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has the Lake gone calm?

B

BuffRad

Guest
I recently asked an American friend of mine that works at a Buffalo ad agency about the Lake and ratings. I was told the Lake has lost it's initial lustre and has trended down to a pond. Listeners came, checked it out, and left. Took about a year and a half, didn't it? what will they do next?

your thoughts and facts??
 
> I recently asked an American friend of mine that works at a
> Buffalo ad agency about the Lake and ratings. I was told the
> Lake has lost it's initial lustre and has trended down to a
> pond. Listeners came, checked it out, and left. Took about a
> year and a half, didn't it? what will they do next?
>
> your thoughts and facts??
>

If the Lake goes dry, I could see 107.7:

-going Urban AC to slice into the huge numbers of mainstream urban WBLK-Buffalo & WDKX-Rochester.

-going rhythmic and realizing the potential that Wild 101 never could since they're not contrained by Canadian content which was a big part of their eventual failure. Of course this new station or Kiss 98.5 would have to be programmed in a way so the 2 Entercom stations aren't creating competition against each other.
 
Look at the Coverage Contours

The Lake is on a continuing downward trend.

> If the Lake goes dry, I could see 107.7:
>
> -going Urban AC to slice into the huge numbers of mainstream
> urban WBLK-Buffalo & WDKX-Rochester.

Not with that signal, especially in Rochester. Check out Radio-Locator.com. And those contours are on a GOOD day.

> -going rhythmic and realizing the potential that Wild 101
> never could

Once again, not with their signal coverage, and not if they're owned by Entercom who already has Star and Kiss bumping into each other. If Entercom wants WBLK's numbers, Kiss is the station that needs to get them.

The only format that makes sense for Entercom is "Country 107". Either that, or "Welcome to Radio Warsaw". And I don't mean polkas.
 
Oldies 107....Good Times Great Oldies...

Then sell it in tandom with KB.
 
Options

> How about a Rock station to take on the EDGE? If Programmed
> right it could work.

If you look at where The Lake has the best coverage, there's only one option, and that's country.

Besides, what makes more sense:

a. Trying to get a piece of a 4.5 share?

or

b. Trying to get a piece of a 12.0 share?


You make the call.
 
Re: Look at the Coverage Contours

> How about a Rock station to take on the EDGE? If Programmed
> right it could work.
>

RANT!!!

Why the hell should they do something someone else is doing? Can anyone think of something different? Radio can be a creative medium or have the bean counters and computers sucked the life out of radio?

Come on guys think outside the small box. I'm really not impressed with markets that seem to have two of everything leaving format holes you can drive a truck through.

Sorry for the rant....Flame if you want.

MikeM
 
Re: Ad-Options

It all comes down to revenue.

It would be nice to be able to SEE those Buffalo numbers (12+, 25-54) that were mentioned by a poster at the top of the thread. Not having access to them, I'll take the original post at its word. I've noticed that our workers don't listen to The Lake as much as they might have a year ago, but that's hardly scientific evidence.

It's said The Lake is the domain of David Field, Entercom President and CEO, who has a vested interest in the format and is its chief proponent. If this is truly the case, then perhaps The Lake will continue doing what it's doing through good numbers and bad, as long as it generates sufficient revenue. That said, time and money take their toll.

It cost Entercom $10 million to purchase the station. The goal of The Lake format was to chart a new path and bring disenfranchised listeners back to radio. In that capacity, it may have succeeded by picking up the disenfranchised and those who may have tired of, or at least wandered away from 97 Rock just to check out The Lake. Of course, it might be argued that after listening to The Lake for a year, those same listeners chose to again disenfranchise themselves. Or it may be that the 97 Rock listeners went back to 97 Rock, leaving The Lake with only the disenfranchised listeners who came back to radio. If The Lake numbers are in fact down, it may be that there aren't that many listeners who are disenfranchised.

As to a country format, it's not hard to imagine competitors thinking about WYRK, a superb radio station with massive numbers, being ripe for at least a flank attack. But isn't that to some extent what The Lake was intended to do to 97 Rock?

KPLX, The Wolf, in Dallas took on the #1 FM County and made some inroads in a market that's wild about country. But this is Buffalo. And again, there's that 107.7 signal... which, by the way is a pretty damn good signal, in the country.

Hey, it's radio... y'never know.
 
Re: Options

We all know that frequency once aired country. Didn't work then. What makes people think it would work now? Yeah, the signal is better than when WNUC existed. But would that translate into hugely improved numbers?

