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HOT 97.5 Sold to Good News Broadcasting

K.M. Richards said:
I think he just misread the viability of programming a Boomer-centric format and not including enough music that also appeals to younger demos.
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The sad part is he put his reputation on the line, and authored numerous articles promoting the commercial viability of formats aiming at 65+. The station airing the format apparently didn't find any benefits in that demo, and asked him to adjust the music. That's what led to the ratings drop.

But I've said this numerous times that the easiest way for any radio station to improve it's 6+ share is to add 60s music to their format.
 
ted chittenden said:
When I finally moved from Tujunga to Phoenix in 1972, the Los Angeles noncommercial dial was pretty much set with ... [edit] ... KCSN in Northridge at 88.5 mHz (it was the last to come on the air in my area);
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Actually, 88.5 was originally applied for by what was then San Fernando State College May 9, 1963 (my seventh birthday!), and the application was drawn up by none other than Saul Levine, who also donated the original transmitter and antenna.

CP was granted June 20, with 10 watts ERP, and it signed on as KEDC the following April. In 1966, they filed for an increase to 320 watts and were licensed at that ERP a year later. They went to 3kW in 1974, and the call letter change was apparently concurrent with that increase.

So I am guessing, Ted, that Tujunga was just too far away from Northridge for the signal to get to you before that last increase.
 
TheBigA said:
The sad part is he put his reputation on the line, and authored numerous articles promoting the commercial viability of formats aiming at 65+. The station airing the format apparently didn't find any benefits in that demo, and asked him to adjust the music. That's what led to the ratings drop.
Click to expand...

That is indeed the sad part. I have to admit that I thought he was wrong from the start, and that was what led me to research the viability of an 80's-focused format as not just attractive to 55+ but also mass appeal enough to get some younger demos.

TheBigA said:
But I've said this numerous times that the easiest way for any radio station to improve it's 6+ share is to add 60s music to their format.
Click to expand...

Provided no one looks at the demo breakouts ...
 
TheBigA said:
The station airing the format apparently didn't find any benefits in that demo, and asked him to adjust the music. That's what led to the ratings drop.

But I've said this numerous times that the easiest way for any radio station to improve it's 6+ share is to add 60s music to their format.
Click to expand...
There was an attempt to add other elements to attract listeners other than just being a jukebox. Veteran radio personality Danny Davis did a live remote on Wednesdays (10-3) from the Desert Diamond Casino hosting the "The Club 55 Plus Dance Party". This was 2 years ago.
 
ted chittenden said:
And that is my point. The primary reason that religious stations now dominate the noncommercial sector of the FM band today in cities like Phoenix is because when that part of the band was wide open, few, if any, secular noncommercial entities chose to apply for radio stations in the band.
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And now, groups like K-Love want stations on the commercial side of the dial because of the assumption that more listeners scan through 92.1-107.9 than down at the non-commercial end of the dial.
 
EricStein said:
And now, groups like K-Love want stations on the commercial side of the dial because of the assumption that more listeners scan through 92.1-107.9 than down at the non-commercial end of the dial.
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They want stations period. 75% of the FM dial is in the commercial portion and more likely to be available for sale. They don't care where on the dial it is, but there is a bonus if they have an existing audience they can transfer over.
 
EricStein said:
And now, groups like K-Love want stations on the commercial side of the dial because of the assumption that more listeners scan through 92.1-107.9 than down at the non-commercial end of the dial.
Click to expand...

Other music non-profits are free to copy the model of K-Love, raise money, and buy available FM frequencies. One such group did so recently in the state of Washington.

Home

www.koolops.org www.koolops.org

The Oldies Preservation Society immediate mission is to keep all these great songs from the early years of rock on the radio in the Spokane area. We at O.P.S. believe that preserving the music of yesterday is essential for the radio listeners of today and tomorrow.
To help accomplish our mission, for many years we solicited donations on radio station KOOL 107.1FM to help expand our membership and raise financial support through regular Pledge Drives. All this was done to help O.P.S. fulfill our goal of someday owning and operating our own radio station.
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K.M. Richards said:
Actually, 88.5 was originally applied for by what was then San Fernando State College May 9, 1963 (my seventh birthday!), and the application was drawn up by none other than Saul Levine, who also donated the original transmitter and antenna.

CP was granted June 20, with 10 watts ERP, and it signed on as KEDC the following April. In 1966, they filed for an increase to 320 watts and were licensed at that ERP a year later. They went to 3kW in 1974, and the call letter change was apparently concurrent with that increase.

So I am guessing, Ted, that Tujunga was just too far away from Northridge for the signal to get to you before that last increase.
Click to expand...

I *thought* that station may have had another callsign, but, for the life of me, I couldn't remember it. Regarding when I first heard the station, it was at my grandmother's house on Summit Rose St., just east of Foothill Boulevard, back in the summer of 1971. I distinctly remember it because that was when, and where, I heard for the first time, Carole King's version of "(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman." While it was possible to hear the station from my house on Day Street and Colbert (or was it Colvert) in eastern Tujunga, the signal was a lot fuzzier. As to why I hadn't heard the station before that, 1) I didn't get access to my dad's AM/FM receiver until the first trip we took to Glamis over Thanksgiving of 1970; and 2) I was too busy playing around on the fuzzy end of the commercial end of the FM band (as well as the more clear-sounding AM band) to pay much attention to the noncommercial stations at the lower end of the FM dial.
 
