100!

Hot AC's of course play recurrents and golds a bit more than CHR, making them more familiar by default. To that point, WTMX is presently 33% current, 33% recurrent, 33% gold, based on Mediabase definitions. They have 1988's "Fast Car" by Tracy Champman in a current slot, smartly so, which is probably pulling the true current number down a bit and pushing the gold number higher.

CHR's and Hot AC's often cume many of the same listeners, though. A would-be CHR listener might be hearing a Backstreet Boys gold from 1999 on the CHR, or a Chainsmokers gold from 2016 on Hot AC. Yes, both are "gold", but which would a CHR listener in 2024 rather hear? Debatable, or as mac said: makes you wonder.

What many CHR's are doing right now is not working. For more than one reason
Click to expand...
Are there any CHR's actually remembering the Contemporary part? 48 of 100 spins being 10+ years old makes them AC at best and bordering at being golden oldies stations. In 1989, Golden Oldies WCBS-FM played songs which were 5 year or older. Now WHTZ "Z-100" is regularly playing songs which are over 5 years old. No wonder so many CHR's have anemic ratings.

Does anyone know of a CHR that plays mostly songs under 2 years old?
 
CentralFL said:
No wonder so many CHR's have anemic ratings.
Click to expand...

The Top 50 at Z100 are all either 2024 or 23. Just below that, you get Justin Bieber's Sorry, which is 7 years old. But it only gets played twice a week.

The difference I see between CHR now and ten years ago is the playlist is bigger. Z100 playlist is 220 songs. That is twice the size of a traditional CHR. Those bottom 100 songs are there for texture, and the oldest one I see is from 1998.
 
CentralFL said:
Are there any CHR's actually remembering the Contemporary part? 48 of 100 spins being 10+ years old makes them AC at best and bordering at being golden oldies stations.

Does anyone know of a CHR that plays mostly songs under 2 years old?
Click to expand...
Well, 48 of the top 100 gold songs are 10+ years old. Not the entire playlist. I was just pointing out how old the golds had gotten at the format.

Based on Mediabase numbers, WDOD "Hits 96" in Chattanooga is quite current/recurrent heavy with minimal gold. WDJX in Louisville is another who's golds mostly only go back a few years, same with WFLY "Fly 92.3" in Albany, NY. There are others, but I picked those 3 as they are at least medium sized markets and have respectable ratings.
 
radiofan86 said:
Well, 48 of the top 100 gold songs are 10+ years old. Not the entire playlist. I was just pointing out how old the golds had gotten at the format.
Click to expand...

I think they're trying to broaden the age of CHR from 18-24 to 18-34. That's what that's all about. They're playing currents twice as frequently as Hot AC.
 
TheBigA said:
I think they're trying to broaden the age of CHR from 18-24 to 18-34. That's what that's all about. They're playing currents twice as frequently as Hot AC.
Click to expand...
For several decades, going back to the 90's at least, CHR has targeted 18-34 women and, in most cases where the same cluster did not have a Hot AC, 25-44 women.
 
DavidEduardo said:
For several decades, going back to the 90's at least, CHR has targeted 18-34 women and, in most cases where the same cluster did not have a Hot AC, 25-44 women.
Click to expand...

But the size of the 18-24 part of that demo has shrunk, so they've broadened the playlist to keep the older half.

We're actually seeing the younger part of the CHR audience showing up in the country format in some markets.
 
TheBigA said:
But the size of the 18-24 part of that demo has shrunk, so they've broadened the playlist to keep the older half.

We're actually seeing the younger part of the CHR audience showing up in the country format in some markets.
Click to expand...
But, as I said, the core focus was 25-34 and 24-44 women because that group shows up on general market 25-54 buys. The 18-24 group does not, so it is of less value.

More significant in that group is the change to later family formation or no family formation in the current generation and even more women in the workplace even after marriage.
 
There are a number of heritage CHR’s out there in the dumps like ‘BBM-FM. Their owners seem to be sticking with the format and hoping for the tide to turn, but I feel there’s a longer term shift happening as David mentioned where older music becomes a mainstay on the format to capture a wider audience.

What I’ll be interested to see is if both CHR’s in 2 CHR markets like Chicago will make it long term. Audacy has a number of larger market stations that are performing poorly but they obviously still bill well or serve as part of a cluster or national strategy as they’re still chugging along in their markets’ ratings basements (just look at KROQ, KRBQ, WXBK, etc). Or perhaps there’s nothing else viable that can be done with them at the time.
 
TheBigA said:
What that means is they're selling a bunch of formats together.
Click to expand...
All clusters do that. Where I interned in 1963, they tried to sell all 5 local station in their group together as a package. If you bought only 4, the rate per station was higher. And if you bought three or less, even higher. So there was no way of telling or saying which stations were the preferred buy. And that was 61 years ago; nothing has changed.
 
TheBigA said:
But those 5 stations were in different markets.
Click to expand...
No, they were all in the same market and in the same building. AMs on 790, 1030, 1150, 1320 and 1440. That is why I said "local"; all had FM simulcasts as well. They had clusters in other markets as well.
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom