How well do the retro shows fare?

[KYYX_fan]

We've see the failure of the 80's niche radio format here, but as a regular listener of The End on Sunday mornings, I wonder how the various retro shows perform in the ratings. I haven't listened for them in a while, but there at least used to be an "old school" show at noon on KUBE, a Saturday night disco show on KPLZ and some other all-request and/or retro shows on other stations. Are those shows successful at all? Is it a case of diminishing returns if they play more?

Along those same lines, I've noticed that the playlist compositions in multi-era stations routinely skip over all but the most "pop-y" music (e.g. Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, etc.) from the late 70's and 80's. JACK plays some interesting stuff now and then, but usually skips a decade and now feels more "KZOK" than ever. I could understand not hearing some of the more quirky new wave, but it has been a LONG time since I've heard any 80's Bowie anywhere and there are maybe two Clash songs played on any station (and for a total of two spins in a month).

 

[djdan]

An interesting question. I pulled up the last couple of books to see how the KNDD Sunday morning show rates, the KUBE noon hour Mon-Fri, KPLZ Saturday Night Fever, just running a 25-54 ranker. KNDD doesn't do very well, but spikes in some hours. KUBE old school lunch did well one book and not the other. KPLZ Saturday Night Fever was number two in Spring, mid-pak in Summer. Eighties Weekend was number two in Spring as well. Since the time periods are low cume, the number of diaries are small. If you get a couple of fans listening that have diaries you will get huge numbers. That is probably the theory behind "retro" hours, nights or weekends. When small cume is tuned to radio and a few diaries count, you can get big spikes with these shows.

A thought came to mind as I ran these numbers for fun. Maybe retro shows are best as one hour features or weekend features, but don't make great programming overall. An all Eighties station, JACK or MOVIN are better hour long shows than full station formats. JACK, MOVIN, 80's all see single trend spikes, but are not consistent in ratings performance over the long term. At first blush the answer to your question is retro works as a weekend, night or hour long feature, but not as a full format. I think that is why on the sales front we shy away from these kind of formats. They don't provide consistant numbers over the four book.