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Cox buys the Promise

  • Thread starter ucanthandlethetruth
  • Start date

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ucanthandlethetruth

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In reading the below threads, one very important piece of information has been overlooked. The newly hired second GM, David Isreal, comes to Jacksonville from his former job as PROGRAM DIRECTOR FOR COAST (AC) in Miami. A VERY successful AC station. If I was at Renda, my water would be breaking. They're over there running 14 and 15 units an hour and sliding every trend. They're chasing the money and forgetting that product comes first.
 
Think for a moment. Will Cox go with Hot A/C because the new GM's a former PD at Coast in Miami? Or will Cox make a business decision based on their positions in this market? A Coast like station would hurt the best billing FM station Cox has in Jacksonville, WAPE. The strength of Ape's demo profile is in Women 25-34. How would putting another Coast on the air here help WAPE? What one gaping hole is there to fill in Cox's lineup? Urban or Urban A/C. My guess is there'll be a competitor for V-101.5 before the year's out.
 
A friend of mine affiliated with Cox says that one thing they are "looking" into is Opie and Anthony and there have already been talks. And active rock would be a strong possibility.
 
Why wouldn't Cox put Opie and Anthony on Rock 105 and dump the undoubtedly higher salaries of the current three person morning show? An Active Rocker competing for listeners with Rock, The Point and to some extent, The Eagle makes even less sense than a Hot A/C. But it may make some sense to transition Rock to a more active format, which would leave Eagle some room to expand the playlist.
 
Consider also that 93.3 is clearly dead, would odds would you take that CC will jump first and move to some protective Urban format before Cox takes over 106.5?

Does anyone think Hispanc is an option for either 93.3 or 106.5?

And lets not forget Renda struggling with 100.7 - maybe a quick jump into something else (or even on 94.1) just to try and get there first?
 
Low odds that the evil empire will switch formats on the dead bird just to 'Cox block'. Spanish? Are there even close to enough Hispanics in Jax for that to make sense? Renda's stuck on stupid, trying to figure out what's going on with its stations. Which brings us to the second most-likely format Cox will choose for 106.5. Soft A/C, as in The Dove. I'll bet research shows the bulk of WEJZ's women 45-64 don't care much for a station that's all over the place musically. There it is, kids. Either an Urban A/C or Soft A/C. V-101.5 or Lite 96.1 will soon have a competitor. Both are format successes, both do some pretty good billing.
 
Ok, just tell me which format that they're going to debut and I'll cause it to debut a little quicker.

That's a bit of an inside joke to a very few. When Florida Sports News Networks had 1570 and was in the process of selling it to Norsan (1160-970-1570 MetroJax Hispanic formats), Caliente 1570 bailed out early from thier lease that was about to expire by about three weeks or so. FSNN didn't want to buy any equipment to interact with the SPorting News Feed, lease a month of 8khz line out to Fernandina again, so I suggested that they use a series of programming loops, plenty of Legal IDs so they'd fall within ten minutes +/- of the top of the hour.
Within an hour at home I voiced a string of impromptu liners, edited jingles from WVOJ 970 Jacksonville and WYHI 1570 Fernandina Beach, welded them together with a goofy little drop... and with oldies music already loaded in the old WGSR/WYHI on-air PC I have at home, I made a series of Oldies CDs. On the way from Palm Coast to Fernandina Beach, bought a Walkman CD player with A/C adapter and batteries, and a short-lived WVOJ 1570 Oldies format was born! I wired it into the control room board, checked levels, and let it rip on "repeat"... changing the CDs every so often. FSNN reimbursed for the new Walkman CD player.

THE NEXT DAY 100.7 Launched it's Oldies format. It was a pretty clumsy transition for them, judging from the on-air product. Our 10kw AM was way, way tighter (the only gap was when the single track restarted...), cool overlays, etc.

A coincidence? Maybe so, who knows, but it was pretty amusing to notice. Tommy R. in fact was one night in charge of changing the CDs for me, for that I'm forever grateful, it was a late night when I set out for Fernandina Beach, about 100 miles away. I met him in Jax with the CD outside the old WAPE-WFYV Hogan Rd studios under cover of darkness... and he ran out to Fernandina from there. We used to keep the key to the station outside behind the bathroom/transmitter room (no longer done)... way to go, Tommy R.! He later got access to tons of Jax airchecks that he got to dub here at the Ol' Palm Coast hideaway studios.

Just a tiny, tiny sliver of MetroJax radio history. .. ... ... ...

Rocky W. Shore
Formerly 1570 AM 1997-2004
 
Think about Country. Renda is growing with Gator but they won't be able to hold that. CC is losing the battle for Country to Renda. What an embarassment. Cox does Country in a lot of markets. The market is ripe for a quality Country station to beat them both. A lot of money in Country
 
Widowmaker said:
Think about Country. Renda is growing with Gator but they won't be able to hold that. CC is losing the battle for Country to Renda. What an embarassment. Cox does Country in a lot of markets. The market is ripe for a quality Country station to beat them both. A lot of money in Country
Click to expand...

Does mburg have an evil twin???
 
Yes, everything Rocky said is true. It was a long-awaited, yet short-lived, return to "WVOJ." I was back in and back out of radio as quickly as I could drive to Fernandina Beach.

On to business...

If/when Cox drops the Christian AC format, I am quite confident that at least one of Jacksonville's many religious broadcasters will tweak its playlist--most likely WCRJ. There's also Air1 on 89.5, which judging from the bumper stickers out there, quite a few people have found. It's edgier than The Promise, but still good.

