Is there a "Pop Crush" in Buffalo's radio future?

[yugoidar]

There's a report in one of the trades today that Townsquare has recently converted their underperforming Gen X station in Albany to a format closely linked to it's national pop culture website, www.popcrush.com. The Hot AC station is now known as "Pop Crush 105.7" and among it's attributes, Pop Crush music news airing twice each hour at :15 and :45.

Here are some comments from Townsquare officials:

SVP of programming Kurt Johnson says, "While it’s logical to expect Townsquare to launch more local stations modeled after its national web properties, the company says the Albany flip was opportunistic and not necessarily the first piece of a national rollout".

“We’re building national brands and when that opportunity presents itself to exploit them locally, we’ll capitalize on it,” EVP of business development Alex Berkett says.

With JOY 96.1's free-fall in the ratings over the past several months, does such an "opportunity" exist for Townsquare in Buffalo and WNY? Let's watch this one!

 

[SirRoxalot]

So, they'd target the Kiss/Star combo? Well, I guess that's what they're failing at now...

 

[TheBigA]

Townsquare has also launched a national 7-midnight country show based on their site www.tasteofcountry.com. It currently airs on every Townsquare country station except WYRK. At least for now.

 

[chas108]

Townsquare has also launched a national 7-midnight country show based on their site www.tasteofcountry.com.  It currently airs on every Townsquare country station except WYRK.  At least for now.

If they're smart they'll leave nights local. Maybe make available any applicable artist audio/bits - like CMT does now - for the benefit of the current local night show. (sorry the name escapes me but I often catch them when driving thru WNY and I like their show)

As for Townsquare's Country giant in "The Great Northeast", last time I heard 'GNA at night - 2 years ago - the night jock opened his show with...

"Today's Best Country and Your All-Time Favorites...One-oh-seven-point-seven-double-YOU-gee-enn-ayy. 8 and a half minutes after the hour of seven o' clock on a gorgeous Friday evening"...

Not that I'm an authority on personality, but when liner cards and time checks are what passes for great content, it shouldn't be a surprise - either to the jock or the PD who sanctions/dictates such content - when you lose your gig to a national show. 

 

[JustPastBuffalo]

Townsquare has also launched a national 7-midnight country show based on their site www.tasteofcountry.com. It currently airs on every Townsquare country station except WYRK. At least for now.

If they're smart they'll leave nights local. Maybe make available any applicable artist audio/bits - like CMT does now - for the benefit of the current local night show. (sorry the name escapes me but I often catch them when driving thru WNY and I like their show) As for Townsquare's Country giant in "The Great Northeast", last time I heard 'GNA at night - 2 years ago - the night jock opened his show with... "Today's Best Country and Your All-Time Favorites...One-oh-seven-point-seven-double-YOU-gee-enn-ayy. 8 and a half minutes after the hour of seven o' clock on a gorgeous Friday evening"... Not that I'm an authority on personality, but when liner cards and time checks are what passes for great content, it shouldn't be a surprise - either to the jock or the PD who sanctions/dictates such content - when you lose your gig to a national show.

You work the format, so you get more latitude to play consultant, Chas. Even though WGNA puts up strong numbers in Albany, Town Square's WYRK should serve as the north star for the company's Country stations. Local, upbeat, promotionally relevant, it plays to the listeners and the listeners play back to it; WYRK is an exceptional Country station.

About that Pop-Crush thing. I get what TS is trying to do in Smallbany. But Buffalo is a different landscape. Could WJYE be considering a "Super Hot AC" approach in an attempt to re-define the format as well as the station? Thus far, TS has come up short because Star is an entrenched and formidable competitor. I'd guess that TS is going to do everything possible to fix WJYE and maintain the AC format, but yugoidar's speculation could be the "Plan B" if things don't soon turn around. The only chink in that plan is Pop Crush might steal listeners from TS's Urban legend, WBLK. And does TS really want to get into a dog (cat?) fight with Kiss and Star? Seems it has its hands full grappling with Star alone. Fall book is on and the All Christmas Music Format clocks are ready to run. Press F9 and Merge the logs.

