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Disco Saturday Night K101, KBGG Big 98.1 and KISQ-98.1 KISS FM

HLeae

HLeae

Don Sainte-Johnn worked at KBGG.

He also hosted Disco Saturday Night at K101.

(Don was not affiliated with KISQ.)
 
I remember when K-101 went all-disco in January 1979, IIRC. Must have destroyed the ratings, because they switched back after only about a month. One of the shortest-lived Bay Area formats ever. Mainly the timing was terrible, because 103.7 was already disco, plus 97.3 switched to disco also (and hung on for about a year). Plus, the anti-disco backlash was starting to gain steam. I remember by early 1980, disco was almost gone from the dial, and 97.3 switched to a hard rock format that ended up running for years.
 
Signal Geek said:
I remember when K-101 went all-disco in January 1979, IIRC. Must have destroyed the ratings, because they switched back after only about a month. One of the shortest-lived Bay Area formats ever. Mainly the timing was terrible, because 103.7 was already disco, plus 97.3 switched to disco also (and hung on for about a year). Plus, the anti-disco backlash was starting to gain steam. I remember by early 1980, disco was almost gone from the dial, and 97.3 switched to a hard rock format that ended up running for years.
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In 1979, you wouldn’t have ratings back in only a month. Books were three months long and you saw the numbers a month after the book ended.

Much more likely that there was advertiser resistance or that Jim Gabbert (owner at the time) commissioned research in that first month that should have been done before the switch.
 
michael hagerty said:
In 1979, you wouldn’t have ratings back in only a month. Books were three months long and you saw the numbers a month after the book ended.
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And when the three month reports came out back then, you could not break out a single 4-week period. There were no monthly trends. You'd get the Jan-March book sometime in the first week of May and so on through the other 3 books of the year in large market.

What I can't quite remember is when Arbitron began continuous measurement. Previously, the Spring book was not the full 12 weeks but a "survey period" of lesser duration. I will ask an "expert"
 
DavidEduardo said:
And when the three month reports came out back then, you could not break out a single 4-week period. There were no monthly trends. You'd get the Jan-March book sometime in the first week of May and so on through the other 3 books of the year in large market.

What I can't quite remember is when Arbitron began continuous measurement. Previously, the Spring book was not the full 12 weeks but a "survey period" of lesser duration. I will ask an "expert"
Click to expand...
A sign of insanity: answering your own posts!

I checked with an expert, Chris Huff, and he says that he recalls this:

"...they rolled that out in the larger markets first... the largest markets (I'm thinking top 50) transitioned with the Spring 1980, with the remainder going to 12 week with Spring 1981."

That would mean that in Disco's "death year" of 1979, the books had a shorter survey period and might not even have covered the brief disco fling that Gabbert had. Jim was probably having too many disco nights back then... (Michael will "get" this one...)
 
Decided to go looking in the Arbitrons.

KIOI

Fall 1978: 4.0 (6th place)

Winter 1978/1979: 3.1 (11th place)

Spring 1979: 3.7 (7th place)

Summer 1979: 3.3 (8th place)

Fall 1979: 3.3 (10th place)


Can you blame the dip on disco? It was just a third of the winter 1978/79 book. But disco was polarizing. Among AC format competitors, KNBR had an appreciable jump (2.8-3.2), as did KYUU (1.6-2.1). There's the 9/10ths of a point K101 lost.

It's also worth noting that Jim Gabbert was thrashing around trying to be something other than a pure AC. In October, he aired "The History of Rock and Roll" and then came out of it as an oldies station, while acknowledging in Billboard (November 24, 1979) that oldies was likely a dead end.

This was the same year that Gabbert bought TV 20, sold KIQI and put KIOI up for sale. It's possible he was simply looking for a buzz that would help his sale price (the August 25, 1979 issue of Billboard says he was asking $15 million).
 
michael hagerty said:
This was the same year that Gabbert bought TV 20, sold KIQI and put KIOI up for sale. It's possible he was simply looking for a buzz that would help his sale price (the August 25, 1979 issue of Billboard says he was asking $15 million).
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When Gabbert finally sold K-101 in 1979 or 1980, I remember it being the higest price (at the time) ever commanded by an FM station.
 
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