Considering the lack of response to The Bridge, having Tiffany Bentley host a sponsored show is one way to justify her salary. Whether the National Comedy Center is the sponsor because of the show's content is pure speculation. Of course, BTPM doesn't care about ratings, so what really matters if they're getting any financial response to either The Bridge or Group Chat. I do agree that it may be a tryout to replace What's Next, which seems to have run its course.
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January '24 Buffalo and Rochester trends
- Thread starter ckg279
- Start date
It's obvious they are TRYING to get younger demos interested in the station. They are acknowledging the elephant in the room. Whether it works or not is not yet known. WBEN has no path going forward, while WBFO may have a fighting chance. The Bridge is not the main product. It's just a small piece of the overall BTPM programming...
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What most joint licensees have found is that PBS Passport access is a great driver of membership $$, even from radio listeners.
At WXXI, our memberships have always been to the whole organization, going back 50 years to when we added the first radio service to TV. It's always seemed weird to me when other joint licensees have had separate memberships for radio and TV - but also a reminder that everyone does it differently and there's no national oversight to it.
The new show will be called "We're Next."
-rimshot-
What's Next has become unlistenable.
Listening to Group Chat on Friday proved moderately interesting although not compelling.
It further reminded me that I'm out of the demo.
Frankly, I'm good with that and so should WBFO be.
Nobody has a gun to my head.
That fits with a lot of surveys done where people identify with 'public radio' more than the specific station.
If they do, Townsquare already has a digital template for it:
Ultimate Classic Rock
Classic rock music news, interviews, pictures, songs and lists from classic rock artists.
ultimateclassicrock.com
With a national 7-midnight show. They might still be able to keep Hot Wings in the morning.
The bad news is the 2% who like the current presentation will be upset.
The shooting massacre of Black people at the Buffalo supermarket was horrific. It also revealed how segregated that city is. A racist sociopath was able to target a zip code he knew was almost entirely Black residents. WBFO chose to create a show that focused on issues that many White suburbanites would rather ignore. Everything is great if it's happy talk about the Buffalo Bills. Not so much if the topics are uncomfortable social problems.
The local show is only 1 hour a day. Most of WBFO's content is still national programming. It seems like there is plenty of variety for a wide range of demographics...
92.9 WBUF Playlist - Last 50 Songs
Looks like they already are a version of Classic Rock.
It's just typical Butt Rock that's been done before. They can keep rehashing the playlist, but it won't matter. There's no demand for more of this product...
Remind me again, what is the #2 station in Buffalo?
All Townsquare needs to do is shave off a point, and WYRK is #2.
WBUF had better ratings when they were JACK. The Wolf has a 1.1 share. They haven't hurt WYRK at all. WBUF tried several versions of Classic Rock after dumping JACK and all failed. Buffalo listeners use Radio by Rote. If they want Free Bird and Zeppelin, they know where it is. No brain required for people who want the same 200 songs on 97 Rock...
If only WBUF would bring back The Lake on a full-service signal it would be massive, right?
WBUF currently has a 1.5 share. That sucks. Are people so ignorant in Buffalo that they're actually listening to WBUF, but writing 97 Rock in the Nielsen diary? Big A is arguing that people want more of the same.
We know you hated The Lake. The 107.7 ratings history is available for you to view. It's certainly possible that a different approach would do better than what WBUF is getting now. Programming requires effort and expertise which is no longer possible by Commercial Radio...
What I said was classic rock makes as much sense as anything else. The other option is CHR.
That's not what I meant. My point is that our "WXXI" members are members of all of our services, TV, classical, news, the Route. We have never had separate memberships for TV or radio.
And our research shows that the "WXXI" brand remains very valuable in the market.
Their current format is Active Rock. That format is library driven these days.
Too bad CHTZ is no longer a publicly reported station for Nielsen purposes. I'd love to know how much share they are pulling on the U.S. side of the border these days.
The Lake is so in the rear view mirror it's barely a speck on the horizon. If it didn't get yanked for a WBEN simulcast that failed, it eventually would have been yanked for something else. Like almost every other radio station that adopted that deep cuts format way back when,the Lake would have modified the format to adapt or changed completely. You keep beating a dead, decaying horse to the point of it being a caricature. But I'll give you this, tbolt, WBUF was a much stronger station when it was Jack-FM in both branding and format ... and as Jack formats vary across the country, it could have morphed into any number "playing what we want" forms, with or without a live morning show imported from East Kneecap, Michigan.
I didn't bring The Lake into this discussion, your pal Rox did.
WBUF and The Wolf are serious bottom dwellers right now.
Nobody cares about those formats. I guess Town square dumped JACK to plug in the Stale Beer morning show. How's that working out? The music mix is also repellent.
A different approach may achieve better results. Maybe it doesn't matter at this stage. Given the state of Radio, getting a hip replacement is pointless if the patient is brain dead...
Has anyone looked at the 25-54 numbers, or any of the many subsets of that age range that advertisers look at almost exclusively of the two talk-based stations under discussion here?
The commercial talk station has to compete with the other commercial stations The public station does not have to worry about demographics as much as psychographics; it can appeal to people of all ages. In particular, non-profit stations can look at the 55 and over group for significant support.
And advertisers don't even look at non-commercial stations. If the corporation that owns a brand wants to support public radio, the money for that generally comes from public relations or community involvement / charitable contributions budgets and not the strictly managed ad budget.
This is all sort of like comparing horse races with greyhound races. Similar concept: radio stations. Different objectives: profit vs. service.
The commercial talk station has to compete with the other commercial stations The public station does not have to worry about demographics as much as psychographics; it can appeal to people of all ages. In particular, non-profit stations can look at the 55 and over group for significant support.
And advertisers don't even look at non-commercial stations. If the corporation that owns a brand wants to support public radio, the money for that generally comes from public relations or community involvement / charitable contributions budgets and not the strictly managed ad budget.
This is all sort of like comparing horse races with greyhound races. Similar concept: radio stations. Different objectives: profit vs. service.
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