 

[TheBigA]

Not that I'm an authority on personality, but when liner cards and time checks are what passes for great content, it shouldn't be a surprise - either to the jock or the PD who sanctions/dictates such content - when you lose your gig to a national show.

One thing you won't hear on a national show is weather or time checks. So that is unique local content, at least as far as radio is concerned.

But Townsquare's syndicated evening show is more like a morning show, filled with live interviews with major stars, and the platform of a successful website to promote it. Not saying that WYRK can't attract major stars. They do every week. But they all air in morning drive. And that great content airs once and is never heard again. What about the majority of P1s who missed it? I believe radio needs to rethink its clock, and create a form of Tivo for its listeners. These stations play the songs 5 times a day, so why not do the same with unique local content? That might be an alternative to syndicated evening shows. And the station gets to keep all the money.

 

[yugoidar]

I'd guess that TS is going to do everything possible to fix WJYE and maintain the AC format, but yugoidar's speculation could be the "Plan B" if things don't soon turn around. The only chink in that plan is Pop Crush might steal listeners from TS's Urban legend, WBLK. And does TS really want to get into a dog (cat?) fight with Kiss and Star? Seems it has its hands full grappling with Star alone. Fall book is on and the All Christmas Music Format clocks are ready to run. Press F9 and Merge the logs.

Valid points, JPB. I haven't listened lately. To your ears have the folks at TS taken any steps at all to improve WJYE's performance as an AC station. Is it your guess that Christmas music is the answer in a month or so, giving them them a couple of months to make any formatic and personnel adjustments to improve their ratings going forward?

 

[chas108]

Not that I'm an authority on personality, but when liner cards and time checks are what passes for great content, it shouldn't be a surprise - either to the jock or the PD who sanctions/dictates such content - when you lose your gig to a national show.

One thing you won't hear on a national show is weather or time checks. So that is unique local content, at least as far as radio is concerned.

But Townsquare's syndicated evening show is more like a morning show, filled with live interviews with major stars, and the platform of a successful website to promote it. Not saying that WYRK can't attract major stars. They do every week. But they all air in morning drive. And that great content airs once and is never heard again. What about the majority of P1s who missed it? I believe radio needs to rethink its clock, and create a form of Tivo for its listeners. These stations play the songs 5 times a day, so why not do the same with unique local content? That might be an alternative to syndicated evening shows. And the station gets to keep all the money.

Touche, A.

Of course I'd have been happy with "7:08" and then something...anything to engage the listener. The weather was so gorgeous that night...it was late May, so it could've been a topic "A" to get some listener response for a break or two. Would you eat bacon-flavored ice cream? If you could skinny-dip with anybody you wanted...no repercussions, who would you choose?

I like your Tivo idea. In PPM-land there's more of a tendency to repeat content knowing we only have the listeners' attention for 6-8 minutes at a pop. I like the idea of re-airing AM show artist interviews and other content as a recycling tool...never the entire bit but re-air a compelling portion and send the listener to the website to hear the whole thing.

In AD 2012, stations concentrating all their entertaining content on AM drive are missing out IMHO.

The night show on my station has a different feature every hour. Tons of listener content. It's a show. And PPM loves it.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Morning show artist interviews and other content are used to drive listeners to the website. If you missed a morning show bit, it's available as a podcast, hopefully boosting the "new media" revenue stream. If there's an especially good bit, repeating it and using it to promote the morning show is common. Longer form content simply doesn't work well in the evening when the approach is more music intensive.

Artist interviews usually have minutes of blah, and seconds of genuinely interesting content. TS would be better served to make that content available to local stations who could pick and choose bits that relate to their markets and/or the songs that they play. Syndication is an unimaginative answer at best.

Lazy radio always sucks. Live jocks have so few chances to make an impression and entertain that they'd better be on their "A" game whenever they crack the mic. That means adding value to even music intensive formats. There must be something going on in town that your listeners can relate to. Find it, and talk about it when you get the chance. And, please DON'T talk about TV, or another TV event that's going on simultaneously. Why would you promote your competition?

