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Indy Arbs...Your Thoughts...

I say the boys in Franklin dump the Oldies altogether and put ESPN on both WIAU and WXLW.

Didn't they try to go Johnsn County/Franklin local with NewsTalk 95/The Point?

Plus like someone said you got the Columbus stations coming into Franklin and the local Franklin paper even advertises on one of the Columbus stations during IU broadcasts.

WIAU and The Daily Journal are next door neighbors!

Not to mention the Martinsville station does a lot of high school sports programming of Johnson County schools once Martinsville and Mooresville are eliminated from respective tournaments...plus there's some regular season games on as well when county opponents face each other. They used to show you some "researched data" when they came to make their pitch that they were No. 1 in the area when airing Johnson County events.

The station stayed dormant being a voice of Johnson County from about 1989 to about 2000 and the stations from Columbus and Martinsville saw the opportunity and took advantage of it.

Pretty hard for the local radio station to get any advertising from the local businesses when other media outlets ad execs go to their clients and question you about advertising on it because "Well, what will they be airing tomorrow? Sumo Rodeos?"
 
If WIAU is ever going to fully serve Johnson County, they need to air a mass appeal format. Yes, they did try to serve Johnson County...with an FM talk format. Funny, the people of Johnson County don't seem to be playing Talk stations or Sports stations or WIAU's Satellite Oldies in their places of business. It's Country, AC or Soft AC that's getting the dial time. Once WIAU gets away from their ill-conceived notion that they have a shot at being an Indy station, maybe they'll realize this & adjust their format to a locally produced mass appeal format...just like the Columbus stations that Franklin businesses play now.

One piece of history...95.9 did play rap in the pre-WHHH/pre HD Radio days and pulled 5-6 shares in Indy. Now, with WHHH on 96.3 and WFMS HD on 95.35 - 95.65, WIAU is no longer viable as an Indy station.
 
BobOnTheJob said:
If WIAU is ever going to fully serve Johnson County, they need to air a mass appeal format. One piece of history...95.9 did play rap in the pre-WHHH/pre HD Radio days and pulled 5-6 shares in Indy. Now, with WHHH on 96.3 and WFMS HD on 95.35 - 95.65, WIAU is no longer viable as an Indy station.
Click to expand...

Unless you live on the south side, they are tough to hear in Indy. I remember when Ron Douglass had it and it was WIFN...and it was a Johnson County station back in those days...they had "Rover", the little remote trailer, and did a fairly decent job of serving Johnson County. It reminds me so much of the old WGRT...many formats, bad metro signal.
I agree with Bob in that these little stations should do a locally produced mass-appeal format..even dayparting if need be, and quite trying to be something they aren't. A good example that immediately comes to mind is WCBK.
 
WIAU's struggles are as much about lack of effort as all the other obvious reasons. Compare this FM with it's combo AM counterpart. ESPN 950 too has a lousy metro signal, on the AM band, and a direct all-sports competitor [AM 1260] as well as other stations serving as flagships for our respective pro sports franchises. Yet they manage twice the 12+ share of Gold. How? ESPN 950 competes as best they can with aggressive grassroots marketing dragging the station out onto the streets, a decent local website, etc. Gold? No direct format competition, but no local street presence. No local website [that I can find], or even a local page on the syndicated Oldies website. They simply stopped trying here. Otherwise, any market exclusive format that did 5-6 12+ share on a solid frequency would still do 2.0 12+ consistently, even with a rimshot signal, with some other effort. The Johnson, Morgan, and Hendricks counties population count alone would get them there.
 
You may hear WKKG QMIX and Y106 on at the Circle K, but in the County by Country book, only WKKG get's decent numbers in Johnson County and they are not (that) great.
The Indy stations dominate in Franklin/Johnson County ratings.
I can't think of one rimshot in Johnson, Morgan, Hendicks, Hamilton, Hancock or Shelby County that did well billing by focuing on the locals. As someone posted earlier, these guys have the worst scenario in radio.
I believe WCBK does OK but that's it. WIAU tried to be an Indy station out of necessity. Now they are serving nobody but they are probably closer to making the payroll than they were 18 months ago.
For the most part, the Top 5 stations in each of the counties surrounding Marion are WFMS, Q95, Hank, B105.7 and The Track.
People in Johnson County don't want to hear the Franklin Grizzly Cubs play Friday night football. Same thing with the Shelbyville Golden Bears. Hendricks, Hamilton and Hancock Counties are even worse. Their loyalties are not to their suburban bedrooms, they are to Indianapolis, where most of them work.
 