I like the Lake. I was one of those disenfranchised FM music listeners. I didn't listen to FM for music until the Lake came along. But I would agree with those advocating that if a change is made that they go with a format that isn't in the region. I would suggest Smooth Jazz. Will it generate huge numbers? Probably not. But given its fringe signal, 107.7 will never be a huge player in this market, regardless of the format.
 
Re: Look at the Coverage Contours

> RANT!!!

And a damn fine one at that!
>
> Why the hell should they do something someone else is doing?
> Can anyone think of something different? Radio can be a
> creative medium or have the bean counters and computers
> sucked the life out of radio?

Hmmmmm. I think we all have our opinions about that. How many stations does Clear Channel own?

> Come on guys think outside the small box. I'm really not
> impressed with markets that seem to have two of everything
> leaving format holes you can drive a truck through.

You make a good point. But if you'll remember, back in the day, there were many markets that had two of each. Buffalo at one time had four CHR stations on FM! It splintered the demo, but the listener who wanted to hear everything from rock-based CHR to urban CHR (churban) must have had a ball. At another time, the market had three AORs! Holy cow!

I think guys like myself look at Buffalo radio stations and their ratings (and sometimes their billing) and play the "what if" game with formats. We're not GMs, we're not PDs, so we come to this board to vent and play "what if." The most popular version of this being "what if WYRK with its gigantic numbers actually had an in-format competitor... and what if The Lake went country?" Yeah, it gets tiresome, but it's winter in Buffalo, the skiing sucks, so we come here to play the "what if" game knowing full well that WYRK is a fine station, perhaps the best in the market and that any station that takes on WYRK isn't assured any more success than wthe format that's already on the would be challenger.

Me? I'd like to hear a Smooth Jazz station (again) in Buffalo. I think CBS pulled the plug on WSJZ (WBUF-FM 92.9) years ago just when the station was beginning to hit its stride.

Alice-WALC, the successor to Smooth Jazz-WSJZ was a pretty good station for a while. It's format also was pulled too quickly by... yup, CBS, which switched format to WBUF-Dancin' Oldies.

A lot of us look at some of the programming decisions that have been made by GMs and PDs and think we could have done better. But we're not GMs or PDs. Hence the second guessing by many of us (myself included)on this board.

One format that aging boomers like me seem interested in is Adult Album Alernative (a little bit of classic rock, a little bit of new stuff, a little bit of Motown/Memphis/Old School [and a water pipe]) which we thought The Lake was going to be and may yet become.

Many of our Canadian friends who post here seem to favor a hip-hop/dance format to rival Kiss. That's a tough sell in a top heavy market like Buffalo, where stations rely on LOCAL advertising dollars from a wide range of (diminishing)sources. Hard to survive on bar/club revenue whether it's from the states or Canada.

> Sorry for the rant....Flame if you want.

Hey, we're a civilized lot here. ;)

> MikeM
>

Good rant, Mike.
 
Re: Look at the Coverage Contours

> > RANT!!!
>
> And a damn fine one at that!

Well I'm glad it was taken in the spirit that I intended.

Sometimes I think all of us look at what we'd like to hear on the radio, rather than something new or different.

I'm really old school I started listening to the radio at a very young age and had records (not kiddie records) before I even started school!

Anyway personally I like the Smooth Jazz idea but that's personal preference. By the way if that's what you like smoothjazz.com does a great job of the format. Kinda tough to hear in the car....Ha ha!

Given the coverage area and without doing research I'd have to go with Country. Here in Charlotte we had an FM Country station that was on top in the ratings for many years. The Challenger was a move in from outside the market and it took them a long time to catch the leader. Now the two go back and forth as the leader in the format and usually get beat out by the Urban station in the 12+ numbers. One of the Country stations is owned by CBS, the other by Clear Channel. So if the research of the area that the 107.7 signal falls in says it's a country audience then I would go with that and stick with it for at least 4 or 5 years and promote the heck out of it.

Please send some snow down here. It only takes about 3 or 4 inches before everything shuts down. It's fun to watch the locals panic, milk and bread fly off the shelf at the store. They can't even drive in the rain. Yesterday we had a good rainstorm that caused a 30 car pileup on the interstate.

MikeM
 
Snow Days

> Please send some snow down here. It only takes about 3 or 4
> inches before everything shuts down. It's fun to watch the
> locals panic, milk and bread fly off the shelf at the store.
> They can't even drive in the rain. Yesterday we had a good
> rainstorm that caused a 30 car pileup on the interstate.

Here, the Jimmy Griffin Special Sixpacks fly off the shelves when the local TV stations go into panic mode.

We've got a couple of days of very windy and possibly snowy weather in store. Looks more like a 12-pack event to me.
 
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