Power 106’s 40th Anniversary is approaching.

[ChannelFlipper]

This comes up every time a station hits a milestone anniversary. The problem is, what fans think would be "something special" would be an interruption of what people tune to the station for today.

It works, when it does, on stations with a high service profile. KNX can get away with 100 year anniversary pieces as they did in 2021 because they can peg it to the whole "depend on us" thing. Stevie Wonder's KJLH has had such a high profile in the Black community that I think they could do it.

No industry disrespects its own history and cheapens it's product like radio.

 

[michael hagerty]

No industry disrespects its own history and cheapens it's product like radio.

I mean, I agree with the sentiment. I'm sure I could come up with other industries, but at the end of the day, broadcasting is a business based on holding the attention of a group of people with more choices than time for as long as it can in any given shot.

 

[yeoldeschool]

As a longtime Power 106 fan, I can only hope.

Call up the PD and ask if he knows! Isn't E-Man still their programming director? He was last I looked, and he's been there since the mid '90s.

 

[K.M. Richards]

This comes up every time a station hits a milestone anniversary. The problem is, what fans think would be "something special" would be an interruption of what people tune to the station for today.

I think the fans don't realize that they are a relatively small portion of a station's audience in matters like station anniversaries. The vast majority of listeners are -- whether we like it or not -- button-pushers. To take L.A. as an example, if Power 106 plays a song a typical listener doesn't personally like, they'll punch over to KDAY. Or to Real 92.3, if they're outside the 93.5 coverage area. They do not have the same emotional attachment as the fans do.

Which is why Mike's statement is on the mark. The vast majority of Power listeners would react to the "something special" as "WTF is this?" ... and then button-push.

And the same thing would happen if KIIS-FM decided to do "something special" to celebrate a milestone as a CHR. Or KROQ wanted to commemorate the launch of "Roq of the 80's" under the late Rick Carroll. Or KRTH acknowledging the day they stopped being KHJ-FM.

Don't get me wrong ... I think it's great that Brandon, et al, have remained fairly loyal to Power. But they cannot speak for the majority of the audience, just as the handful of people who think many songs on KRTH's playlist are "burned to a crisp" cannot speak for the exponentially larger number of listeners that obviously don't agree (or they'd stop listening).

So, even if Meruelo knows about the anniversary, I doubt they'll do anything special.

 

[K.M. Richards]

No industry disrespects its own history and cheapens it's product like radio.

Personally, I see all of that more as doing what we have to do to stay as viable as we can as we face increased competition from a variety of media.

When I started in this business, there wasn't streaming or podcasts. Hell, Al Gore hadn't invented the Internet yet. (Gratuitous joke there.) Computers were still huge mainframes, not desktop machines ... and no one was predicting that eventually we would all carry a computer around with us everywhere as smartphones. There was no satellite radio; there was barely satellite-delivered television, as HBO and Ted Turner were just starting the cable revolution. And cable no longer has the spotlight that it had during its prominence.

Everything evolves, because if it doesn't, it first becomes irrelevant and then goes extinct. When was the last time you saw someone offering buggy whips for sale? The equivalent of that in radio is programming that the audience eschews.

Point blank, that statement is unfairly narrow in scope. If you look at the bigger picture it's an insult.

Because we're still here, when so many other forms of media have disappeared.

 

[yeoldeschool]

There are circumstances where flashback specials can work. It's typically when a station's format has evolved over time as a result of continuous, gradual tweaking, rather than through sudden format flips. And it also requires that not an excessive amount of time has passed, so that there isn't an entire generation gap between the old and the new. In cases like that, the audience will have often evolved with the format itself as a matter of general evolutionary moves in musical trends and tastes among their demographic's peers. Rather than causing everyone to punch buttons, flashback specials for them can create buzz, drawing in higher than average numbers of listeners, and longer periods of listening.

During the mid-1990s, KPWR did a memorial day weekend special that resurrected its entire late '80s, early '90s, pre-hip hop playlist, along with all the original jingles, sweepers, and slogans from that period. It worked exceptionally well. Only 4-5 years had passed since the station sounded that way as a matter of course, and people had a blast hearing the "n00bs" like Big Boy introducing "Tarzan Boy" after taking a "Power 106 INSTANT request."

Today, that wouldn't work because the current audience, even though it's the product of decades of slow evolution, simply wasn't alive when KPWR sounded that way.

I still have a couple chrome cassettes buried somewhere deep in storage of that old memorial day broadcast. I wonder if sending copies to them would help inspire an HD2 re-creation of the old dance/crossover KPWR, a la KROQ's "ROQ of the '80s."

 

[K.M. Richards]

Today, that wouldn't work because the current audience, even though it's the product of decades of slow evolution, simply wasn't alive when KPWR sounded that way.

If ever someone managed a succinct summarization of what David, Mike, BigA, and myself have been saying all these years, that was it.

 

[michael hagerty]

Every year, KHJ made a big deal out of its anniversary.

The first year (1966), they asked listeners to send in birthday cards to the station.



Entrants got a Boss Goldens album and a 32-page souvenir booklet and were eligible for a drawing for a $2,000 swimming pool, a color TV, a scuba diving outfit, a surfboard, a complete wardrobe, a motorcycle or a roundtrip to Europe.



The second year (1967), KHJ had the listeners send in birthday cards. No prizes for the qualifiers, but the winner got a 1967 Firebird 400 Convertible.



The third year (1968), the listeners sent cards in again. This time, they gave away a color TV. One.

Maybe they felt like they were cheaping out. So in 1969, for KHJ's fourth birthday, they came up with the "Birthday Payday" contest.

Each hour, KHJ would announce some sort of historic event, but withhold the date. If you were whatever number caller, you told them your birthday (month and day) and if your birthday matched the date of the historical event, which they'd announce on the air, you won whatever the jackpot was.

It launched on Wednesday afternoon, April 30 with $2,500 and went up by ten bucks each time they had a loser.

Their winner happened overnight Friday night into Saturday morning, May 3. $2,920. Too soon, too little, wrong daypart. Sucks for promotion, so KHJ figures it's worth it to re-launch the contest with another $2,500 Monday morning.

A second winner 45 hours after re-launch---$2,950. Again in overnights on May 7.

So, KHJ, made of money in those days, decides to roll the dice one more time, and re-set the jackpot to $2,500, with ten bucks added each hour until the jackpot is won.

And every hour of every day for the rest of the May---nobody wins. By May 30, the jackpot is $8,020. On the back of the May 28 Boss 30, there's a promo that reads:

"On July 16, 1969, the United States is scheduled to rocket the first man to the moon! If the "Birthday Payday" jackpot hasn't been won by then, it'll be worth $18,230 in KHJ cash!"

The trouble is that the official rules for the contest didn't give an end date. KHJ was stuck.

Until the first week of June. When a listener claims what is by then a $10,420 jackpot ($91,520 in today's money).

And for the third time---it happened in overnights. 3:11 a.m.:



For KHJ's fifth birthday (1970), Bill Wade held a piece of cake up to the camera for a Boss 30 cover.



KHJ never mentioned its birthday again.

 

[briancraig]

Due to the sales element of the Hot 100, a lot of those 21-40 songs on AT40 were R&B songs that didn’t get played on most top 40 stations. 45s sales were still important in the R&B market in the 1970s long after albums had become the main way rock listeners consumed music.

I had a friend who always thought it was funny to hear Casey introduce all those James Brown titles from the early 1970s

I Got Ants in My Pants (and I Want to Dance) Part 1
Hot Pants (She Got to Use What She Got to Get What She Wants) Part 1
Get Up, Get into It, Get Involved Part 1