After Losing Jack, Westwood One Launches Two New Variety Hits Networks

[Y2kTheNewOldies]

https://radioinsight.com/headlines/...d-one-launches-two-new-variety-hits-networks/

Note these changes will take place in October.

CUMULUS MEDIA’s Westwood One, the industry powerhouse in satellite delivered 24-hour radio formats, has announced the launch of two Variety Hits formats to offer stations fresh content and competitive advantage in their markets. Variety Hits-Pop and Variety Hits-Rock will join 20 other radio formats which the company provides to 1500 affiliated radio stations. Westwood One’s Variety Hits formats will debut in mid-October.

Variety Hits focuses on familiar hits from five decades of music with long music sweeps, fun production and imaging, numerous opportunities for local station identification, and complete spot-break flexibility. It is distributed on STORQ2, Westwood One’s patented delivery platform. Affiliated stations retain their desired image, slogans and live shows, and local identifiers are supplied by the network imaging voice.

The Variety Hits format is available in two distinct versions: Variety Hits-Pop featuring artists like Journey, Madonna, Michael Jackson, and Maroon 5, and Variety Hits-Rock skewing toward artists like Aerosmith, Queen, Nirvana, and Fleetwood Mac. Both versions will have large libraries spanning the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s.

“The Variety Hits format checks a lot of boxes for many markets, and the time is right for us to build a satellite-delivered version that enhances our successful custom music-scheduled format,” commented Kirk Stirland, President of Programming at Westwood One. “We designed this to accommodate our customers who wanted an unbranded, flexible structure, with up to 13 opportunities an hour to make it their own.”

 

[PTBoardOp94]

Kind of funny, given that Westwood One eliminated their "Sam" format when they acquired "Jack" through one of their mergers. What goes around comes around, I suppose.

 

[davideduardo]

Kind of funny, given that Westwood One eliminated their "Sam" format when they acquired "Jack" through one of their mergers. What goes around comes around, I suppose.

I believe that Westood One did not "acquire" the Jack format, as that is controlled by Sparknet.

http://www.sparknet.co/

Westwood simply did not continue its syndication of the format to the smaller markets. Sparknet provides the format as a consultancy in the top 50 markets, while it did a full syndication in the smaller ones.

 

[TheBigA]

It's interesting to me that this particular company provides 24/7 programming to more stations than iHeart and Cumulus own combined. And if one were to look at their affiliate list, you'd see that most of those 1500 stations are owned by small, mom & pop owners, who've found a way to run their stations without any airstaff.

 

[mnradiofan]

It's interesting to me that this particular company provides 24/7 programming to more stations than iHeart and Cumulus own combined. And if one were to look at their affiliate list, you'd see that most of those 1500 stations are owned by small, mom & pop owners, who've found a way to run their stations without any airstaff.

I'm sure for many it just simply isn't financially viable to hire a local airstaff for part or all of the day.

We had such a station in the 1980's where I grew up. It covered the very fringe of a major market. IIRC they were "live and local" from 5AM - 7PM on the FM side, and aired an ABC format from 7PM-5AM. In the early days they would have an intern or a minimum wage engineer insert local spots manually (because it was cheaper than buying the automation gear) but by 1990 they were able to get the automation gear needed to do local spots automatically. Of course now it's rather trivial to do that with most modern computer systems.

The local owner just told me that they didn't have a large enough budget to hire more than 2-3 people (and the people they did hire wore multiple hats).

Looking at the website now, it doesn't look like it's changed much. Outside of daytime, weekday hours, they are an affiliate of Westwood One Classic Country.

 

[TheBigA]

Outside of daytime, weekday hours, they are an affiliate of Westwood One Classic Country.

Didn't know that stations could cherry pick this service...thought they had to clear it 24/7.

Perhaps they have a minimum spot load they have to carry.

 

[PTBoardOp94]

With SMN/ABC Radio Network in the old days, the dayparts could be cherry-picked. But they wanted their spots cleared in the dayparts you did not select. I think GMs could negotiate a cash buyout in lieu of running the spots, but my station always recorded the spots and played them back 2-5 minutes after they aired on the satellite.

 

[Kent]

Didn't know that stations could cherry pick this service...thought they had to clear it 24/7.

Perhaps they have a minimum spot load they have to carry.

Not sure about that particular WW1 service, but PT Board Op is correct that most of them allow you to cherrypick dayparts so long as you air a certain number of network spots outside of network programming or pay a fee.

I also once worked at an ABC/SMN affiliate. We aired live programming morning, middays, and afternoons and joined the bird at 7:00 PM. The number of spots and/or fees you paid were determined by your AQH. One of our stations aired the former Pure Gold format almost 24/7 and didn’t pay anything for it. The other, which was live about half the day, paid about $200/month for Today’s Best Hits.