bturner said:
I think the big drop for KSBJ is significant. One can wonder about KSBJ's Christmas music format and if the new competitor has taken a bite. I sometimes wonder if one can research themselves into a tiny box, seemingly perfect, that winds up sounding like plain vanilla against the other 30 flavors offered. Perhaps another month or two to determine if this was a fluke would be the right move. With that said, I'd be looking hard at what I'm doing and trying to identify the weak spots. At the least, it is time to play smart. We have all seen those at the top of the ratings flounder after the years and years of success make one think it could never happen. While KSBJ is not on my presets (nor the other guys), I recognize KSBJ can easily be credited with making Contemporary Christian music a viable format in radio and they helped other stations along the way as well.
It only takes one listen to Air-1 to make one extremely dissatisfied with the praise and worship format on KSBJ. Yes - I am calling it praise and worship, with a little AC CCM thrown in once in a while. I've programmed Christian music, I know the subtleties in the format, and I am qualified to say KSBJ has been praise and worship for at least 15 years. When the first came on the air, under the wise leadership of Buddy Holiday, their format was Hot-AC CCM, with Christian rock on Saturday nights. After Buddy Holiday was unceremoniously walked out of the station he created, the whole Hosanna Integrity praise and worship stuff took over - to the detriment of the CCM format. I fought it as hard as I could on the station I was on in Florida, but it had the backing of conservative churches all over the country who did NOT like Christian rock music, and thought it was corrupting the minds of the youth in their churches. So much for the mandate Buddy Holiday gave that KSBJ would never sell out - it would always be the station for young people. Old people had KHCB, and it was time for young people to have a station. They sold out to praise and worship. It may rate well, it may rake in donations from everybody attending the mega-churches, but young people were left completely without Christian radio to serve them. This happened nationwide - CCM stations abandoned young people to retreat into the safety of adult, conservative church member audiences. And they were quite successful in doing so.
There is just one little problem in all of this. Something called the great commission. It doesn't call on Christians to retreat into the comfort zone of our own little cliques - even if they have 20,000 check writing members. It calls on Christians to reach out to unbelievers. As much as an anathema as praise and worship music is to me as a Christian who remembers the golden age of CCM - before the dumbing down and lukewarmness - praise and worship has ZERO appeal to non-Christians. AC-CCM, hot-AC CCM, and Christian rock have appeal to non-Christians, because they are creative, fun to listen to, and mimic music that people are familiar with. It is very easy to convince someone to try out a Christian rock station - nearly impossible to convince them to try a praise and worship station.
So - yes - the observation that KSBJ has focused grouped themselves into a corner is very astute. The mega-churches in Houston are growing younger in demographic by the day, I can promise you that the teens and young professionals are not tuning in KSBJ. The genie is out of the bottle - and it goes by many names: Air-1, streaming, and even NGEN. For the lucky folks living near an NGEN translator, if they are under 50 - one listen and it is bye-bye KSBJ and hello NGEN, love at first listen. KSBJ can thank somebody in their creative department for coming up with the idea for NGEN - it was probably to shut up the Christian rock fans, but they may soon find it is their future. How long it will take - for NGEN to become their primary format and the praise and worship to become their secondary is anybody's guess, but it is inevitable. Praise and worship is a dying format, I think you will find KSBJ's ratings erosion is more due to deaths in their audience and lack of younger listeners replacing them - but NGEN has the potential to reverse that trend. For now, with the no NGEN over the air signal in the massively affluent, younger areas of Houston like Cypress, the Woodlands, Conroe, the younger listeners are probably going to secular competition. They need to fix that, and HD-2 isn't the answer. Neither is streaming - they need an over the air signal that covers the North part of Harris county and south part of Montgomery county. I think if they did - NGEN would start showing in the ratings just as WPOZ's other formats are starting to show in Orlando ratings. I'd give praise and worship another ten years at most before the ratings flip completely to things like NGEN for Christians. Christian stations better line up with where God is moving, or they will be left behind.
