Earlier in this thread, a man stated that he would be admonished for suggesting that a pop oldies station should be tried instead of an urban station. Happens all the time on this board, won't work, no money in oldies, so on and so on. But then he was called blatantly racist for even suggesting such a thing and was called coded. I highly doubt that comment had anything to do with PPM. I'm a Southern white man with mixed race children and grandchildren and I've been dealing with racism my entire life. To see the word racist just tossed around like that is insulting. Racists are truly evil, disgusting people. Trust me, I've met enough of them. So, I'd like an explanation of what was meant by coded and why it got a seemingly innocuous statement labeled as racist.
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99X Dropped from 99.7 HD-2 and 98.9 FM
- Thread starter RadioDoogie
- Start date
Hi Mitch! Much love to you and your family. Like you, my family is mixed as well, so for someone to try and call me a racist tells me that they don’t know me and they’re just digging for something to say when they have nothing but negativity to spread.
I appreciate you and your insights here. You’re one of the regulars whose posts I really enjoy.
Someone should try and launch a 70s/80s/90s pop AC on a small signal and see what happens. There. I said it again. And I stand by it.
Nearly every single station in a PPM market has an encoder. One major exception are the Central Florida Educational Radio Foundation stations in Orlando including former market leader "Z88" WPOZ where the head of the organization got into a tiff with Nielsen and ripped them out.
My guess is that the Fox-FM owner is misconstruing that with Total Line Reporting for all his signals which is only done for subscribing stations. Because he's on a network of small AMs and translators he would need that to even get a fraction of a share visible.
You can bash Urban in Atlanta all you want, but the various flavors of it bring in the ratings on a wide variety of signals, from class Cx FMs to Class A FMs to translators to class B regionals and class D daytimers on AM.
People thought that WPZE would get clobbered by PPMs, but nope--it's still got great ratings.
The only one that doesn't make any sense from a ratings standpoint is WBIN. Is iHeart still getting what they want from it?
People thought that WPZE would get clobbered by PPMs, but nope--it's still got great ratings.
The only one that doesn't make any sense from a ratings standpoint is WBIN. Is iHeart still getting what they want from it?
No one is bashing urban at all. In fact, V103 is a fortress, even after all these years. Talent, music, imaging, signal, they have it all. They’re not number one anymore because their urban audience is diluted by several stations, but they are still the Cadillac of the format in Atlanta.
I highly doubt that. He’s very smart and savvy, and an expert on the radio business. He certainly knows what total line reporting is. He’s not basing his information on his stations not showing up; he’s basing it on what Nielsen told him.
Nice “guess,” but how about some facts?
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The original poster was simply suggesting that Atlanta is too saturated with Urban stations and that an additional one would not make sense. You then suggested a Classic Hits station.
Nothing remotely racist about that.
IMO, OG’s format is up for grabs since OG 98.9 in now official. Finally a new voice guy for liners which sounds like Milk Styles voiceovers. Sadly, the signal on 98.9 compared to 97.9 is horrible. It would somewhat leave a format hole for a metro wide coverage of classic/throwback hip-hop but I don’t think any major companies has launched any of those formats since the early and mid 2000s.iHeart did launch the classic hip hop format in Tampa in 20204 on 2 frequencies and they still have a few “Throwback” branded translators in various cities. Audacy also relaunched 102 Jamz in Orlando the same year with an all classic hip hop format. Radio One did have the “Boom” throwback brand which have all flipped in many of their markets including here on 102.9.
It will be shocking to see if iHeart or anyone here does any tweaks and/or flips in response.
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Not sure if this has anything to do with it, but does anyone else feel like the "return" of 99X has kinda been a failure? They don't really do anything fun with the classic alternative motive outside of like their resurrection sunday meetup (hmm, same name as 91X's, very creative), and made a beer for their station. Besides that, they don't really go in depth with their classic library, they lack a huge local show (that they had before the format flip to classic), Leslie Fram is off the station again and their currents are just staple acts from 20-30 years ago with the rare cumulus-pushed song. It seems like they did what 91X did but in the most safe, boring way possible. Last time I checked their ratings were around the 2 share, and now they're not viewable at all. I think 99X will be gone again.
Cumulus and Nielsen have been entangled in a lawsuit for a few months now. None of the the Cloud company’s stations are being listed while this goes through.
I somewhat know certain people involved with the station - they’re doing fine in target demos. They’ve invested a decent amount of manpower to make it work. Unless if the bottom completely falls out, they’re not changing.
If anything, if the revenue stream gets to be too small, I think they would automate the station and dump the staff. What else could they flip 100.5 to? Better to serve a niche audience that they know is there than take a chance on another format that might completely flop.
OG100.5 😁
Seriously I would attempt to copy 1070 in Memphis. They are making enough on an AM signal without a translator for iHeart to keep it going.
Now that would be something different! I'd enjoy that.
I wish U1 would do that on 1110 in Charlotte. But they've put the tower site land up for sale.
I haven't quite understood their thinking. If the site is up for sale, why not just simulcast the FM until a sale happens? Their ratings probably would increase in the interim. The only reason I can think of for not doing that is perhaps they feel that if/when the AM does go dark, they want to make sure all of the WBT listeners have moved to FM. But what they've been doing with 1110 comes across as ridiculous.
*biting my tongue*
Another word that comes to mind is incompetence.
Their Mission Statement:
"Our mission is to be the most trusted source in the African-American community that informs, entertains and inspires our audience by providing culturally relevant integrated content through our radio, television, and digital platforms."
In contrast, here's what CEO Liggins said in 2020: “By adding three best-in-class general market formats (adult contemporary, sports, news and talk) to our existing cluster of stations that super-serve the Black and Urban consumer, Urban One will be a dominant player across all segments of the growing Charlotte market. The ability to build scale with a complete market offering in multiple genres is what makes this deal so exciting.”
It does make some money, and targets men in a largely female-targeted cluster. And again, it does well in their target demos.
Unless the bottom completely falls out, I don’t see any outright format change coming.
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Agree 100%
WBT has 3 Blaw-Knox towers, two of which were rebuilt after Hurricane Hugo. Too bad that those are probably goners.
That said, while WBT is a class A clear-channel station, their night signal is so directional as to be comparable to a class B. It's almost as bad as WCNN's night signal. I can never pick them up in Atlanta after dark, while WSM, KMOX, WLW, and WLS are no biggie.
I wonder if Urban One could sell or transfer the class A rights to some other eastern station, similar to what happened to WOWO.