Money talks and the country fan in Brooklyn doesn't.
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Country for Frisco,zilch for NYC
- Thread starter JoeBenjamin
- Start date
You have to remember the signals for the new country format in the Bay Area are suburban in nature. The signals are spotty in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, but these places do not have a high concentration of country fans.
If there is a new country format in the Tri-State area, it won't originate from any of the five boroughs. Maybe Jersey or Long Island.
If there is a new country format in the Tri-State area, it won't originate from any of the five boroughs. Maybe Jersey or Long Island.
And "San Jose" is an embedded market which is part of the San Francisco market. In other words, San Jose is a suburban area of the SF metro.
Country and rock are standard radio formats that you'd expect to hear in every market across the nation. The fact that they're missing from NYC is pretty inexcusable but the way the FM dial has been carved up, there's no place for them.
I count only 12 English language, full market commercial FM stations in NYC, and that's generously including WXBX from New Jersey. Two of them are sports talk (ugh), that leaves just ten for music formats.
WNYC, WQXR, WBAI and now K-Love all occupy spots in the commercial portion of the FM band, removing 4 prime dial positions from the pool that would support common commercial formats like country and rock in other markets. I'm convinced they would exist and serve their respective audiences in New York if there were places for them, but the supply of FM frequencies doesn't meet the demand and as a result there are formats you'd expect to hear anywhere else that can't make the cut here.
I count only 12 English language, full market commercial FM stations in NYC, and that's generously including WXBX from New Jersey. Two of them are sports talk (ugh), that leaves just ten for music formats.
WNYC, WQXR, WBAI and now K-Love all occupy spots in the commercial portion of the FM band, removing 4 prime dial positions from the pool that would support common commercial formats like country and rock in other markets. I'm convinced they would exist and serve their respective audiences in New York if there were places for them, but the supply of FM frequencies doesn't meet the demand and as a result there are formats you'd expect to hear anywhere else that can't make the cut here.
There are markets like Miami and LA where the future of rock of any kind is dubious.
And a top 20 market, Puerto Rico, lost its only rock station a couple of years ago to K-love. It could not make money.
But, for the quarter of the market that is Hispanic, we have just three choices in Spanish.
And because they are not commercial, but have significant audiences in two of the three cases, they are not serving the audience? And WBAI was there long before FM was profitable for anyone.
Country is a niche format in NYC, best served by being on suburban signals. It has few, if any, listeners in the central part of the market and no advertiser demand.
Both formats have at times existed in NY and neither did well financially. You make a good point about the shortage of commercial frequencies, but that implies that the formats would attract commercial sponsorship. There is documented evidence that neither does. In its final year on the air, WNSH billed $2 million in revenue. That's less than KRTY billed in San Jose. That's why the format is gone from NY, but was replaced in San Jose. It's about money.
I agree. Again, supply & demand issue with the FM band.
They are great stations. Again, my point is there's not enough room for everyone.
That station belongs on the left end of the dial and most of the programming would be better suited to podcasts than linear radio. It's a strange situation to see them cling to a channel that they can barely afford and makes very little sense to keep.
Not every station can be number one but Country is still a mainstream, mass-appeal format that had an audience in New York. Audacy thought they could do better by playing more hip hop when NYC already had existing stations for that. So far, it's doing no better than country was, or rock could have done. That Audacy's fault for targeting an audience that's already well served instead of offering the kind of diversity the NYC market deserves.
That's what everyone was saying about San Francisco too, yet they just got a big flip to Country there yesterday. Where there's a will, there's a way to choose your audience, super serve them and make it work. In New York there's not the will because there's other low hanging format fruit and a shortage of places for it to go.
Country never disappeared from the San Francisco radio market it's just that KFGY Santa Rosa covered the northern end of the Bay Area radio market such as Sonoma County, note Santa Rosa is also an embedded market of San Francisco like San Jose is. It's just that KRTY was sold to EMF because the owner Bob Kieve died two years ago. Also parts of Solano County specifically the eastern half of the county like Vacaville and Dixon gets KNCI Sacramento the country station in the Sacramento Valley. It's just that San Jose is the most populated part of the Bay Area is directly getting KBAY and KKDV converted from AC to Country in the deal according to Alpha Media.
San Jose Suburban?? But San Jose has 1 million people and San Francisco has 850k people as of 2022. But get what you mean the center of radio market 4 is San Francisco.
Huh? The only formats that "deserve" a spot on the dial are those that generate sufficient revenue for their owners.
Radio markets are defined by groups of counties surrounding the central location and are usually named after the core city. But cities are not measured; counties are.
The San Francisco market consists of 9 counties, and all have weight proportional to their population. San Francisco has about5 890,000 and Santa Clara has 2,001,000 persons.
In the New York City market, Kings and Queens have more people than Manhattan, but the market is still named after the central city as is the custom going back to when radio surveys were done only in the "central zone" of a metro where phone calls were not toll calls.
You missed the part about advertiser demand. In real inflation-adjusted dollars, San Jose stations are billing about 10% of what they billed in the year 2000. Because advertisers buy the full(er) stations licensed to the central area of the market, they don't feel a need for those licensed to corners of the metro.
In the case of the newest country station, it does have a decent enough signal to be considered a San Francisco/South Bay station and not just a San Jose station. By picking a format that is close to those of the bigger signals, they may have a chance at improving revenue.
That's what they were saying, but $3 million is good for San Jose, and obviously more than what Alpha was making with classic hits.
For some context, WBAI raises about $2 million a year, and that's what WNSH billed.
You try to find her on regular radio!!!!
NYC is not country friendly. It is very out of place in NYC. It doesn't work here. It's too diverse for country. If country was more diverse in who they played maybe they would survive in NYC. Try 107.3 WRWD, 96.1 WJVC, Cat Country 96 on 107.1 or Thunder 106.3 for country if you can get reception depending on where you are. Or try streaming a country station.
Shouldn't "diversity" include everyone? Besides, in the media sense, "NYC" doesn't mean only the 5 boroughs, It includes New Jersey, Long Island, Westchester, and other places where you DO find country listeners. But we can compromise - the stations licensed to New Jersey can serve listeners from New Jersey. (I'm being facetious on that last one.)
(But since you brought it up, how "diverse" is hip hop?)
I'm familiar with Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens and Staten Island but where is Kings?
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