mobley said:
First of all: Country HAS worked in New York..WHN was often top 5 25-54 in it's day..and the format was a lot LESS mainstream back then. Brad Paisley, Keith Urban and others are much bigger multi-media stars than the Country stars of yesteryear. By the way, WYNY was the the number 2 12+ station on Long Island as recently as 1992. I know, because I found those numbers in an old issue of R&R a few weeks ago. Before WYNY's demise, they were also Top 4 in Morristown, which by the way is the richest metro country in America. As far as the quadcast goes, it did pull a 1 something in the NY Metro with a poor signal in most of the heavily populated areas. The local quadcast signal in Monmouth Ocean was darn close to #1 in the market from time to time. WMJC on LI did not work beacuse it was automated and on a bad signal.
Country could make money in the NY market with a suburban strategy..It's worked for PLJ! I predict Country could be very strong (on a good signal) in Middlesex/Somerset, Long Island, Morristown and Monmouth/Ocean.
As far as Country not getting 18-34..Guess again! Look at the numbers for WCTO in Allentown, WPUR in AC and WGNA in Albany. Places not dissimilar to SUBURBAN NYC.
For all of those alleged successes, those formats all went away, some of them quite quickly. Country is an older-leaning format across the country, and in the NYC area especially, that also hurts billing. Ultimately, billing matters even more than the numbers, and I suspect that a lot of those stations just weren't billing well enough to survive, even if they had some spots of success in areas like Morristown 15 years ago.
And as someone else correctly pointed out, the early 90's were during the tail end of the country music boom. They would face a much taller order now, especially when also considering the demographic change in NYC, like it or not. No, not everyone in the NYC region is ethnic or wants to listen to urban. Far from it. But, there's no denying that the demographics of New York City don't even compare to Portland, Seattle, Wichita, or even Chicago, to name a few cities. And Albany and Allentown, I'm sorry, can't really be compared to suburban NYC. Those are much smaller cities out of the shadow of a large metro area. Different demographics, different tastes, different listeners.
The female demos are also oversaturated in NYC and in formats that are much more mainstream to the average area listener than country. You have PLJ, Lite, Fresh, Z100, KTU, Hot, Power, CD101.9 all going after the female demo to some extent, as well as spanish-language stations like Amor, and as well as all those suburban AC and Hot AC stations like WALK, WEBE, The Coast, Star 99.9, KJoy, WMJC, Magic 98.3, 94.3 The Point, WFAS, WHUD, and on and on and on.
And wow, WHN was in the top 5 30 years ago. That's certainly a compelling argument to bring back country in 2007. *rolls eyes*
There's a lot missing from NYC radio, there's no denying that. And if there were more frequencies to go around, it would be nice if country, and oldies both had radio homes. That said, some formats that I think would have a better chance include:
-An intelligent triple-A format similar to The Peak
-Another CHR station to go up against Z100
-To a much more limited extent, a newer-leaning dance station to go up against KTU's sagging numbers, which have been sagging ever since they made their latest tweak to sound older. However, a rhythmic-friendly CHR competitor to Z100 could do the job as well.
