Can Jamn be dethroned?

[Brooklyndon]

I think rap peaked in 99. big pimpin on the east, snoop and dre had G-Funk 2000, Ludracris introduced us to souther hospitality.and Ca$h money had everyone singing bling bling.

And the bes tpart was, fifty cent was still some gimmicky rapper on 50 people out in Far Rockaway knew about.

 

[mistermicrophone]

The mistake Ivey made was this:

He did take the "riddim" out of Kiss and it leaned hot ac but also played a good amount of alternative that was not hot ac crossover like " Blue Monday" by Orgy, that one still puzzles me, or "my own worst enemy" by Lit which was on all the time. Ivey's problem or mistake was that he wanted to distance Kiss from Jamn, or mark clear lines of difference between the two stations where one would not play anything that could be heard on the other, dumb since all of the hit music was Rythmic!~. So you had Kiss 108 a hit music station playing virtually no hits, and they were left the entire field of the boy bands and the Brittney's of the world that were super hot at the time, yet they stayed away from Nsync, and Backstreet because they wanted to cultivate an older female cume. So the hits that were left since Jamn wasnt touching boy bands, KIss didnt even really play. It was a bad, bad, time for a legendary station BUT they were still on top somehow.

Enter Cadillac who is a smart programmer who knows that a hit is a hit, whether it's Fall out boy, or Kanye West. SO Kiss and Jamn started sharing artists and songs again, which was fine because if you heard Beyonce on Jamn it woud be followed by something dancey or hip hop-ish, whereas if you hear it on kiss it probably wont be. So audience integrity is still maintained while actually playing music that people care about.

Programming 101 boys and girls.

Although I questioned what Ivey did as well, he did protect the brand as KISS continued to win in the ratings and make money. There were a lot of CHR's in that time period that sounded the way KISS did and that was by design to keep from sounding too young. Like I said before, the format has evolved and those 18 year olds that were listening to JAMN 10 years ago are now 28 year olds who don't view the rhythmic stuff as just "kiddie" music and they fall right into KISS's demo.

 

[TowerBuzz]

Yes he protected the brand but in fairness he also had no competiton. Mix was/is hardly a head to head competitor and that is the closest thing they have had to competition in the past fifteen years or so.

 

[mistermicrophone]

Yes he protected the brand but in fairness he also had no competiton. Mix was/is hardly a head to head competitor and that is the closest thing they have had to competition in the past fifteen years or so.

Who's to say that with competition, things would have been done the same?? The competition was Mix and JAMN and the brand was protected against them. If the competition was a straight up CHR, KISS may have played it differently...we'll never know...lol!!

 

[Brooklyndon]

you guys are missing it completey. Kiss wont beat nor try to beat jamn.

The only station that can beat jamn is wbcn and it has to flip rap to do it.

 

[Garrett]

Can a station come along and rip away the men from JAMN and eat into its market leading ratings? And if so, would it do it by also being an urban format, or could another format appeal to adult males they way JAMN fills in the gap?

The answer is yes. Any station can be dethroned anytime, and especially one owned a large company (such as CC) that lacks cluster support in market like Boston.

However, it does not help that WJMN's sister is Top 40 kiss, because it locks out any one else from touching either market. A CHR can do damage to a station like WJMN, but not if one already exists.

 

[TowerBuzz]

you guys are missing it completey. Kiss wont beat nor try to beat jamn.

The only station that can beat jamn is wbcn and it has to flip rap to do it.

A. Wbcn is not flipping anything IF they were to flip it would not be rap.

B. a "rap" station will not beat Jamn which has heritage and again it's not just a "rap' sttation, that is why it works.

C. Jamn and Kiss do not compete against each other directly, that is why they are both owned by the same company and operated formatically the way that they are.

D. BrooklynDon mistakenly believes that all a station needs to win is to be "gangsta", dumb, wrong, clueless. Even Hot 97 NYc plays more than just "gangsta" rap, they play R & B, Mary J Blige, Mario, Lloyd etc, etc they're imaged as "number one for hip hop R & B",...gee just like what statiion is it? right on the tip of my tongue,...mmmmmmmm, JAMN 94.5 BOSTON!.

E. A "Rap' station of this calibur would not make any money, who would advertise? there are only so many Nubian Notions and Hip zpi's out there. Jamn makes big money because they have a fairly affluent audience which is reflected in their advertising. No you wont hear BMW ads on the station but compared to teh spots that ran on WBOT, it's like the major leagues and the minors.

 

[Brooklyndon]

Infinity does a nice job with 93.7 in New Haven, WZMX. I actually feel that Hot 93.7 is hotter than 97.1 in New York. infinity sells that well, the same people who advertize on Jamn will advertize on WBCN, they'll keep the patriots.

Look, WBCN has a demographics crisis on its hands. Its core which was late-twenties to mid-thirties when they dropped the classic rock in 94 is now mid-to-late forties.

They have to blow up their format anyway. They can go the hot talk route, though if O&A (and about 5 years of history) are any guide that's a loser, and in most cases more obscene than hip-hop.

