Considering that EPN 1050 is the 31st station in NYC with a .6 share 12+ they could broadcast whale farts and no one would know the difference.MusicRadioUSA said:
Country music on AM. There is a novel idea!
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first,CAPE MAY,now CAPE COD---WHY NOT IN NYC???????
- Thread starter yossefgershon
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Country music on AM. There is a novel idea!
12 + numbers Arbitron and Radio and Records magazine. Btw 0.9, 1.1 and now a whopping 1.4 is nothing to brag to advertisers about. Especially at 12+ you are the not even in the top 30 stations in the New York market.neo11 said:
And I could care less about males 18-34 demo. What's that a 1.8?????? The Fan has horrible numbers and they kick EPN's butt. :
videokilledtheradiostar said:12 + numbers Arbitron and Radio and Records magazine. Btw 0.9, 1.1 and now a whopping 1.4 is nothing to brag to advertisers about. Especially at 12+ you are the not even in the top 30 stations in the New York market.neo11 said:
And I could care less about males 18-34 demo. What's that a 1.8?????? The Fan has horrible numbers and they kick EPN's butt. :
Yes, even in Radio and Records magazine, the numbers are exactly as I posted them, because they are the same Arbitron PPM numbers. So I have no clue what you were reading.
Besides that, you should know by now that ESPN's #1 concern is having their station cleared in market #1. Ratings are secondary. ALSO, and this is important, WEPN doesn't even have half the signal WFAN has, even with the LMA agreements on 1040 and 107.1. That hurts the station. Add to that its lack of "heritage" in the market and, voila, you have them being the second dog behind WFAN.
Oh, and 12+ doesn't matter, so it really doesn't make a difference whether they are in the arbitrarily defined "top 30" or not.
Put the country on 92.3 FM. And if the deal with 101.9 doesn't work out for ESPN move ESPN Radio to 1560 and Radio Disney to 1050.
BTW am I the only one who likes ESPN Radio? On a semi-regular basis I listen to Mike & Mike in the Morning and Tirico and Van Pelt in the afternoon. And if I don't have to work I listen to Colin Cowherd during middays on a semi-regular basis.
WX4ESPN Bristol, Connecticut 98.1 Campus Radio
HD-1 ESPN Radio
HD-2 ESPN Deportes
HD-3 Alternates between: WEPN/NYC, WEAE/Pittsburgh, WMVP/Chicago, KSPN/LA, and KESN/Dallas
BTW am I the only one who likes ESPN Radio? On a semi-regular basis I listen to Mike & Mike in the Morning and Tirico and Van Pelt in the afternoon. And if I don't have to work I listen to Colin Cowherd during middays on a semi-regular basis.
WX4ESPN Bristol, Connecticut 98.1 Campus Radio
HD-1 ESPN Radio
HD-2 ESPN Deportes
HD-3 Alternates between: WEPN/NYC, WEAE/Pittsburgh, WMVP/Chicago, KSPN/LA, and KESN/Dallas
I've watched this discussion go nowhere and meander about. Look, there's a huge hole in NYC regional programming...Country.
In South Jersey, we support Four Country Signals, WXTU Phila, WDSD Dover DE, WKOE Cape May and WPUR Atlantic City. Each has a piece of the pie of persons, each has a piece of the pie of money. Granted, South Jersey is WAY different than cramped, congested Metro NY. But reasonable persons gotta think: Jeeze, wouldn't Country FM make a nice alternative to SIX Adult Contemporary stations or share listenership with the adults of WCBS-FM. Think of the TSL with no format competitors. You wouldn't need huge cume to get great ratings.
