Re: It is not a format change.
> OK. David. Next time I'll make sure everyone knows I was
> being absurd in describing a CHANGE IN FORMAT disguised as a
> shift. It was meant in jest. The ALA B96 should've been a
> clue. Most intelligent people in the industry know when a
> station shifts, B96 doesn't just shift it changes. It has
> and never had to change it's call letters. I use that to
> describe what occured. Once in a while you need to take your
> head out of the books and see what's happening in the real
> world.
Whatever. The fact is, most formats that are successful and last over many years are evolutionary and go through many many changes.
This is why your B 96 example is totally off-track. CHR is the most changable "format" since the music is based on whatever is popular, and may change in style almost totally over a very short period of years... that is the entire idea of CHR.
The first "CHR" (when it was still called Top 40) played Patti Page, Billy Vaughn, Gogi Grant and such. But it was as much a CHR as today's stations as it played the big hits of that moment in time.
Change is expected, even in library based formats. A so-called soft AC, like WLIT, will not age with the listener if it can help if. If the target is 35-54, they will shed the songs that are too old over a period of years, and introduce songs that are younger. So, as some people leave the demo, they will not find the station as appealing, while people reaching the start of the demo will find that the station is inviting to them.
Oldies, on the other hand, has died because the demo target moves older every year, and has finally become top heavy with unsalable listeners.
In general, stations try to keep up with the music of their target demo, so change is constant. Further, many people already inside a demo get tired of oledr stuff, and ude to exposure, start to like newer things, giving another reason for constant change.
>
> It is what it is David, a format shift means a CHANGE.
> They're making HUGE changesm three to four to FIVE J.O.
> tracks an hour. Now the station is all over the place. I
> guess the days of actually having a format are gone.
That is a change in music blend on an existing fomrat... cleaning out some music that no longer tests and adding songs that listers TODAY want to hear. If the station is called (and who cares what the name of the fomat is) Ädult Contemporary" and the songs are adult appeal hits, then there is no format change.
Format descriptions are mostly used to tell advertisers what kind of programming a staiton has, especially when they are in a different market. The listener does not care what we call the format. All they care about is whether the music is good or not. You are the one who actually should get on the street, and you will find out that listeners, mnearly all the time, do not use "our" terms to describe formats unless, like "oldies" and "classic rock" the stations in the formats locally have used a format descriptor to position. Otherwise, listeners refer to the music based on their own taste criteria.
In the case of Lite, all that a listener might say, if they even notice the change, is that the station has gotten better or worse. It's all about the reaction of each individual listener.
