Buffalo and Rochester May '23 trends

[tbolt909]

The Wolf has a signal issue, and based on what it covers it is doing adequately.

You set a very low bar for "adequate". Blaming the signal is a weak excuse. It's been proven that other formats performed better on this same signal. Audacy thought The Wolf might take a couple shares from WYRK, but it's had no impact at all...

 

[four4rock]

The Wolf has a signal issue, and based on what it covers it is doing adequately.

In New York, with the exception of crossover-reinforced WHN, the format has always suffered from buyer prejudice in a market that is almost entirely agency driven.

I realize that "signal issue" has many facets. But, by way of sharing my pleasant ('cuz I am a WOLF over WYRK listener) surprise, while returning from Wayne County (NY) last weekend, I turned the radio on in Junius, NY and WOLF was loud & clear. Yeah, obviously, that covers a boatload of highly rural turf.

Also, relative to NYC-centric agencies, seems like there'd be a monumental untapped niche for a more 'open minded' (so-to-speak) ad guru. Based on concert/event attendance, nightlife, retail, etc., I'd be hard pressed to suggest that there's no country market.

 

[TheBigA]

And in NYC, they skipped country in the past because they did not feel the format reached anything but the outer rural areas of the market "somewhere near the hilly part of Pennsylvania".

As you noted earlier, "stereotyping at its worst."

A few months after Audacy dropped country from WNSH in NYC, David Field was part of a panel discussion at the annual Country Radio Seminar. The moderator was the president of the Country Music Association. He was asked a lot of detailed questions about this. The CMA itself has commissioned very respected demographic studies of country music consumers in NYC, so they could speak knowledgably on this subject. You could see the pained expression on Field's face. He knew they were right, but he said the decision was made strictly on the basis of advertisers. In the final year, the station was billing less than $2 million a year in a market where similarly rated stations were billing five times that much. So that was it. They kept a version of the format as an HD-2. But the chief beneficiary was Sirius. Their music channels are non-commercial, so they don't have to worry about advertisers.

 

[davideduardo]

Also, relative to NYC-centric agencies, seems like there'd be a monumental untapped niche for a more 'open minded' (so-to-speak) ad guru. Based on concert/event attendance, nightlife, retail, etc., I'd be hard pressed to suggest that there's no country market.

But the media buyers who pick the stations are the lowest level of the whole media department. For example, they are told how many GRIPs to buy (gross ratings points) and what the CPP (cost per point) goal is. The pick only enough stations to get the desired campaign reach in the demos the client wants.

A media buyer is not high on 5he agency food chain. They buy using math and ratings points, not formats and music.

In the case of New York, the country stations have not rated high enough to be considered for any but the few huge and deep buy.