Most of this is Radio 101, circa 2012. It's amazing how many people don't execute it well. BTW, WYRK is not one of those stations. They do what they do very well, and they dominate the market because they have scared off any competition.

 

[TheBigA]

TS would be better served to make that content available to local stations who could pick and choose bits that relate to their markets and/or the songs that they play. Syndication is an unimaginative answer at best.

They have too many stations for that to be practical, and no one knows local like the local stations. So what they're doing is leaving the local stations do their own local interviews for morning drive, and then the evening show gets its own interview. So one station gets two interviews. One that's localized, and the other that focuses on breaking some national news that they can use in their national website. That story gets picked up by blogs, and goes viral, leading to millions of hits, well beyond what a local station could get. These Townsquare sites are becoming high traffic sites, because they aggragate lots of information from lots of individual sites into one mega-site organized by format.

 

[Ed Trefzger]

These Townsquare sites are becoming high traffic sites, because they aggragate lots of information from lots of individual sites into one mega-site organized by format.

Compared to most radio station websites (that often resemble a diner placemat or a grocery store bulletin board) Townsquare's Taste of Country site is really nice. They could take more advantage of that aggregation by localizing the digital property with a little geotargeting and/or letting people select their local station from the site. Then the branding of the local station and perhaps local content could augment the excellent national site.

 

[TheBigA]

They could take more advantage of that aggregation by localizing the digital property with a little geotargeting and/or letting people select their local station from the site. Then the branding of the local station and perhaps local content could augment the excellent national site.

There's a button on the bottom of Taste of Country that says Country Radio, and it gives links to all the local Townsquare sites.

Initially, local Townsquare sites were branded as Taste of Country sites, but apparently it was decided to give them more of a local flavor.

 

[SirRoxalot]

Smart groups would make artist interviews conducted in one market available to other markets. That kind of sharing could benefit both the stations and the artists. It would also make it a lot more attractive to an artist to do a local interview if they knew that bits from that interview could go national. All it takes is a little imagination. If a group is going to do a syndicated show anyway to service smaller markets without local talent, why not make those interviews available to the local stations that do have local talent? It's not hard, or expensive.

From a sales perspective, what's more effective - having one large audience going to one site, or having dozens of smaller audiences going to dozens of smaller sites? What brings in more money - a handful of national advertisers paying for a lot of "impressions", or a host of local advertisers paying a host of sites for a smaller number of localized "impressions"?

Radio generally gets 80% or more of its revenue from local. Is there any reason that the web shouldn't do the same? Unless you believe - as I do - that most local advertising on the web are simply bonus ads thrown in to make a radio buy more attractive. Corporate websites servicing formats don't bring any money into a local station. It's just cream that corporate skims off the top, even though local radio is driving listeners to the site. If I were a Market Manager, I'd want credit for those dollars which are going to end up at corporate anyway.

 

[TheBigA]

If a group is going to do a syndicated show anyway to service smaller markets without local talent, why not make those interviews available to the local stations that do have local talent?

They do. Not all of the stations choose to use them, but they're available. Anything is available. Sometimes it comes from station ownership, sometimes it comes from a syndicator, sometimes it comes from a label, and sometimes it comes from the artists. But there's a huge wealth of content available to any station in any format. How the station and its staff use all that content is up to them.

 

[Ed Trefzger]

From a sales perspective, what's more effective - having one large audience going to one site, or having dozens of smaller audiences going to dozens of smaller sites? What brings in more money - a handful of national advertisers paying for a lot of "impressions", or a host of local advertisers paying a host of sites for a smaller number of localized "impressions"?

It depends on what sort of advertising you are running on the site. If you are doing direct sales, you very likely can get more per impression from a local sale as you can probably charge more than the often sub $1.00 CPM you'll get from third-party aggregators. That's if you do sell them.

The national site has the advantage of a "critical mass" that gets you the ability to use third-party advertising aggregators that have high-quality ads and high click-through rates that can earn you $2.00-plus CPM.