In South Jersey, we support Four Country Signals, WXTU Phila, WDSD Dover DE, WKOE Cape May and WPUR Atlantic City. Each has a piece of the pie of persons, each has a piece of the pie of money. Granted, South Jersey is WAY different than cramped, congested Metro NY. But reasonable persons gotta think: Jeeze, wouldn't Country FM make a nice alternative to SIX Adult Contemporary stations or share listenership with the adults of WCBS-FM. Think of the TSL with no format competitors. You wouldn't need huge cume to get great ratings.
amfmsw said:
This discussion is recycled again and again and again and the answer is no! Country really wouldn't do better here because it's not a matter if the format isn't on the air currently, but the reasons *why* it isn't on the air. The listening public, as a whole, in the NYC area is not favorable to country music, and this has been proven again and again in the past 12 years or so through the various attempts at putting on a country format in NYC and the suburbs (country music's supposed "base" in the region). From WYNY in NYC, which was below a 2 share, to the various attempts at country formats on 94.3 and 102.5 in LI, the Y-107 quadcast which pretty much blanketed the entire suburban region of NYC, etc., the ratings just were not there. I think it's telling that on Long Island, with Country 92.5 from CT booming in like a local station in pretty much all of Suffolk County, it doesn't even show up in the ratings. And before you mention that it is an out of market station, I'll invite you to look at the most recent ratings to see numerous other out-of-market stations from CT, Westchester, etc. that do make it to the list, even on formats like AC which are found ad nauseum on the local Long Island airwaves. I think that tells you all you need to know about country's likelihood of success in the NYC area.
neo11 said:
And yet, when you go back before that time, to when WHN was on the air, country was a Top 10 format in NYC. And when WYNY signed on as a country station, it did better than a 2 share. In fact, I recall that WYNY at 103.5 did better than a 2 share until about 1994. Then it became a typical Nashville-based music station with a higher percentage of new music than might work in an older market like NY.
I really think it has nothing to do with the general format, and more to do with the specific application. WHN's approach was to be an AC station that also mixed in some country. I think we see that being done with Lite, which plays Martina McBride, Taylor Swift, and Carrie Underwood. I think a country station that used the WHN approach would be more successful than WWYZ's approach in Hartford.
The bigger issue with country in NYC is advertising and getting over the country stigma with agencies.
TheBigA said:
Now you're going back 20-30 years. I don't think you can draw ANY conclusions from that. New York City was a less ethnically diverse city then, certainly a "whiter" city than it is today, and country is definitely a format that leans strongly white. We're also talking about an era where Musicradio77 was tops, where "beautiful music" stations still had decent ratings, and so forth. It's just not the same today, and the more recent attempts at country music all prove it.
neo11 said:
I don't disagree with the change in demos, but my point about recent PRESENTATIONS still stands. I'm talking about approaching the format the way The Wolf approched Texas audiences in the 90s. Ignoring national charts and programming specifically for the New York audience. It means a cross between classic country and AC. There is still a large audience for this music in New York. Kenny Chesney sells out Madison Square Garden. I think he could sell out Giants Stadium with the right bill.
TheBigA said:
It amuses me that this argument about "selling out" Madison Square Garden is always used. Ethnic concerts (Brazilian, Greek, Polish, etc.) have also sold out Madison Square Garden. Latin American soccer teams playing friendly matches against each other sell out Giants Stadium. Does that mean that a 24-7 Greek or Polish or Spanish-language soccer station would work on a full-power commercial NYC frequency? Absolutely not!
In a metropolitan area of over 15 million, it is not difficult to find even 80,000 people (using Giants Stadium as an example) that are into any type of genre imaginable. That does NOT translate to any sort of likelihood of commercial radio success.
As for the formatics, again the argument still stands: there was more than one attempt at country in NYC and the surrounding suburbs, and from what I recall, WYNY, for instance, tweaked the music quite a bit. It didn't work.
neo11 said:
They get more representation on NY area radio than country.
neo11 said:
All of the attempts were as typical, Nashville-based music stations, with a large number of currents, which is the wrong approach. WYNY may have tweaked the music, but they NEVER diverged from being a typical cookie cutter country station that could have been based in any American town. They didn't need a tweak, but a wholesale revolution, similar to what The Wolf did in Dallas in the 90s.
