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JACK FM
- Thread starter Mrbiglott
- Start date
Didn’t it work the first time? I thought WCBS-FM only came back because angry New Yorkers (Mayor Bloomberg too) complained about it
It worked the first time. There are other factors that led to the way things played out.
1) CBS-FM did not ”come back”. What appeared after Jack hit the road was a new classic hits format, not the oldies format it had prior to Jack.
2) A gold-based format was put on the station because CBS corporate saw the results of a modified oldies format in the PPM tests in Philly and decided that they had to own that potentially larger audience group.
3) After the first couple of books, Jack was doing better in sales demos than the old oldies format had been doing, particularly in the critical 35-44 segment of those broader 25-54 or 18-49 demos.
But...while the ratings/shares improved in certain demos, the advertising revenue fell off quite a bit.
Station___________Owner__2008___ 2007____2006____2005____2004
101.1 WCBS-FM___CBS___$18.5___$18.2____$16.1___$23.9____$34.1
radioinsight.com
The original NY Daily News article from April 2009 quoted BIA's Mark Fratrik stating that 2008 saw an across the board
revenue drop of 10% from 2007 for all of radio (remember the recession) and was expecting a similar decrease in 2009.
(paywalled article) On the radio: For ads, WLTW’s at the top of the bill
Note that WCBS-FM revenues remained steady even after the format change in 2007.
Station___________Owner__2008___ 2007____2006____2005____2004
101.1 WCBS-FM___CBS___$18.5___$18.2____$16.1___$23.9____$34.1
New York Radio Revenues
BIA Financial has released its annual report on radio revenues for the previous year. Thanks to the New York Daily
radioinsight.com
The original NY Daily News article from April 2009 quoted BIA's Mark Fratrik stating that 2008 saw an across the board
revenue drop of 10% from 2007 for all of radio (remember the recession) and was expecting a similar decrease in 2009.
(paywalled article) On the radio: For ads, WLTW’s at the top of the bill
Note that WCBS-FM revenues remained steady even after the format change in 2007.
In the period between the last aging-in-ratings years of “oldies” and a couple of years into the new “classic hits” one that followed Jack, radio in general lost… on an inflation-adjusted basis… almost a half of its revenue. So any evaluation of the station has to show the radio revenue decline against the specific station billing.
Any multi-year comparison or tracking has to have an inflation-adjusted baseline. And any revenue based analysis needs to consider that revenues tend to take as much as a whole year to reflect significant changes in ratings, up or down.
And that decline is mirrored in the drop in ratings.
Jack-FM was a great format for some cities, such as Los Angeles, that had success with Modern Rock in the 80s. Jack is still going strong in LA, Baltimore, Seattle, Nashville, Minneapolis and other cities with few changes, all these years later. Key artists on Jack include U2, REM, Depeche Mode, Nirvana, Eurythmics, etc. As Modern Rock fans got a bit older, Jack gave you your favorites, mixed with some Classic Rock, along with Jack's ironic and sarcastic quips.
But NYC never had a successful Modern Rock station. It was a format that was tried several times on several frequencies. So for New Yorkers, those songs were not our frame of reference.
Did Jack improve on WCBS-FM's Beatles/Four Seasons/Motown demographics? Yes. But when WCBS-FM ended the Jack experiment and came back with 70s and 80s Classic Hits, that worked very well. Jack was never in the Top 10. WCBS-FM Classic Hits is always in the Top 10, usually in the top three and once in a while at #1.
But NYC never had a successful Modern Rock station. It was a format that was tried several times on several frequencies. So for New Yorkers, those songs were not our frame of reference.
Did Jack improve on WCBS-FM's Beatles/Four Seasons/Motown demographics? Yes. But when WCBS-FM ended the Jack experiment and came back with 70s and 80s Classic Hits, that worked very well. Jack was never in the Top 10. WCBS-FM Classic Hits is always in the Top 10, usually in the top three and once in a while at #1.
It might if they played as you mentioned Shalamar.
The Jack type stations should be tailored. It needn’t rely on whether the market had modern rock (though as has been noted, there was a time Z100 was pretty much alternative).
The WCBS-FM Oldies format worked in the sales demo for many years, and could have continued working if the CBS Radio management had its head screwed on straighter. They could have slowly, almost imperceptibly, pared away the oldest of the old music and replaced it with the most compatible of the newer stuff. Instead, they didn't want to do anything to risk their current success, so the CBS Radio brain trust left the station on autopilot for too long, then panicked and chopped off PD Joe McCoy's head. (Sound familiar to anyone who remembers WABC from the late '70s?)
Joe's replacement (Brian Thomas, IIRC?) "freshened" the sound by removing an entire tranche of '50s/early '60s music all at once, cancelled popular specialty programs in one fell swoop, and stuck his finger in the eyes of their longtime listeners. Then that guy got sh!t canned, and another new PD (Dave Logan) was brought in, who began righting the ship. And just as he was starting to see results, the Hollander brain trust panicked again, pulled the rug out completely, and installed Jack in a surprise Friday afternoon coup d'etat, in the process firing talent that had been on the station for decades. (Here's a little-known fact: CBS did this so quickly and stealthily that they didn't even have severance worked out for the jocks, some of whom had worked at WCBS-FM since the '70s, and CBS fought for months to avoid paying the amounts their own AFTRA agreement required them to pay.) And then, adding salt to the wounds, they began running liners that insulted and demeaned their longtime, loyal audience.
Why in the world would anyone think that this strategy would fail to win hearts and minds? Or that New Yorkers (and Jerseyites and Connecticutters) might get angry and refuse to listen anymore? Or that the new target demo might have some residual hostility to the company, the station and the new programming? Even if they preferred the new music mix? (And despite what's been written herein, the initial ratings said anything but that.)
CBS could have gotten to the same place ("Classic Hits") at about the same time (2007), but that would have taken some discipline. However, it was the 2000's, and Shock & Awe (and Stupid) was in fashion -- not to mention ignorance and hubris, always a fun combination -- and they opted for Stupid. Because almost any other strategy they might have taken, including installing Jack on 92.3 or 102.7 (both of which had modern rock in their DNA), would have likely been more successful, with less resentment.
What you're missing is that at the time CBS Radio was run by Joel Hollander. He was basically a sales guy who was fighting with the chairman of CBS Les Moonves. Les wanted to sell CBS Radio. Joel's way to stop Les was to cut costs, and JACK was a way to do it. Joel did a company-wide deal with SparkNet, and that kept the wolves at bay for another year. The resulting controversy cost Hollander his job, and he was replaced by the popular Dan Mason, who dropped JACK from WCBS.
Using national programming like JACK was a very CBS way to do things. In the 1980s, CBS Radio did a corporate programming deal with Mike Joseph for the Hot Hits format. The format started at WCAU Philadelphia, and spread to a bunch of other CBS stations.
Regarding JACK returning to NY, I think the JACK brand was damaged by the controversy. Its also possible that Audacy has an inherited right to prevent a competitor from using the format in NYC.
Only because management was watching carefully the progress of the "live" PPM testing in Philadelphia and saw the potential for a relaunched classic hits.
The problem is that, except for the original Hot Hits market, San Juan, that format had a rather fast burn rate with is screaming, double jingle segues and the like.
Which is why two years later, CBS stations such as WBBM Chicago, dropped the format.
I alluded to Hollander...
...but another line that more explicitly mentioned him and his role in the debacle must have gotten edited out before I hit Post.
I never knew this bit of history - thanks for posting; I found it interesting!
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