New Rock station coming to DFW?

[Loverofradio]

I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall during research done for the freak

 

[davideduardo]

I know you're not a fan of labels, but they do a lot of research on their new songs. For stations in currents based formats, such as country, urban, or pop, labels will gladly send you a tip if they see one of their songs is getting plays in other platforms. Then you compare their info with the other labels, and it gives you a good idea what's going on. Then you discuss in your weekly format meeting.

That is not uniformly done, and the research is often "do you like this song?" and not a comparison with 300 or so other songs you might play at a radio station.

Back in the day... labels saw stations start to do music tests. So they got companies to try to test the "hittiness" of new songs. They did not realize that even in callout, we find a station has to have given a song 80 to 100 spins for its listeners to form a real "like-love- neutral-dislike-hate" opinion. The record companies played a song a time or two and asked opinions. That does not work.

Once I had several staff members at my 11-Q and Z-93 in San Juan (#1 and #2 music stations) sit in on some music meetings. In general, the all "liked" nearly everything that we had pre-qualified and could not tell a possible hit from a genuine stiff. So we quit doing that; the radio people on the music committee looked at the potential for being a hit while the non radio people just said "sounds nice" but could not project into the future.

My best example was sitting at 102.9 in San Diego with our PD and our Music Assistant (we always had at least one woman out of 3 or 4 on a music committee) when the Sony promoter came by to hype whatever they were working. After we talked about those songs, he brought out a hand-labeled CD of a song and said, "here is something I want you to hear and give your opinion on.".

We were presented with Don By Four's "A Puro Dolor". Of course, it went on until a Shakira song took the title to be the most played song in U.S. Latin Radio ever. But we heard it the first time that day. We asked to hear it again. As the Sony guy was leaving, the PD and I looked at each other and we ran to the lobby where he was waiting for the elevator. "You can't leave until you give us that song."

We added it instantly and played it as the Sony guy was driving to LA. We heard the hit in that song, and wanted it badly. No research, just a combined 50 years or so of radio experience in a room. When we realized we were all blown away by the song, we knew we wanted the thrill of playing it for the first time on the radio.

 

[davideduardo]

I wish I could’ve been a fly on the wall during research done for the freak

Remember, music research consists of playing 400 to maybe 600 hooks for each participant. Today, online. Before, in a hotel meeting room or similar venue. Then the results are tabulated and, if all goes well the station gets a computer file after the test is done... might be a week of tend days from the first person scoring songs to the last one finishing. And then a day to tabulate (including eliminating "bad participants") and create the desired columns and tabulations like factor analysis for "fit" scores.

 

[TheBigA]

That is not uniformly done, and the research is often "do you like this song?" and not a comparison with 300 or so other songs you might play at a radio station.

It's a lot more professional than that. At least in some formats. The promo people are all former PDs, so we know them, and they know they can't BS us. As I said, if you take one label's research, send it to their competitor, and then compare it with other PDs in your company, you can come up with some interesting information. Once again, I'm talking strictly about currents. I would never ask a label about gold. They wouldn't know.

 

[101tm]

I think the playlist will expand by next week. It’s essentially in a jockless stunt format now. If they can make additional revenue having the Mavs, it’s not an issue. Having Ben and skin come back next week is going to be unfortunate.

Has Ben and Skin coming back been confirmed?

 

[Jay S]

And that’s why I love 99.5 KISS

If they’re going more gold-based like 99.5 KISS, I’d love to see them really focus on the 90s and early 00s and add some gems like Stabbing Westward and Rammstein among others. I’ve seen “Du Hast” in rotation on 99.5 KISS recently. A few years ago, KEGL played it as bumper music, but then I got disappointed when they didn’t start to play the whole song.

 

[charles1234]

If they’re going more gold-based like 99.5 KISS, I’d love to see them really focus on the 90s and early 00s and add some gems like Stabbing Westward and Rammstein among others. I’ve seen “Du Hast” in rotation on 99.5 KISS recently. A few years ago, KEGL played it as bumper music, but then I got disappointed when they didn’t start to play the whole song.

KEGL played Rammstein yesterday but didn’t pop up on their playlist, there’s a couple more that they played but those never showed up on their playlist neither.

 

[Identnut]

We added it instantly and played it as the Sony guy was driving to LA. We heard the hit in that song, and wanted it badly. No research, just a combined 50 years or so of radio experience in a room. When we realized we were all blown away by the song, we knew we wanted the thrill of playing it for the first time on the radio.