TheBigA said:
What, with leased time programming and secondary AM signals? Look at WNYE, for instance, which has Greek, Serbian, Croatian, and other ethnic leased-time programs. They have an 0.1 in the ratings.
What I'm talking about full-power, 24/7 FM commercial radio. And my example illustrates that filling up MSG or even Giants Stadium does not translate to a successful full-time format.
But they were also the only game in town. WCBS-FM was about as cookie-cutter as it gets in the years before they were jacked, but as the city's only oldies station, they still had strong ratings (albeit with aging demos). WYNY, much like WCBS-FM, also had a pretty decent lineup of jocks as well, with some name recognition in the market. Having the playing field to yourself means that many people will still listen to a mediocre station, due to the lack of an alternative. And in the WYNY days, let's not forget, there was almost no such thing as internet radio, there was no satellite radio, no mp3 players. They really were the only choice, and they still failed. Cookie-cutter or not, if the audience was there, they would have succeeded.
neo11 said:
I disagree that people will listen to mediocre radio if there's no alternative. What they do is listen to NOTHING. That's what many of them did, and that's what many of them do now. Nothing is an alternative, and that's a choice people make. Or they do what the AAA audience does, and listen to non-commercial radio. Or they listen to their own collection. In the 90s, that meant cassettes. New York is still one of the best sales markets for country music, even without radio, and without inner city retail like Wal Mart.
The audience IS there, and it's largely unserved. It just needs someone to take a risk. And it IS a huge risk which The Wolf took in Dallas. Dan Halyburton, formerly of Emmis, was the one who took that risk. He would have been ideal to do it in NY, and when he left 102, Emmis lost that opportunity. Certainly they could have done better than a .8 with country on that frequency. There are non-country markets that are succeeding with country as a format because they have focused on presentation rather than serving Nashville record labels. That is something that has never been done in NYC, no matter what you say.
TheBigA said:
They won't necessarily listen to nothing. The oldies fans with WCBS-FM proved it, by whining and complaining that the station wasn't playing enough 50's and pre-1964 music, by overplaying music from the 70s (and now the 80s), and yet the station is perched in a very strong position, thanks to those very same listeners who are tuning in regardless. And this was the case with WYNY and with all of the attempts to go country in the suburbs, where country is supposed to be a strong sell. Again, the fact that Country 92.5 doesn't show up AT ALL in the Nassau-Suffolk book, not even with an 0.1, is very telling.
As for country sales in NYC, if you're talking about volume, then you can throw that argument out the window. NYC, by virtue of being the largest metro area in the country, probably has the highest volume sales for just about any genre out there. So the fact that a lot of country albums sell here really means nothing at all. What's the sales percentage of country music versus other genres? That would tell us a bit more, though even then not the whole story. And even without Wal-Mart, there's plenty of inner-city retail. Lots of music stores in Manhattan still, even with stores like Tower Records closing. Quite a few Best Buy's in the five boroughs as well.
The AAA audience doesn't tune in because there's no AAA station at all (RXP may call itself AAA but it's anything but). Of course no one is tuning in to a station that doesn't exist! But that doesn't mean that if such a station came around, that it would do well.
Dallas is a FAR different market from NYC and I'll go out on a limb here and say that it is far more country friendly. So it's not really a valid comparison. It's also a logically fallacious argument to say that just because Emmis has a severely underperforming station in RXP on 101.9, that country is the solution. Country may do better than the 1.1 that RXP has currently in 12+ (though we know how little 12+ numbers matter), but how much better? I don't see such a format going above the high 1's, and where would it rank in specific money demos? And what about the advertisers? Revenue? If you want to put a station on the air that is a tough sell in NYC and you want it to be more than just a cookie-cutter jukebox, you need to invest major money in advertising and air talent. I don't see any cluster in NYC doing that and especially for a format that has such a negative recent history and perception in NYC.