lanceventa said:
They don't care where on the dial it is, but there is a bonus if they have an existing audience they can transfer over.
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Of course, the fallacy in their thinking there is that the existing audience leaves en masse after their favorite station goes away as a result of the sale.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Of course, the fallacy in their thinking there is that the existing audience leaves en masse after their favorite station goes away as a result of the sale.
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Not necessarily. K-Love has seen more early ratings growth in a market when it replaces an AC or Hot AC than another format. They know people will still punch in and they try to hook a listener with music that they know sounds just similar enough to what was there and try to convert them to listeners then donors.
 
lanceventa said:
Not necessarily. K-Love has seen more early ratings growth in a market when it replaces an AC or Hot AC than another format. They know people will still punch in and they try to hook a listener with music that they know sounds just similar enough to what was there and try to convert them to listeners then donors.
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But that's not an absolute given. Your phrasing essentially says that ... it depends on what the format was before they took over.

Example: Here in L.A., K-Love (well, they were still legally EMF at the time) replaced a Classic Rock station at 100.3 back in 2017 and virtually the entire audience bailed.
 
K.M. Richards said:
Sounds to me like John Sebastian will finally have to retire. The format never took off in syndication (a feeling I know too well myself) and now his one station is apparently tossing him aside.

Which is a shame, because he is one of the all-time great programmers. I think he just misread the viability of programming a Boomer-centric format and not including enough music that also appeals to younger demos.
Click to expand...

One thing that may have lulled Mr. Sebastian (and again, I'm only guessing as I neither know him or anybody else employed by KOAI or Zelus personally) was the results of the music tests conducted.

I know the "how" of how those tests were conducted from personal experience. Basically, around 2020, the station announced over the air that if you wanted to be involved in helping to choose the music the station played, you could go to the station's website and fill out a form. The form included questions about your name, age, how to contact you, and when and how often you listened to KOAI.

I filled out the form and then clicked on a link to take the test online. Approximately 30 seconds of songs were played, most of which I knew, and I had to decide whether I liked them, disliked them, never heard them before, or never heard them before but wanted to hear more. The vast majority of the songs were released between 1964 and 1985 with a few songs sprinkled in from before the Beatles era (including the 1950s) and a few that charted after 1985. Since participation was voluntary and since the musical clips were mainly from the 1964-1985 timeframe, I think that it was safe to say that those were the songs that were really being tested.

A few years after I took the first music test (I believe it was around the beginning of 2025), the station sent me an email invitation (remember that I had given it my contact information) to participate in another music survey. This second survey covered many of the same songs as the first survey did (per my memory) except with some of the minor hits and music recorded after 1985 taken out. What I think I'm saying (and this is in hindsight, of course) is because these music tests primarily revolved around music between 1964 and 1985 and *because* the second survey came via email, Mr. Sebastian and Co. may not have had enough results from younger listeners to show where the problems in serving an older audience only might be.

Again, as I said at the top, I'm only guessing at what happened. Outside of actual survey participation, I have nothing whatsoever to back up my theories of what occured.
 
One strange nugget from all this, is that I noticed a few weeks ago that Hot had removed all mentions of the 103.9 signal on the air from dj’s and imaging. Also the main logo on the website only has the 97.5 frequency on it.
 
lanceventa said:
That's been like that for nearly a year

Home - Hot 97.5/103.9 Phoenix

web.archive.org web.archive.org

A separate site of theirs still is live from 2012 frozen in time:

Click to expand...
Why are on earth are they using a logo that doesn't include the frequency where two thirds of the listeners tune into? I know they have a HOT logo with both frequencies, I've seen it. Or, is this just an overlooked error that no one has noticed for at least a year?

Either way,, this shows the level of incompetence at Zelus.
 
ted chittenden said:
One thing that may have lulled Mr. Sebastian (and again, I'm only guessing as I neither know him or anybody else employed by KOAI or Zelus personally) was the results of the music tests conducted.

I know the "how" of how those tests were conducted from personal experience. Basically, around 2020, the station announced over the air that if you wanted to be involved in helping to choose the music the station played, you could go to the station's website and fill out a form. The form included questions about your name, age, how to contact you, and when and how often you listened to KOAI.

I filled out the form and then clicked on a link to take the test online. Approximately 30 seconds of songs were played, most of which I knew, and I had to decide whether I liked them, disliked them, never heard them before, or never heard them before but wanted to hear more. The vast majority of the songs were released between 1964 and 1985 with a few songs sprinkled in from before the Beatles era (including the 1950s) and a few that charted after 1985. Since participation was voluntary and since the musical clips were mainly from the 1964-1985 timeframe, I think that it was safe to say that those were the songs that were really being tested.

A few years after I took the first music test (I believe it was around the beginning of 2025), the station sent me an email invitation (remember that I had given it my contact information) to participate in another music survey. This second survey covered many of the same songs as the first survey did (per my memory) except with some of the minor hits and music recorded after 1985 taken out. What I think I'm saying (and this is in hindsight, of course) is because these music tests primarily revolved around music between 1964 and 1985 and *because* the second survey came via email, Mr. Sebastian and Co. may not have had enough results from younger listeners to show where the problems in serving an older audience only might be.

Again, as I said at the top, I'm only guessing at what happened. Outside of actual survey participation, I have nothing whatsoever to back up my theories of what occured.
Click to expand...

EVERYONE who thinks programmers operate in a vacuum needs to read your post, Ted. You have detailed a classic example of the music research process in the modern era.

This is the 21st century version of what @davideduardo outlined at his site ... the auditorium test:
 


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