Looking at tasteofcountry.com's stats via Alexa and Quantcast, I can see that they have a monthly reach of 214,000 people on the site and are (not surprisingly) particularly popular in cities where Townsquare has stations.

I provide technical consulting to a sports site with similar traffic (about 250,000 readers a month in-season) and third-party ad sales via three aggregators generates about $200,000 per year from third-party sales on 80-100 million page views. Direct sales adds another 15 to 20 percent of the ad revenue.

Combining localization for individual markets with the volume of the aggregated site could result in the best of both worlds, especially if they did local ad sales for the localized portions of the page and used national third-party and direct sales for the rest.

A page with links to click through to local sites really doesn't achieve the same thing.

 

[TheBigA]

Combining localization for individual markets with the volume of the aggregated site could result in the best of both worlds, especially if they did local ad sales for the localized portions of the page and used national third-party and direct sales for the rest.

An interesting example is espn.com, which has launched a number of localized sites in larger markets. They have ESPN Radio stations in a lot of those markets, particularly NYC with a new FM station. But the TV site seems to be run separate from the radio station, so all the synergies you mention aren't leveraged. Pretty strange for Disney, who seems to be the best at maximizing synergies among its properties.

 

[Ed Trefzger]

An interesting example is espn.com, which has launched a number of localized sites in larger markets. They have ESPN Radio stations in a lot of those markets, particularly NYC with a new FM station. But the TV site seems to be run separate from the radio station, so all the synergies you mention aren't leveraged. Pretty strange for Disney, who seems to be the best at maximizing synergies among its properties.

ESPN's local sites are part of its overall site structure, not separate. For example http://espn.go.com/new-york/. So they absolutely are "leveraging the synergies." In addition, we're talking a major difference in traffic: 214,000 monthly for tasteofcountry.com; over 13,000,000 a month for ESPN. ESPN is doing exactly as I suggested for Townsquare: they are localizing and personalizing within the national site. In addition, those who sign up for the ESPN site can further personalize it with individual team preferences.

 

[Element9]

After so many listens to morning drive, each one more difficult than the previous, the thought occurs that Town Square is trying to kill Joy because what's on now doesn't hold a candle to what was in place for so many years. Star must be laughing their ashes off. Now, it could be that Town Square thinks it had nothing to lose by dumping the Chile-Hagen morning show, or TS felt it was time to re-tool because Chile was getting long in the tooth, even though he didn't sound like it. Could be entirely bottom line related, or the format not being executed to the needs of the PD or consultant, lacking show prep, hourly maintenance and payoffs. A TS rep has implied that TS felt the WJYE morning show should have been performing on par with the WYRK morning show, albeit with different P1 listeners. That's a pretty high standard. It's hard to imagine what WJYE has on the air now in AM drive getting anywhere near it.

 

[TheBigA]

ESPN's local sites are part of its overall site structure, not separate. For example http://espn.go.com/new-york/. So they absolutely are "leveraging the synergies."

My point is that the ESPN New York site isn't a WEPN-FM site. Although WEPN drives a lot of traffic there. And WEPN only gets a button on the ESPN New York site. So radio is a stepchild here to the brand. Townsquare is doing the exact same thing. They gave radio a button on the main site. They really can't do a "Taste Of Country Buffalo" site because there isn't much uniquely Buffalo country music news, as evidenced by the stories on the WYRK site.

 

[Ed Trefzger]

My point is that the ESPN New York site isn't a WEPN-FM site. Although WEPN drives a lot of traffic there. And WEPN only gets a button on the ESPN New York site. So radio is a stepchild here to the brand. Townsquare is doing the exact same thing. They gave radio a button on the main site. They really can't do a "Taste Of Country Buffalo" site because there isn't much uniquely Buffalo country music news, as evidenced by the stories on the WYRK site.

WEPN is part of the espn.go.com site and not a separate site driving traffic there: http://espn.go.com/new-york/radio/index

It's not the same thing no matter how much you insist it is.