It isn't clear why there is a belief the new format, with ratings that are lower than the previous one's, would bill well enough to justify the switch, on this signal.
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Country on WXBK HD-2
- Thread starter radiodx10
- Start date
I do wonder if iHeart had (theoretically) owned 94.7 if they could have sold the format better than Audacy. Country is perhaps their strongest format with the most knowledge/research, while it is one of Audacy’s weakest generally speaking. Cumulus isn’t as good as iHeart with it but they seem to know country better than Audacy. It doesn’t really surprise me that they had sales issues.
Audacy knows certain formats well, like news, talk, and sports. Some of their AC/Hot AC, classic hits and classic rock stations are quite successful. Country, Alternative, and CHR, even before they ran in to their recent doldrums seem to be a ratings challenge for Audacy vs a lot of their iHeart counterparts.
Audacy knows certain formats well, like news, talk, and sports. Some of their AC/Hot AC, classic hits and classic rock stations are quite successful. Country, Alternative, and CHR, even before they ran in to their recent doldrums seem to be a ratings challenge for Audacy vs a lot of their iHeart counterparts.
Because country is so hard to sell to advertisers looking to reach a New York City market audience, as has been said many times, many ways (Merry Christmas to you...) in this thread already. Rhythmic music reaches an audience advertisers want to reach, even if fewer ears may be listening.
iHeart has more of a national programming strategy than Audacy. iHeart has Bobby Bones and the iHeartCountry festival. Those two things power the country format even in markets where they don't get great ratings (such as Boston). Audacy is a more traditional radio company, with a very limited national sales package. Audacy actually owns the top billing country station: KILT in Houston, but a lot of that station's revenue comes from its relationship with the Houston Texans football team.
And we should point out that KILT-FM is regularly beaten by Cox's KKBQ in Houston's Country battle.
You've been on this board too long not to understand that Barry. 1. Country has always been a hard sell for NYC and has always struggled to make money. Before WNSH the market went decades without country. 2. WXBK has a rhythmic format, easier sell in this market. WXBK pulls in less than WNSH did but it's a new station. If they didn't believe it would and could do better they would have left it as country.
And to be clear, it'll never pull in a 3.0 with it's signal challenges but doesn't mean it can't make money
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The concept of Nash though was understanding that there probably wasn't going to be a huge local sales market for the format, but there were a lot of people listening. So adding 1 million in cume to the national sales platform as well as Market #1 (they later added Market #4 in the same way), you could make a lot of national sponsorship money. Plus, since mornings and evenings were syndicated, you were operating at low cost. No one had attempted to do that before in NY. Unfortunately Audacy didn't get the concept at all. But iHeart does, which is why I say if they had the ability to buy another frequency, they might try country. But unless ownership rules change, that'll never happen.
Exactly and that was the only way to get country on nyc radio. Since that concept died woth Cumulus WNSH became a stand alone station amd eroded. Audacy's fault or not it doesn't really matter as they thought best to blow up the format and go for more money.
What ??
Y107 ended 2002 & WNSH started 2013.
Ok 1 decade and 2 months and Y107 barely reached the city with its simulcast of 4 signals targeting a suburban audience
I think that instead of buying 4 area stations to simulcast on 107.1, the owners of Y-107 should have just acquired the one by the Jersey shore. The other 3 were probably a waste of money.
I thought it was a much better country station than 94.7. They had some very good personalities, and it was all local. The decision to flip Y-107 to a Spanish format (which didn't last long) was dumb, as the 4 signals did not reach most of the Hispanic people in the area.
I recall seeing lots of Y-107 bumper stickers, and still spot them occasionally.
I thought it was a much better country station than 94.7. They had some very good personalities, and it was all local. The decision to flip Y-107 to a Spanish format (which didn't last long) was dumb, as the 4 signals did not reach most of the Hispanic people in the area.
I recall seeing lots of Y-107 bumper stickers, and still spot them occasionally.
Y-107 was a great use of the four signals to program country to the suburbs...a really interesting idea. It was unfortunate for country fans that the new owners had another agenda. Trying to claim that they were a "NYC" station was a big blunder. Also, I'm not quite sure that it was economically feasible to maintain.
The "decades" characterization of the gap between country stations in NYC almost surely referred to WHN 1050, which became all-sports WFAN in the late '80s.
Yes but WYNY switched to country at the same time
And as others have explained, the WYNY "four-play" was not a full-market signal. WHN was, at a time when listeners in the country music demographic -- which was older then than it is now -- were still listening to AM.
But the WYNY 103.5 was a full market signal, with antenna on the roof of the WTC. They were on from 1988-96.
I've never understood #1, as if country listeners are some "othered" population that doesn't buy cars or everything else that is advertised on non-country stations.
But even if that were true, if country listeners are unresponsive to advertising, then Nielsen should exclude country fans from the ratings of the other stations they listen to (CBS-FM, Lite, or Z-100 depending on the age, or WPLJ before the sale) as they artificially inflate the ratings, and the number of listeners they can actually reach. Advertisers shouldn't be paying for that.
Or more simply, I'd like to know why country is so easily sellable in every other market (including Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington DC), and in suburbs of NY, yet not the full NY market itself, as if the only people who matter when talking about it are those within 10 minutes of Times Square.
The reference was to WYNY at 97.1, which is a full-market signal, not the quadcast where one of the stations later took on that call sign (and was also used colloquially to refer to the quadcast).
Hmmm, must have missed that part of the WYNY story. My bad! Sorry! I guess the "decades since" characterization is wrong after all.
Forgot that small detail. When WHN was sold to Emmis in 1986, WYNY 97.1 flipped from AC to country. Then when NBC sold 97.1 and 660 to Emmis in 1988, the country format and call letters went to 103.5, and WQHT moved to 97.1.
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