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Future of WIP-AM

Sentiment is all well and good, but anyone who makes a busiess decision based on sentiment shouldn't be making any business decisions at all. Whatever 1210 was decades upon decades ago is irrelevant. What matters is trying to make the most of it now.
 
imhomerjay said:
Sentiment is all well and good, but anyone who makes a busiess decision based on sentiment shouldn't be making any business decisions at all. Whatever 1210 was decades upon decades ago is irrelevant. What matters is trying to make the most of it now.
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True. But the other suggestion of turning 1210 into an all-oldies format or whatnot is throwing up the white flag. In fact, that's what happened in the interregnum from WCAU to WPHT, pretty much wiping out any sentiment whatsoever.

By virtue of the signal alone, WPHT would be the last signal I would tamper with in the CBS Philly cluster.
 
Oldies has been done for a while.  Ten years ago I was in a meeting where the fate of a small FM oldies station was being discussed.  I told the GM "do you realize that if we were going by the old rules of what defines 'oldies' we'd be playing Nirvana right now?"

Today, under the old rules of "1955 until 10 years ago," an oldies station would be playing artists like Nelly, Matchbox 20, Lifehouse, Train, and Eve 6.  The old definition of "oldie," and the core demographic that "oldies" used to cover, is now the province of classic hits and "Jack" stations.  The demographic that "oldies" serves now has 50 year olds at the YOUNG end of its spectrum.  There's only a four year overlap between "oldies" and the money demo now.  Advertisers don't want the oldies audience any more.

It's the same thing that happened to standards a decade ago; the audience is literally dying off.
 
In 1965, when r&r was young, oldies were from 1955 until the previous year. You were playing 10 year old music at the most. Suddenly, we got caught in frame of mind that oldies were music that was 40 years old. That oldies audience is now primarily listening to talk radio, if they listen to the radio at all.

When CBS killed NYC's WCBS-FM, I remember Imus saying "You can't play 'In the Still of the Night' forever." Hw was right. You have to move on.
 
Older cities like Cleveland, for example, can still support classic hits stations that are still 60s-heavy, to some degree. But for the most part, the era of 50s/60s oldies on the radio is fading away, outside of small AM stations or "True Oldies Channel" outlets. And you'll be lucky to find a station that uses "oldies" in any part of their branding.

Regarding WCBS-FM, the smartest thing they could have done after the Jack FM flop was to reset the station back to what it was pre-Jack. And since then, they've been updating themselves continuously. Also look at "K-Hits" in Chicago, a 70s-80s classic hits station. And the 1980-2005 era "Gen-X Radio" (interesting concept, don't care for the name).

That's where the future of the format ultimately lies. One wonders why the format didn't update itself quicker over the past 20 years, unless if it was simple fears of giving up the 1960s era of music completely... and the attachment factor associated with that decade.
 
They are not going to move KYW to FM unless and until it starts to falter in the ratings on AM.

And if you have an all news station and a music station that both skew in the same general age demographics, and you want to keep them both, you keep the music on FM.
 
WCAUTVNBC10 said:
Read the press release. They also announced it on air Thursday as part of the big announcement.
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Could you give me the link so I can read it?
 
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