And you can trace overt attempts to attract young women to country music to Billy Ray Cyrus and "Achy Breaky Heart," in 1992, starting a line-dance craze fueled by hunky male performers. A direct line can be traced to stars of today like Luke Bryan, whose fans are overwhelmingly young and female and whose music makes no attempt to appeal to 55+, or even 45+.
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96.5 to Country
- Thread starter Cobra14
- Start date
That is true… what is your take on branding, Kelly? From where I’m standing, I don’t see a generic animal name cutting it. “The Wolf” obviously worked, but “The Bull” felt like a copy cat. I know you’re not a fan of using call letters, but I’d bet that someone out there would love to use KMPS (if Audacy weren’t holding onto those call letters now). I can’t overlook KAYO 96.9, where they took an old branding (that I assumed most people would have forgotten about), and made it recognizable brand yet again.
As far as I can tell, another country station would struggle unless they were able to create an immediate buzz with their brand.
If you're in a city that's never had an animal-branded station, neither the "Bull" or the "Wolf" that comes to town feels like a copy cat. The "Wolf" here in Vermont competes with a "Kixx." The "Bull" in Boston competes with a station with no branding other than "Country."
One has to understand the purpose of a brand. A brand doesn't attract an audience. Its purpose is to become an easy-to-recall anchor for (in this case a listener) to remember where to find you. 'I listen to Neal and Bob in the Morning on 96.5, The Dou*he'.
Call letters are usually the brand for legacy stations, but it's simpler to come up with a landmark or inanimate object that relates to your format: The Bull, Wolf, Kickin, Moose, whatever..
Even after all these years, 'content is still King'. The brand name isn't going to determine whether listeners stick around, but more as a way for listeners and advertisers to identify who you are.
I don't follow Seattle much. So, I can't vouch for all of that, but widely discussed was that David Field didn't like the way the CBS stations were run. He reportedly felt like they were inefficient, had too high of overhead, spent too much, and, by extension, had too low of margins. Using that logic, killing the more successful station can make sense if you're able to use the reduction in competition to increase revenue at your other property without significantly increasing expenses. It often doesn't work that way in practice, of course, but Entercom certainly wasn't the first (and won't be the last) to try it.
Steal from Peter to pay Paul... Same as it ever was.
KXXA does a nice job with "Classic Country" as does KYYO with "Your Country" - the latter allows for more personalization and ties in well with support for local military in the region.
Shania Twain was one of the biggest stars in country in the1990's - 2000's, and I would think a large portion of her fans were female. Same with other 90's female country stars like Trisha Yearwood, Dixie Chicks, Deana Carter, Mary-Chapin Carpenter, and the like. There used to be a large country music pub (the American version of the 'beer barn' you could probably have called it), and any time I went over there a large portion of the clientele were female, doing their line dancing and regular dancing to country covers bands during the 1990's. Same with another local beer barn that was popular during the Urban Cowboy thing in the early 80s, before that fad fizzled.
The country audience has always been close to 50/50 male-to-female. Some stations might have a few more men or women listening, but it’s usually a pretty even split. Seems like I heard the classic country stations tended to tilt a little more male, but that was before those stations started playing 90’s country. Not sure if that’s changed the audience much.
Which when you think about it; creates a challenge for having more than two country stations in the same market. Most station groups cover a demographic spread using multiple stations within the market. A sports station targets males 18-54. An AC station females 25-54. A classic rock station, males 25-54. So when Sales pitches agencies for advertising, it's easy to explain how your station group covers whatever demo gamut the agency wants to reach. With a modern country station, your demo is fairly wide and split M/F. As I've mentioned, unless one has a blockbuster AM drive show, now your audience is split again into quarters shared with the country station across town because chances are good, one station is playing the same popular and researched music as the other. In other words; the more Country stations in the market, the more everyone loses.
I wish I was a Cowboy played on KKWF one day which I used to hear on KMPS on the bus when I was younger.
Personally, I have really enjoyed the variety on KKWF now that they stand alone in the country format. Being solo seems to give them a little flexibility. This seems like a win-win for listeners and Audacy. I also agree with Kelly in the sense that I don't think anyone else jumping into the country fight would put enough effort in to make it worth their while. Something generic and cookie-cutter won't do it.
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