You would think, at the very least, that with so many underperforming suburban stations out there, and with the country audience based in the suburbs (as we're told again and again) that someone would have given it a shot if they felt there was an audience. But the numbers prove otherwise.
neo11 said:
That's a very different demo. And I think they're a bigger target. I think they're losing a bunch of them because of their music policies. But they're getting enough to get good numbers.
neo11 said:
They don't target that market at all. If you're relying on an accidental audience, that's what you get. If a country station in NYC is programmed like WWYZ, it too will get a .1. Well, maybe a .5. That's my point.
neo11 said:
That's not my point. As I said, country is top rated in non-country markets like Seattle and Cleveland. But those stations are programmed to their markets. My point is that for country to work in NYC, it needs to be a non-country station, as WHN was.
neo11 said:
I agree and I think THAT is the real reason you don't see a country station in NYC. Not programming or lack of audience.
TheBigA said:
It is the same kind of example though. And if they are losing some listeners, it certainly is a very small amount, judging by their continued strong ratings. Even a lot of the whiners and complainers about CBS-FM on this board and the dentist board still claim to listen to the station. There's a reason for that.
Neither do the other out of market stations, and some of them show up with well over a one share and ahead of local, LI stations. Star 99.9 has a 1.4 in the latest Nassau-Suffolk book, and it's an AC format that already has plenty of options on LI in WALK, WKJY, etc., plus the NYC stations. If there was an audience for country, it would be there.
As for your comments about WWYZ, you have to realize they are purely subjective based on your own apparent tastes. Certainly whatever WWYZ is doing doesn't seem to be preventing it from being #4 in its market, but if you're telling me that country listeners in Long Island are *so* much different than the ones across the sound in Connecticut that they would refuse to listen to the type of programming and music found on WWYZ, I would just find that immensely hard to believe. The reality is that the audience is not there.
Seattle and Cleveland are much more country-friendly, demographically, than the NYC market is. They are more white, and less urban overall, and that benefits country stations. Looking at the Seattle numbers, I also see a Christian AC as #4. That would never happen in NYC. I think that is one example that illustrates just how different a market Seattle is from NYC. And Cleveland? Well let's just say that Cleveland is much more "midwestern" than NYC is. For instance, their #1 CHR station is #10 overall in the market. Big difference from NYC.
Beyond that, you: 1) completely ignored my comment regarding Dallas being country-friendly and not a suitable comparison to NYC, and 2) you're saying that a country station needs to be non-country. For that to happen, as you've also said, it needs to have a heavy dose of AC to it. What you would get then is the following:
1. Country "purists" coming out of the woodwork complaining that their country station is full of non-country music, much the same way the oldies "purists" are complaining about the 80s music and the lack of 50s music on CBS-FM.
2. An uphill battle going up against established AC powerhouses in an oversaturated AC market in the city and the suburbs. Typically, the last one in the game is the one that loses, when that happens. And if you add to it a perception that it is a "country" station, you'll see the advertisers flee as well. That's just the reality of it. If Fresh, which is a much more "contemporary" station for NYC, can hover in the mid 2's-low 3's, I can't see an AC-leaning country getting above a 2 share, at its very very best, and that may be too optimistic.
neo11 said:
No, it's all of the above. Lack of audience, lack of appeal for that sort of programming (in big enough numbers to support it), and the advertisers. But the advertisers would come around if the listeners really were there. When you're hovering around a 1.9 that isn't usually going to be the case unless you score VERY highly in some coveted demo, which country wouldn't do.
TheBigA said:
Really? Who are these "well-qualified" and "objective" people? Show me some articles specific to country music in NYC and how these "well-qualified" and "objective" people claim it will be a success here, backed up with more than just opinion or bias towards the country music genre. It seems to me that you're the one that is not objective, and that lack of objectivity has shone through multiple times in your postings on this issue.
TheBigA said:
Kenny Chesney selling out at MSG means nothing in terms of popularity of country music in New York. The majority of the audience undoubtedly comes from outside New York. People travel far and wide to see concerts in the big city.
Your analogy is akin to saying that seeing the ball drop on New Year's eve is popular with New Yorker's when in reality 99.9% come from out of town.
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