They can do what they did 15 years ago and basically carbon copy WFNX's image. Might work, I like FNX I think its a solid station. Does that format have as broad based appeal as it once did??? Who knows, i think WFNX had a 2.0 share when WBCN finally copied them.

or they can go out and flip hip hop. They already did this flip once in 99-02 when they flipped nu-metal. At any given time you could easily hear Method Man (on alimp Bizkit track), Eminem, Cypress Hill, Outkast and Public Enemy(for like week before a river rave). Those are just the "rapppers' forget all the ancillary rock bands that rapped like Korn and Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, Zebrahead, 311, and a bunch of other bands I just forget. When BCN was playing this brand of music, wants that the last time they were #1 in their demo?

Now their is all this tlak, BCN cant flip rap, its the heritage rock station. I got news, its not, WAAF is Boston's heritage rock station for anyone born in the 80s. BCN has been 4 formats since 1990, whereas AAF has always been a harder version of WBCN. And now WBCN is second fiddle to WAAF.

WBCN shoud follw WAAF's lead and become the dark horse against JAMN.

 

[TowerBuzz]

Wrong, wrong wrong. Wbcn targets men 18-34 and if you think the only people who listen are men who were 34 in 1994? may I remind you that Boston is a COLLEGE TOWN with a new crop of men in the demo every year many of whom stay in town and grow into the upper part of the demo. For somebody who claims that he has done sales ( yeah right) you're even more clueless than MOSt sales people. :

WZMX is a diferent situation altogether since Hartford is a much more blue collar, or working class ethnic city than is Boston. They are grimy-er because the market itself is grimy-er, the rock station is cloer to waaf in terms of appeal to the blue collar types, and the hip hop stations are a bit more "ghetto" becuase of the audience they're reaching both white and black. Wy doesnt Jamn sound more like WZMX? is like asking why terry Francona doesnt coach mor elike Joe Torre, BECUASE HE'S COACING THE RED SOX AND NOT THE YANKEES, NOT EVERYTHING WORKS, EVERYWHERE! :

Waaf is not the heritage rock station for anyone born in the 80's anyone who can say that with a straight face is,.......... you're just clueless. WBCn has been a rock station for almost four decades. They have modified the format by adding things (classic rock etc) to the library like many alternative stations as the format began dying at the end of the 90's but they have not changed format, they have been a rock station longer than know it alls, that know nothing, like you, have been alive.You are just reaching at straws man your arguments just dont make any sense. : : :

 

[Varulven]

WAAF is a heritage rock station in play since 1969 and only a know-it-all with a big ego and no facts to offer would try to deny them that right. Yes, they are a mere shadow of their former self, just as WBCN has failed to fulfill it's destiny since Oedipus Rex'd the radio.

But the call letters survive, just as the Phoenix mentions how WRKO's call letters have significance in the marketplace. WAAF was a dominant Worcester station obliterating all else and seeping into other markets.
Only someone who probably worked in Rhode Island and got transplanted here would make a remark pulled out of fantasyland.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAAF

Harvey Wharfield was the Commander of the Supreme WAAF Air Force or something

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAAF_(FM)#Station_history

Since Wikipedia is not under copyright, here it is:

Early history

The WAAF call letters were first adopted in 1967 and the station had a Beautiful music format. WAAF switched to its long running Rock music format two years later in 1969. (WAAF previously had been WAAB-FM having the same call letters as its sister AM station 1440 WAAB-AM. Historically, the station is often noted as the worlds first FM station. The stations original owner was Edwin H. Armstrong who invented and patented FM radio in 1933. The stations first call letters were W1XOJ. W1XOJ was the first experimental FM radio station, granted a construction permit by the FCC in 1937. Today, WAAF is often still broadcast from the same Paxton, Massachusetts site as W1XOJ. For more on the early history of WAAF/W1XOJ see FM broadcasting in the USA and History of radio. Radio station WXOJ-LP 103.3FM "Valley Free Radio" in Northampton, Massachusetts is a low power station whose call letters pay tribute to WAAF's ancestral origins).

 

[Brooklyndon]

Wrong, wrong wrong. Wbcn targets men 18-34 and if you think the only people who listen are men who were 34 in 1994? may I remind you that Boston is a COLLEGE TOWN with a new crop of men in the demo every year many of whom stay in town and grow into the upper part of the demo. For somebody who claims that he has done sales ( yeah right) you're even more clueless than MOSt sales people. :

WZMX is a diferent situation altogether since Hartford is a much more blue collar, or working class ethnic city than is Boston. They are grimy-er because the market itself is grimy-er, the rock station is cloer to waaf in terms of appeal to the blue collar types, and the hip hop stations are a bit more "ghetto" becuase of the audience they're reaching both white and black. Wy doesnt Jamn sound more like WZMX? is like asking why terry Francona doesnt coach mor elike Joe Torre, BECUASE HE'S COACING THE RED SOX AND NOT THE YANKEES, NOT EVERYTHING WORKS, EVERYWHERE! :

Waaf is not the heritage rock station for anyone born in the 80's anyone who can say that with a straight face is,.......... you're just clueless. WBCn has been a rock station for almost four decades. They have modified the format by adding things (classic rock etc) to the library like many alternative stations as the format began dying at the end of the 90's but they have not changed format, they have been a rock station longer than know it alls, that know nothing, like you, have been alive.You are just reaching at straws man your arguments just dont make any sense. : : :

uhg... so typical of boomer. Complain complain complain, yet offer no solutions.


How is WBCN going to address its demographics issue?