Guesses as to the new format can be endless, but I think anything said up to this point is certainly possible.

There is also the chance that Cox could move a lesser-performing format to 106.5, as it is very noticeably weaker than the signals Cox is used to working with around here. They could launch a new format and brand on, say, 102.9, where there are absolutely no signal issues to get in the way. (That's for those of us who argue that signal matters--or not. I say if the programming is compelling enough, people will make an extra effort to pick it up...as I did with Real Radio and Big 106.5 back in the day.)

Any word--rumor or otherwise--on what's happening with the Salem AM's?

RockyWShore said:
Ok, just tell me which format that they're going to debut and I'll cause it to debut a little quicker.
A coincidence? Maybe so, who knows, but it was pretty amusing to notice. Tommy R. in fact was one night in charge of changing the CDs for me, for that I'm forever grateful, it was a late night when I set out for Fernandina Beach, about 100 miles away. I met him in Jax with the CD outside the old WAPE-WFYV Hogan Rd studios under cover of darkness... and he ran out to Fernandina from there. We used to keep the key to the station outside behind the bathroom/transmitter room (no longer done)... way to go, Tommy R.! He later got access to tons of Jax airchecks that he got to dub here at the Ol' Palm Coast hideaway studios.
Click to expand...
 
The days of oldies on AM.. hell oldies all together is dying.

i miss my days as PD of that un-named oldies station.. which, even tho it faced license revocation and did have the license deleted, it's still on the air.
 
Did anyone think about a format that has been discussed on the forum before for Jacksonville .. but, I don't see it's on here now..... News. This might be the golden opportunity to get an FM news station in the market. All they would have to do is switch from AM to FM and bingo.. it's done. No new hirings.. no nothing. Makes sense to me.
 
Well, we're all format speculating anyway, so anything really goes. However, I respectfully disagree that "all they would have to do is switch from AM to FM and bingo...It's done." If news/talk moved to 106.5, there would need to be marketing/TV ads. Listeners have to know where you are - that costs money. Cox does an effective job in promoting it's stations and in particular new formats. It would seem the costs outweigh the benefits.

Back to format speculation and the Coast. It's important to remember that the the Coast is not cookie-cutter. Miami's Coast is very different from the Fairfield County, CT version. Someone earlier raised a good point in that Cox would not be doing anything to hurt WAPE and it's billing. I agree. And so, I think an Adult Hits station targeting woman 35+ would not only satisfy a demo that is underserved but would position Cox even stronger in this market. The CT version, with some modifications, seems like a winner to me. And reading the comment someone made earlier that the Coast Miami GM is in Jax just adds to the speculation.
 
When I said that all they would have to do is switch from AM to FM.. I meant that they wouldnt have to go out and find a "staff" to manage and run the News station. It would save a lot of time and effort.. not to mention the money... which as we all know.. goes at the top of every list.
 
With exception of night time, WOKV 690's 50kw goes virtually everywhere an FM would. Well, not counting for power lines. Sometimes I seem to log WOKV pretty well in Palm Coast at night... you'll have better building penetration with the FM.
 
I know what is being suggested here: an all-news station on FM, right?

Back in the early 90's, WOKV, then on AM 600, experimented with an FM simulcast for a short time, at 100.7. Given the signal issues--and despite a booster--it was just as easy to keep listening on the AM. That doesn't have much to do with the subject, but [greglarson] I just thought I'd throw that out there at no extra charge. [/greglarson]

106.5 isn't the type of signal you can just flip on any radio in the market and hear. Not so good for news, IMO. But who knows? I think any UNIQUE format Cox can pull out can do well enough.
 
By any chance did the FCC change ownership rules. Thought you could only have 4 fms. But guess by the Promise bein from GA you could bypass the rules a bit.
 
Ponte Vedra Beach, but yeah, I get your point.

Unless something has changed recently, I believe Jacksonville falls under Sec. 73.3555 (a)(iii):
"In a radio market with between 15 and 29 (inclusive) full-power, commercial and noncommercial radio stations, not more than 6 commercial radio stations in total and not more than 4 commercial stations in the same service (AM or FM)."

If I recall correctly, "6" has been the magic number around here, so that would mean 4 FM's are OK. But I think Cox will get by with a fifth because of either the city of license difference, or the 106.5 signal, which does not cover all of the Jacksonville market (no matter what strength contour you're shooting for).

JACKSONVILLE COX FM COL'S
WAPE Jacksonville
WJGL Jacksonville
WMXQ Jacksonville
WFYV Atlantic Beach
*WBGB Ponte Vedra Beach*

JACKSONVILLE CLEAR CHANNEL FM COL'S
WJBT Green Cove Springs
WROO Callahan
WFKS Neptune Beach
WQIK Jacksonville
WSOL Brunswick
WPLA Jacksonville

CC Jax was able to keep 6 FM's after the Jacor deal in 1999. They, of course, "divested" 106.5 and 3 AM's at that point to "Concord Media."
 
What about an AC targeted to women 35-54 to go after WEJZ and help Cox's other stations? Cox could do six units an hour and play a lot of music just to peel away EJZ's audience. New GM did AC successfully as a PD in Orlando and Miami. Makes more sense than Urban or FM News.
 
I really doubt that Cox would waste their time getting into a four way battle for country. Urban? I doubt it. Dove? Possibly. Hot AC? Possibly, because WEJZ is very vulnerable right now. Newstalk? Maybe if they opt to simulcast WOKV.

Whatever they decide to do, I don't really think that they'll keep it as it is right now. That's not really their thing.

I'm still not convinced that The Point will be around much longer, but that's another story.

We'll see!
 
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