And that song had a lot going for it from the get-go, because it was by a proven hitmaker, Panamanian Omar Alfanno, who had done great things for Gilberto Santa Rosa and Victor Manuelle at that point. What's the chance that something similar is going to happen for a fresher-faced producer?

 

[TheBigA]

Has Ben and Skin coming back been confirmed?

They launched a YouTube channel Monday.

 

[charles1234]

Are they gone from The Eagle permanently?

 

[254dan]

If they’re going more gold-based like 99.5 KISS, I’d love to see them really focus on the 90s and early 00s and add some gems like Stabbing Westward and Rammstein among others. I’ve seen “Du Hast” in rotation on 99.5 KISS recently. A few years ago, KEGL played it as bumper music, but then I got disappointed when they didn’t start to play the whole song.

i caught them playing du hast yesterday so maybe

 

[macattack]

So far it feels like the natural endpoint for The Eagle if they hadn’t flipped. The Eagle was notoriously slow to add currents (even “sure things” like Shinedown and Disturbed would show up months after everywhere else), and played a rather bizarrely large amount of dinosaur rock in its final years. This feels like a resolute doubling down on the dinosaur rock and removing most remnants of new rock completely. It indicates that iHeart has close to zero confidence in new rock music and essentially cedes that lane to KVIL.

I feel like this isn’t going to work long-term. KVIL is already responding to the flip by going heavier as some of us expected; Deftones and Tool are starting to get spun and “For You” by Staind was also spun a short while ago. KVIL is also promoting an exclusive acoustic concert with Shinedown on its website and on the air; and Shinedown is as core of an Active Rock artist is there is in this day and age.

 

[MarkW]

Is any other station in Dallas doing that? You & Kramer are focusing on one group of songs. But each of the stations that play that group of massive hits combines those songs with some other very different songs. There are lots of ways to put together a curated playlist. You can do it so it all fits neatly into one very narrow box. That way you hit one very specific group. Or you can take elements from one group and combine it with elements from another similar group. One thing that has helped the country format achieve such mainstream popularity has been to combine various subgenres of country together, so people hear some of everything. Back to the bar analogy, it becomes more like a buffet.

My take on the Turbo list is it's way too male. That's fine if you have advertisers who only want men, or in the case of Sirius, no advertisers at all. My sense is that the problem with the Freak was not only that the audience was too small, but it was also too old and too male. So this approach is to tamp that down a little. Not a lot. The classic rock increases the women by a few points over what they'd get with all hard rock.

If your aim isn't to hit a 70%+ male audience, then I agree hard rock isn't the way to go (just like all sports and hot talk).

 

[MarkW]

An all-men station doesn't sell. You need to get their wives and girlfriends to listen as well.

WFAN, WSCR and WBZ-FM would beg to differ.

 

[MarkW]

Just a sidebar:

Whether done locally or across multiple markets, radio stations do extensive listener research both on image/concepts/talent and on individual songs.

Debating whether a song or an artist "should" or "should not" be on a particular station may be amusing and fun, but the fact is that stations have very sophisticated listener research on which to base song selection... and that is based on initial research to define the style and scope of the format.

This is not WKRP.

I strongly doubt such detailed research has been performed on a LOCAL level recently as it relates to KEGL - at least so far.

The same tired music formula as that used in 2022 is what we're seeing so far. Hopefully some noticeable fine tuning occurs with regard to song category rotation in the months ahead.

As a point of comparison, it took a couple years and a change in programming leadership for Audacy to finally fix multiple severely underperforming (at the time) alternative stations.

 

[sox fan matt]

So I assume KEGL is basically back to where they were musically before the freak, while ALT 103.7 is leaning harder.?

 

[TheBigA]

WFAN, WSCR and WBZ-FM would beg to differ.

You'd be surprised to know how many women like sports radio.

 

[MarkW]

Correct on KEGL.

Looking at KVIL's log, I see no discernible difference in the station's general sound.

You'd be surprised to know how many women like sports radio.

About 1 caller in every 20 to my local station is female.

Zero chance more than 25 percent of AQH listeners during talk programming on such stations is female.

 

[TheBigA]

KVIL is also promoting an exclusive acoustic concert with Shinedown on its website and on the air; and Shinedown is as core of an Active Rock artist is there is in this day and age.

So shouldn't alternative fans be upset that their music is being replaced by non-alt bands?

 

[TheBigA]

Zero chance more than 25 percent of AQH listeners during talk programming on such stations is female.

The typical sports talk station has 25% female audience. But KEGL likely wants 30%.

Have you been to a sports event lately? Lots of women. They are passionate, knowledgeable, and LOUD.

Do you think rock fans are the same as sports fans? I'd like to see research on that.