Since at the time Clear owned two research companies, that was when they started testing the music and playing what people actually wanted to hear.
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Cleveland Radio Jan 23 Ratings
- Thread starter skiwest
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"Since at the time Clear owned two research companies, that was when they started testing the music and playing what people actually wanted to hear."
As an old vet, trust me......always raise suspicion when a corporate in-house division is used to justify a corporate move.
As an old vet, trust me......always raise suspicion when a corporate in-house division is used to justify a corporate move.
I remember the days when great programmers felt that no time period was "a throwaway".
Yes, I realize that. In fact, anything outside of morning and evening drive time is now a throw-away.
The funny part is John Gorman did have consultants on retainer for stations he programmed—even in the early 80s with WMMS—but barely used them, if ever. Then he became a consultant himself in the late 1980s with WAAF as his highest-profile client.
WMMS in the 70s and 80s, and WMJI in the early 90s, were successful for their time because Gorman and Denny Sanders programmed based on what they felt listeners expected, not according to their own whims. They were the furthest thing from freeform or randomness. It would sometimes run contrary to what a consultant would recommend (no one, no one, would have told WMMS to play Madonna or Michael Jackson in 1983!) but overall, there was mass appeal. Substantial mass appeal. WMJI ran counter to practically every other oldies station by making Lanigan, Webster and Malone a morning talk and comedy show, in a way no other station could imitate or copy, and it was arguably John Lanigan’s pinnacle.
A station like WMMS in the 70s and 80s or WMJI in the early 90s cannot be replicated in the present day with anywhere close to the same results. I say this having listened to WMJI in the early 90s as a pre-teen, basically as a total outlier in my age demo. And honestly? I’m okay with that. I can look back at how those two programmed with fondness, not a longing for the past.
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"The funny part is John Gorman did have consultants on retainer for stations he programmed"
There is nothing wrong with using consultants. I just think that a corporation using an in-house corporate consulting division to justify a corporate decision is like the fox guarding the hen house.
There is nothing wrong with using consultants. I just think that a corporation using an in-house corporate consulting division to justify a corporate decision is like the fox guarding the hen house.
Or did they just pick the people that agreed with the music that they wanted to play? Or were the people they tested C.C. employees that said "Sounds good to me. Whatever you want, boss"
Not true. In PPM markets, middays has the highest PUR, followed by the drive times. And the first 3 hours of evenings is almost as strong as the other daytime hours.
Lanigan had the clout when Gorman/Sanders took over to dictate what he was going to do. And if I remember correctly, even before they came along, his show was gravitating more towards talk/comedy even while he was at AM on 1220 WGAR but it really took off once he came back from Florida to WMJI.
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