I used to stream the station online up until 2016 when they flipped to generic alternative. Loved live at the lunchbox, and the mixture of new unknown artist and classic alternative, stuff that my alternative station in Tulsa didn’t play like St. Paul and the Broken Bones, and moon taxi. Sad that it’s being flipped to a simulcast, but if it’s good for San Francisco, I’ll be okay with it..I guess.
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KFOG Flips To KNBR Simulcast
- Thread starter TheBigA
- Start date
No surprise...the print media is in love with fringe genres and tends to overlook whatever is popular at the time. Radio has to focus on the popular in order to be viable. I see lots of articles about the vibrancy and importance of Americana, and there's an annual Americana Music Festival and Awards show promoting the genre's vitality. But it's a fringe format of a fringe format, and the audience is mainly made up of boomers for whom this is their oldies format. There are also lots of Folk Festivals around the country, and the International Bluegrass Music Association is pretty active. None of that means the music will be the next big radio format, except perhaps in the non-commercial world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WKLQ_(FM)
Wow This AAA Station is out of the Grand Rapids area though but how long will AAA last in that market is yet to be seen though.
A look at the Grand Rapids ratings doesn't show WKLQ.
https://ratings.****************/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb127
Apparently the station shows up as WTNR, the letters assigned to the 94 frequency up until February.
The huge drop came when the station switched from country to AAA in January.
It's recovered a bit lately, but clearly it got better ratings as a country station.
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The WTNR calls are still in use; the prior format along with the WTNR calls were relocated to 107.3 FM.
It is unclear to the general public if the WTNR line item in the Nielsen report refers to the AAA format of WKLQ-FM @ 94.5 MHz or the Country format of WTNR @ 107.3 MHz. If the latter, then the frequency move was a disaster, since the same format garnered a 4.1 share just two books prior!
Both 94.5 MHz and 107.3 MHz cover a good chunk of the market's population with 70 dBu signals, although 94.5 is the better of the two in that regard.
It is unclear to the general public if the WTNR line item in the Nielsen report refers to the AAA format of WKLQ-FM @ 94.5 MHz or the Country format of WTNR @ 107.3 MHz. If the latter, then the frequency move was a disaster, since the same format garnered a 4.1 share just two books prior!
Both 94.5 MHz and 107.3 MHz cover a good chunk of the market's population with 70 dBu signals, although 94.5 is the better of the two in that regard.
The 107.3 letters previously were WBBL, and they still show up in the listing now as a country station, but as N/A. So not sure what those numbers for WTNR relate to.
90's? DSL and Wifi was not widely known to the public at the time and radio streaming was then experimental. Im Guessing CD Samplers of KFOG or Audio tapes of KFOG airchecks being sent to other parts of the country is how people outside of San Francisco got to know KFOG? Or also once DSL and Wifi became widely known KFOG at one point got attention outside the Bay Area though?
Like BigA, I don't know of any in-the-industry sources that have praised the "vibrancy" of what is an aging format that tends to only have any modicum of success where it has been long in place.
I looked at every book since mid-2017 and find no place in 12+ or 25-54 where they were higher than 8th, with the range over the last year being between 8th (once) and 20th (once) and the average being about 14th to 15th.
It's not a bad station, but it is definitely in the second tier in both ratings and billings.
I think we see a lot of that in this discussion. There are people here who like certain radio stations for the music. They're fans of a certain style of music, and they don't care of the radio station is profitable or gets good ratings. In fact if it gets too popular, they might stop listening, because it's no longer their private thing.
So KFOG was one of those stations that at one time appealed to music lovers. Unfortunately, it's hard to build a radio station simply as a free, ubiquitous distribution service for music. If the advertisers aren't seeking that audience, the radio station becomes superfluous. Some see it as the end of an era, but it's no different from other radio formats that became unsellable.
https://www.robertfeder.com/2017/07/13/wxrt-rocks-straight-top/
This was right after the merger, when Greg Solk was hired to turn the station around and introduced the "modern" WXRT playlist. The ratings have slipped a bit since then as some of the longtime listeners did tune out as I mentioned previously.
What I got wrong was when the Loop was flipped. For some reason I thought the flip was in 2017 not 2018. Don't ask me why.
Demographic changes in the Bay Area over the recent decade likely made AAA less viable in San Francisco than in Chicago and accelerated KFOG's demise. That said, I still contend that KFOG could've hung on longer (either with Alternative or AAA) if they had a compelling morning show (something akin to what 97.3-Alice has going). Once they went with the syndicated Woody Show, it signaled that they'd given up trying and were just finishing out the string.
Ah, but the Feder article talks about 25-54 men. Not an easy field, with all the sports competition for male dollars as well as the other stations going after that segment.
Actually, looking at the last 40 books, I see that XRT is, on average, doing better now overall now, month to month, than it has been over that 3+ year period.
That's a real interesting comment, and I think you're talking about the average age?
Some people are slow to recognize demographic changes where they live. They see radio stations change format, and can't understand why the music they love isn't on the radio. Usually its because the market demos have changed and the audience for that music either isn't there anymore, or is over 55.
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I thought he meant ethnicity, as the overall percentage of the market that is non-Hispanic white is below 40% now.
Not saying that the various ethnic groups don't like rock at all... it is just that the under-index in usage, between "considerably" and "extremely".
The other day I drove through Indianapolis and tuned their heritage AAA station, WTTS. WTTS has never been a huge factor in the market, largely due to its weak signal (tower is 25 miles south of town). I used to really enjoy the station when I lived there.
But they've done a discreet format change. No longer do they identify themselves as "World Class Rock". They have added a number of classic pop hits like Elton John and Prince, and generally seems more mainstream. I personally like the mix. It's very different than Q95 or WJJK, and it seems to have its best 6+ ratings this year that I can remember.
That would have meant blowing up KFOG a year ago, while Cumulus was going through bankruptcy. They're in a stronger position now.
Regardless, this was a station that was going to be blown up, and replacing it with KNBR gives them more sellable demos than soft AC.
Weak signal? Since when? I grew up in Bloomington, where WTTS (originally WTTV-FM) was licensed until fairly recently (it's now licensed to the transmitter's location, Trafalgar), so I knew that station well. It was audible along I-65 from maybe 20 miles north of Louisville to about 50 miles south of Chicago, where Hammond's 92.3 takes over. Unless its power (37 kW @ 1250 ft HAAT, shared with WTTV Channel 4 since sign-on in 1960) has been reduced in recent years, that shouldn't have changed.
WTTS is a big signal, but according to an engineering exhibit filed with the FCC when they changed the CoL a while back, it only covers 40% of the Indianapolis area (essentially south of I-70) with its 70dBu contour. All of the other class Bs serving Indianapolis (WIBC, WFMS, etc) cover 90-100% of the Indianapolis area with 70 dBu. WTTS's 54 dBu protected contour covers the whole market, barely.
Interesting. RadioLocator shows it as 1089 ft. HAAT and 1014 ft above ground. Maybe its antenna was lowered when Channel 4 added its digital antenna years ago. The last time I was in the area was 1992, well before digital TV.
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