I been listening to some easy listening radio stations online, was wondering if such a station could return to New York City radio ? I think WRFM, WTFM and WPAT were the last stations doing an easy listening format.
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Easy Listening Radio Station in the New York City area
- Thread starter xmradiopro
- Start date
Sure, as long as it's on the AM band once the whole FM dial is taken over by talk formats.
The NYC area lost it's only (to my knowledge) Smooth Jazz station a few years ago. One of the issues was that the 20-somethings on the Sales Team couldn't "sell" it to their peers. So what did it become?? ??? YET ANOTHER "rock" station. :
Sigh. How original. :-\
I think this is an issue with EZ Listening, as well as another factor: Is there ANYONE still making this music, anymore?
Personally, I think there SHOULD BE BOTH of those formats in the Big Apple... but my thoughts aren't worth the electrons I just wrote them with. ;D
Sigh. How original. :-\ I think this is an issue with EZ Listening, as well as another factor: Is there ANYONE still making this music, anymore?
Personally, I think there SHOULD BE BOTH of those formats in the Big Apple... but my thoughts aren't worth the electrons I just wrote them with. ;D
What Frequency would be good for a BIG BAND-Standards format? I think it would do good here. ???
On FM?
JohnnyOhJohnny said:
None. We're not even talking about a demo that's "too old" here, we're talking about a demo that's been DEAD for years.
WPHA said:The NYC area lost it's only (to my knowledge) Smooth Jazz station a few years ago. One of the issues was that the 20-somethings on the Sales Team couldn't "sell" it to their peers. So what did it become?? ??? YET ANOTHER "rock" station. :
You don't sell to peers in NYC. Agencies buy. Agencies didn't buy smooth jazz, so smooth jazz went away. On the other end of the spectrum in Lancaster, PA where it's almost all local ad buys, a well seasoned sales staff wasn't enough to sell Hall's Smooth Jazz 92.7 WSJW. It's not the sales staff. Why buy smooth jazz when you can buy an AC station and get a wider swath of the demo?
it's called BROADcasting for a reason. Formats need to be broad to reach a broad audience due to limited spectrum. Even while stations need to offer things that will make the medium unique in a fragmented media environment, stations still need to offer something for everyone.
Theater of My Mind said:
One FM Talk station in NYC is hardly a takeover.
B
butchfm
Guest
How bout' www.wduv.com do you mean a station like this...go listen live and take a look at the play list for the lat 6 hours...
Check it out...
Check it out...
WPHA said:The NYC area lost it's only (to my knowledge) Smooth Jazz station a few years ago. One of the issues was that the 20-somethings on the Sales Team couldn't "sell" it to their peers. So what did it become?? ??? YET ANOTHER "rock" station. :
Really, you're going to go there? RXP was NYC's only modern rock station. The irony of taking it there coming from 'YET ANOTHER' Godcaster seems really too big to ignore.
Losing smooth jazz wasn't unique to NY, it happened in several markets relatively around the same time. I'm far happier we didn't entirely lose QXR.
This is just a drop in the bucket, but Clear Channel recently relaunched their "Lite FM" station in Dayton, Ohio on a new frequency and with a much softer and older music mix. In fact, you can't even call them "Soft AC", because I haven't heard them play anything newer than 1998 or so. But it does bring back fond memories (to me, at least) of the way NYC's own "Lite FM" used to sound 15-20 years ago:
http://www.945litefm.com/
http://www.945litefm.com/
Yes I was referring to an easy listening station like WDUV which plays many easy listening artists from the 60s 70s and 80s...
butchfm said:
If you're talking about bring a traditional style easy listening back to the air may I suggest the following:
First, have it feature original recordings and limit the number of remakes to no more than about one-third of the entire on-air library with absolutely NO CUSTOM RECORDINGS! Artists to feature on such a station should include:
Henry Mancini
Dan Fogelberg/Tim Weisberg
Acoustic Alchemy
Jonathan Cain
Chris Geith
Frank Mills
just to name a few.
I can't see this format making it on FM anymore; unless, of course it's a small station. Even then, it would have a tough go. The question is which AM frequency might work? 620 might work; so could 930, 970, 1050, 1130 (bring the WNEW calls back), 1280 (bring the WOV calls back), 1330, 1380 or 1560.
First, have it feature original recordings and limit the number of remakes to no more than about one-third of the entire on-air library with absolutely NO CUSTOM RECORDINGS! Artists to feature on such a station should include:
Henry Mancini
Dan Fogelberg/Tim Weisberg
Acoustic Alchemy
Jonathan Cain
Chris Geith
Frank Mills
just to name a few.
I can't see this format making it on FM anymore; unless, of course it's a small station. Even then, it would have a tough go. The question is which AM frequency might work? 620 might work; so could 930, 970, 1050, 1130 (bring the WNEW calls back), 1280 (bring the WOV calls back), 1330, 1380 or 1560.
Nobody ever thought about WHLI 1100. NO WAIT! That's a daytimer which needs to file an application to broadcast 24/7.
The place for an easy listening/standards station is in the non-commercial educational end of the FM band.
The likely audience for the format has aged out of the demos that advertisers want, but as a non-profit the format could be cheap to do and could probably be supported by donations from devoted and grateful listeners. That's what has happened with jazz and classical, the model would also work with easy listening/standards. The FM fidelity and stereo would also be part of the appeal.
The format's commercial potential is too small to waste a full commercial FM signal on, and AM just doesn't have the needed fidelity.
Years ago, while traveling through New England I used to pick up a non-commercial Beautiful Music format from a monastery in the Hartford area. I don't know if it is still around.
The likely audience for the format has aged out of the demos that advertisers want, but as a non-profit the format could be cheap to do and could probably be supported by donations from devoted and grateful listeners. That's what has happened with jazz and classical, the model would also work with easy listening/standards. The FM fidelity and stereo would also be part of the appeal.
The format's commercial potential is too small to waste a full commercial FM signal on, and AM just doesn't have the needed fidelity.
Years ago, while traveling through New England I used to pick up a non-commercial Beautiful Music format from a monastery in the Hartford area. I don't know if it is still around.
satech said:
But how many people could build up the library and have the patience to get those stations up and running and then going until they started breaking even? At least Bitner had acquired WJIB-FM's library when he started and had a set of call letters familiar to Boston EL listeners. You can't really use "FM" calls on AM and WPAT's calls are still in use in the area, so there isn't any New York EL calls that could be used, AFAIK.
With the internet, why go slumming in the AM-FM junk yard?
20 years ago, some of the stuff that Easy 93.1 plays wouldn't have been considered soft or easy at all.
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