Strangely enough, K-Earth 101 in Los Angeles hasn't rebranded despite K-Earth having a strong association with oldies.
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July '22 6+ and More
- Thread starter pjc1961
- Start date
That's just not true when, market after market, well over 80% of those in the 18-34 demographic use radio regularly. Sure, they have more things to divide their attention with. But radio still has an opportunity to remain part of the entertainment choices of younger persons.
But KRTH has had a number of major revisions in its music and formatics in the last 20 years, making it less entrenched in the past.
To add, KRTH already sort of did this around 2014 when many of the on air staffers were let go/moved around after Jhani Kaye’s exit. They were one of the last big market classic hits stations to evolve out of the 60s, but apparently the older music was still doing well enough in demo for them to stick with it longer. They did a fast evolution but it obviously didn’t hurt the station, still very strong in 2022.
There's nothing "radio" can do about that. There is no czar of radio who is in charge of relevance.
Whether or not you believe it's relevant, we all have jobs to do, and we are all responsible for what we do. That's it.
But hiring local staff will not change anything or make KOOL more popular than KOAI. Nobody is listening to KOAI because of the exciting local DJs. Because there are none. I just find it unfair that you hold KOOL to a different standard for some unknown reason.
It’s contradictory. We repeatedly read about how we need more stations like KOAI because of how “successful” they are, but KOAI does “well” 6+ without local DJ’s and the like which we are told are the reason for radio’s problems. I don’t see KOAI’s numbers jumping with a local airstaff.
KOOL-FM will still have a lot more local talent than many or even most (overall) stations have.
I know I'm an anachronism but I am the only one in my extended family that still 'listens' to the radio, and that only in my car (which is infrequent).
I was a longtime listener of KOOL-FM for many years but the last time I listened was more than a decade ago. The primary reason was that the suits got rid of their 'personalities'. The on-air staff made the station listenable. If all I wanted was a juke box I could put my library on a memory stick and listen to that. Unfortunately, the combination of lack of interesting DJ's and moving their music out of the Oldies format took them right out of my "must listen radio" pre-set. Oldies Radio not only refers to the music but also the DJ's and their presentation of that era. If your station doesn't offer the whole package why would I listen?
There are a lot of similarities to the situation with KOOL and WOGL. I'd argue that KOOL was, ratings-wise, worse off than WOGL, but they are dealing with similar competition.
Both markets have a classic rock and adult/variety hits station that chip into their ratings. The question is how competitive can these stations be? Can they claw back against competition that may have crowded them out? At WOGL, this seems to be working for them. It will be interesting if the same can be said for KOOL.
Both markets have a classic rock and adult/variety hits station that chip into their ratings. The question is how competitive can these stations be? Can they claw back against competition that may have crowded them out? At WOGL, this seems to be working for them. It will be interesting if the same can be said for KOOL.
KOOL has always had on-air staff. They have on air staff now. They may not be the same people they had 30 years ago. Most people retire at some point.
Or they don't fit the presentation that the station is going for. A presenter that makes sense for the oldies (majority 60's/early 70's) crowd may not translate well to a station playing 80's and even 90's music.
It happened to Shotgun Kelly at KRTH and many other 60s-era DJs around the country. WLS in Chicago kept Dick Biondi there until he was 80, but the music had already shifted to 80s-90s. You hire someone because they're associated with an era, and when that era isn't the focus anymore, they don't fit the station anymore. Working at a radio station isn't supposed to be a job for life.
Which is what we saw with KRTH around 2013-2014. The DJ’s no longer fit the format.
I would be curious to see if KOOL had the same 55+ issue WOGL had. A big portion of WOGL’s issue was lowering the demos by attracting listeners that may have associated the station with “oldies” and politely turning the 55+’s away. The interesting component in Phoenix is KOAI - which I would think would reduce the amount of 55+ listening to KOOL. If you wanted to hear a station playing older music than WOGL in Philadelphia, you were pretty much out of luck.
Streaming KOOL now, the music mix is pretty good, typical for Audacy classic hits. Doesn’t seem as adventurous as WOGL has been since their rebrand.
Looking over the playlist, I see a lot of 70s. More than you'd see at WCBS. And I didn't see any 2000s songs. WCBS is playing several songs from the 2000s.
Can confirm now that Dee Garcia has departed the company, in addition to Charlie Huero.
The station got rid of the very people that made it a significant entertainment choice back then. You need only to count the listeners to know why. Of course, their change of music is another huge reason.
Offhand I cannot think of a single on-air talent that 'retired' from KOOL.
While there is no "czar of radio," there are certainly a couple companies who are responsible for the rapid shrinking of the business and the inability to do anything to stay relevant.
And it's not just about whether a station has local talent or any talent, but rather talent that is actually any good. "Coming up in 6 minutes, we'll tell you about the latest thing Kim Kardashian said, plus a chance to text to win in our nationwide contest!" isn't any good. Some voice tracked talent reading liners on any one of the many stations they service every day isn't any good. I'm old enough to remember when successful stations would spend a little extra money so they wouldn't have to settle for "liner card jocks," but now it's all liner cards. There's no real compelling content. Again, talk to a younger person. Why don't they listen? Because radio is just mindless DJ chatter, endless commercials, and the same songs played over and over again.
And yes, everyone is doing their jobs. Complying with corporate programming decisions, doing what they're told, and trying to keep their head above water and hope they have a job after the next round of inevitable layoffs. Layoffs that come because companies like iHeart and Audacy look at the numbers and say "we need another 'Reduction in Force' to make our company leaner and able to compete" while failing to realize the last round of budget cuts, and the round before that, and the round before that didn't do the trick.
And then you have people like our intrepid moderator/administrator who insists that everything is just fine. The frog is swimming in the pot and happy that the temperature went up a notch. Nothing to see here, Everything is fine...
Nobody is saying that things are just fine or even the same. But radio is far from dead, and vastly more people use it regularly than you indicated.
The issues include the larger of the several elephants in the room: radio is ad supported and federal legislation prevents scrambling broadcasts to allow only subscribers to listen. That means that we have to sell advertising as there is no other alternative.
Most people hate ads. 22 years ago I bought a TiVio to skip TV ads. Now I listen to music via my Amazon Music subscription and my own playlist. Lots of us do that, and it hurts radio's only source of revenue.
The big pachyderm's mate is that radio is one-for-many. We don't offer personalization. I can call up Pittbull followed by Los Corraleros de Majagual followed by Pedro Infante, CCR, Garth Brooks and the Cleveland Symphony. But no station can make me happy for more than a few minutes. Many people have eclectic tastes and will use broadcast radio less because of it.
The rest of the elephant herd in the room involve the declines in revenue available to radio. The decisive moment was during the 2008 recession which was combined with the introduction of the PPM and the launch of the smartphone. The result was a 30% reduction in listening time and a consequent reduction in revenue in the top 50 markets where about two-thirds of radio revenue are earned.
Radio did not keep up with inflation, either. So the industry today has about 35% of the inflation adjusted revenue it had in the year 2000. The issue for radio is to find ways to operate profitably in a new environment. In many cases, the rest of the world already knows what to do: do national format with the country's best talent, top research and access to news, information and entertainment sources that the local station in Macon or Duluth or Spokane just can't have.
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