-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Another NAC/SJ bites the dust
- Thread starter Tim
- Start date
of all of the multitude of flips, this one surprises me a lot. WNWV is locally owned and it seemed elyria-lorain was locked into the format, as for two decades it continually produced solid ratings with a signal that is 20 miles outside of cleveland and does not cover a lot of the eastern suburbs all that well. i can't imagine AAA doing any better, if not a whole lot worse, in a market like cleveland. total head-scratcher, but with the state of the format, i guess nothing is ever all that surprising.
Inside Radio cited these reasons for the demise of Smooth Jazz on WNWV:
"The triple threat of metered ratings, an aging audience and a lack of new music from core acts brings an end to two decades of smooth jazz on Cleveland’s WNWV."
The first two we've talked about but as far as I know there have been new albums by "core acts" as well as music from new artists. Apparently they're either not getting airplay or it's a case of too little, too late.
As we've oft discussed, it's time for a Smooth Jazz reinvention. For that matter, it's time for a new format built on the foundation (ruins?) of Smooth Jazz.
c5
"The triple threat of metered ratings, an aging audience and a lack of new music from core acts brings an end to two decades of smooth jazz on Cleveland’s WNWV."
The first two we've talked about but as far as I know there have been new albums by "core acts" as well as music from new artists. Apparently they're either not getting airplay or it's a case of too little, too late.
As we've oft discussed, it's time for a Smooth Jazz reinvention. For that matter, it's time for a new format built on the foundation (ruins?) of Smooth Jazz.
c5
i don't know where the heck they pulled the "lack of core" music reason from. there may not be bundles of quality instrumental music out there, but it's there if you look. just listen to XM watercolors and tell me that there isn't decent new music in smooth jazz. if your PD is too inept to find it, go look for a new one, don't blow the station up.
but the threat of the PPM was what really finished them, no doubt. current smooth jazz programmers have no idea how to handle it. that again is where the reinvention needs to come in. these stations had been resting on the laurels of being an office background station going into the diaries as such .
but the threat of the PPM was what really finished them, no doubt. current smooth jazz programmers have no idea how to handle it. that again is where the reinvention needs to come in. these stations had been resting on the laurels of being an office background station going into the diaries as such .
orange434 said:
PPM was not a threat in Cleveland, it was a reality. They have had two full pre-currency books already.
All stations that depended on low cume and high TSL have been severely impacted by the PPM system, because the diary tended to overemphasize listening spans.
In the diary, a person might have listened to a station at work, and put in "KTWV" from 9 AM to 5 PM. Actually, the radio went on at 9:25 after checking in, getting coffee, etc. Then it was interrupted by a meeting, taking documents to accounting, going to the restroom, morning break, afternoon break, lunch, chatting with associates, phone calls when volume was turned on, etc. Those 8 hours turn out, in the PPM, to be more like two hours and 45 minutes, not 8 hours.
There is nothing a station in a high TSL format can do; the diary had been giving such formats a boost for nearly 40 years.
Jay F said:
WNWV is still locally-owned (in some ways quite stodgy with their programming), so they won't be so apt to pull the plug on AAA as quickly as CC did with their former SMJ station that flipped to AAA last year (and is now CHR as a Z-100 clone). Even with it being a stand-alone FM signal that mostly keeps the rest of the cluster afloat (that and their country station in their Sandusky cluster).
Am I surprised that they pulled the plug on SMJ as quickly as they did? Yes. WNWV was one of the first - if not THE FIRST - to sign up with the New Age satellite format patterned directly after KTWV in November 1987, thereby becoming one of the first SMJ stations. I generally thought that it would be the last to fall aside from KTWV.
Nathan Obral said:
They appear to have waited through two whole PPM books, and seeing no light at the end of that tunnel, they moved on the format change.
There has been some really strong music from core acts over the last year because a lot of artists started to open it up a little more. Plus there are some strong new artists on the horizon. However, stations programmed by or influenced by BA never played any of it so I guess on the surface it looks like it wasn't there.
I cannot recall a year in recent memory in which SO much great music was produced, both by "core acts" as well as new/emerging Indie artists. As some of my friends on this board have mentioned, we cannot worry about those things we cannot control and instead focus on those things we CAN control, which as programmers is giving this great music the airplay it deserves. Can the format be saved on terrestrial radio? I think we all know the answer to that question. But it's not the end of the world, guys. In my mind, it's only the beginning. 
Hate to see that WNWV 107.3 in Cleveland go, seeing as how it lasted for some 20 years and still had decent ratings up until the flip. Ditto for KOAS 105.7 in Las Vegas. At this point, I think the SJ community should focus on re-branding and re-marketing the format under a different name (as discussed in other threads) and focus our attention encouraging (as well as educating them) people on using mobile devices to listen to the format. Judging from the comments on the Internet, a lot of people are upset with all these recent changes, so there is a market out there. I just hope the artist don't get discourage and stop producing good music, because they fill no one will hear them.
Well...adding insult to injury...I tried to access the online stream for the HD2 signal and I get an error message when I click on the link for it. Some real well-thought out preparation there ic...dropping the smooth jazz format and then letting listeners know the smooth jazz format has been moved to an HD2 channel (which hardly anyone can hear, anyway), and then providing a link to an online stream which doesn't function, either. :
JoshB said:
As reported here and in Inside Radio, the PPM pre-currency 25-54 numbers for WNWV were what brought the station to decide on a format shift. The manager is quoted or referenced as saying that the PPM audience levels after two books forced them to change the format.
Apparently the same thing held true in the first two precurrency books in Las Vegas, where The Oasis was around 20th or lower, I am told.
DavidEduardo said:
Plus there was a serious revenue issue. WNWV was starting to bleed money and revenue, plus their sister station cluster in Sandusky, particularly country station "K96" WKFM/96.1 Huron, outbilled The Wave for nearly a year. That alone was enough to justify the flip.
- Status