Add me to the list of those confused by 93.9. The Song served a profitable, loyal niche audience - FM Talk isn't serving much of anyone, judging by those poor numbers.
 
Discussing the 12+ numbers is futile. Unless you can show me the 18-54, there is nothing to talk about. I consistantly see a station rank #1 in my market (not Indy) and #18 in the 18-54.

How is that possible? They own the 55 to death group, most of whom can't find the off switch so their AQH is HUGE. Of course, the only thing they can sell are AAA memberships, Depends undergarments and cruises to Alaska. Tough to sell.

The 12+ #5 station in my market is #1 in AM & PM drive, 18-54 women.

Something to ponder...
 
Someone at Cumulus should be fired. If WXNT couldnt go higher then a 1.5 with those shows, how could they expect to do better without a local personality or staff? Be happy with a 3.4 next time, if you have the chance.
 
In response to the earlier posts on HANK FM.

The average era of Music on HANK FM is 1995.

WFMS is 2000, WFBQ is 1979, WKLU is 1975. Obviously HANK is (and has been) more contemporary than some of you think.

That said, Hank is currently top 7 with adults in the money demo. (and missed top 5 by 2 tenths of a point.)

Thanks for caring about my buddy HANK!

David Edgar
Director of FM Operations
Emmis
 
David Edgar said:
In response to the earlier posts on HANK FM.

The average era of Music on HANK FM is 1995.

WFMS is 2000, WFBQ is 1979, WKLU is 1975. Obviously HANK is (and has been) more contemporary than some of you think.

That said, Hank is currently top 7 with adults in the money demo. (and missed top 5 by 2 tenths of a point.)

Thanks for caring about my buddy HANK!

David Edgar
Director of FM Operations
Emmis
Click to expand...


WKLU came on the air in 1975? Wow, seems like they just came on the air not more than 6 years ago ;) - my, how time flies.
 
David Edgar said:
In response to the earlier posts on HANK FM.

The average era of Music on HANK FM is 1995.

WFMS is 2000, WFBQ is 1979, WKLU is 1975. Obviously HANK is (and has been) more contemporary than some of you think.

That said, Hank is currently top 7 with adults in the money demo. (and missed top 5 by 2 tenths of a point.)

Thanks for caring about my buddy HANK!

David Edgar
Director of FM Operations
Emmis
Click to expand...

Guess you didn't do so well in history as a student, huh David?
 
I don't think David is talking sign-on dates here.

Re-read the post.

He's talking about the median year represented by the music in each of the formats.
 
ten_four said:
I don't think David is talking sign-on dates here.

Re-read the post.

He's talking about the median year represented by the music in each of the formats.
Click to expand...

Well then in the case of WFMS, he's w-a-a-a-y off the mark.
 
He's accurate. You can see the hard facts yourself if you subscribe to the service that monitors all stations and compiles that data.
 
I'd say WFMS is about right...mixing the current hits and all the mid 90's stuff that they play probably does yield a 2000 median. I like WFMS music and Hank's attitude. Fortunately, we have a couple of good country stations in the Columbus area in KORN and WKKG, which are the ones I frequent for now.
 
BobOnTheJob said:
I'd say WFMS is about right...mixing the current hits and all the mid 90's stuff that they play probably does yield a 2000 median.
Click to expand...

So in this particular case what we have is a grasping after straws on the part of the Emmis FM guy and not the perception of listeners who've been listening to country music on WFMS for decades.
 
as a "limited" country listener - I rarely go to WFMS because they typically have two or three female oriented sloooowwww ballads per set and I can't stomach that. Very generic times right now in country music - FMS is a reflection of that.

HANK does play older stuff, but it's typically upbeat and well-known.

Nothing scientific, haven't done a complete study like some of you like to do - just a casual listener's opinion.
 
I like KORN Country 102.9 for it's relative lack of sappy ballads. I can't stomach a lot of those either. Speaking of KORN, less than 30 days until it's 6KW non-D on 100.3...assuming my sources are correct. But the engineer is always the last to know.
 
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