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KIRO-FM

Don't think I agree. The one big thing the PPM has taught us is the power of radio as a listening and advertising medium. 235 million people tune in to radio in this country each day and some of the biggest users are twitter, facebook and myspace fans along with I-pod fans. Radio, it turns out is a complimentary media. Will radio change? Yes. Will it go away? No
The one thing I have also learned on the national sales side is that live, local with compelling music or talk wins. It seems to be content driven. Look at the winners 25-54:

Philadelphia: Killer B. Personality AC
Houston: WVEE-FM Personality Urban
NY: Z-100 Personality CHR
LA: KISS Personality CHR
Dallas; KISS Personality CHR
Boston: KISS Personality CHR
Chicago: WTMX Personality HOT/AC
Seattle: KPLZ Personality HOT/AC
Detroit: The Ticket: Personality Sports
WDC: WTOP: Heritage News Talk
Atlanta: WVEE heritage personality Urban

Heritage, live, local and content win in each market. No automated stations. Each of these with almost a million listeners to five million listeners a week depending on the market. Radio is hardly dead. What is dying is internet on the advertising side. I sold internet ads for 15.00 CPM two years ago. You are lucky to get a dollar today. Newspapers and stations that focused all their dollars on internet are really feeling the pain today. The internet is growing, but the cost to advertise has geometrically shrunk. It grows because the number of players grows by thousands each day, but only "search engines" have really made money.
 
The move to FM was bad judgement. KIRO really opened the door for KOMO. Seattle does not need two Sports stations. With the PPM responders music intensive, it now appears KIRO should have kept KBSG and stayed put. The AM had three decades of loyalty that apparantly has not moved to the FM side, ah all in my humble opinion.
 
Makes me laugh to see all the posters who are showing such acute 20-20 hindsight. It would be more impressive had you started saying that last summer when they first announced the move. The real question is WHY it seems not to be working. It is the strength of KUOW and a reluctance for FM news listeners to change? Is it KOMO's move to predictable formatics now that baseball is gone? One would think Seattle, being a youthful and progressive market, would have embraced KIRO moving to FM.
 
I think it's quite selective to accuse everyone of 20/20 hindsight on the KIRO move to "FM Only."

I know many people who were in disbelief upon hearing that KIRO was going to NOT continue on one of the most remarkable AM signals in the country.

I also think it's fair game to question Bonneville's judgement, even after the fact. Why make this move BEFORE seeing how things shake out with PPM. There was no pressing need that required Bonneville to make this switch when they did. If there's one radio company left with the resourses to "wait out" a game-changing development like PPM, it's Bonneville.

But I also have to question their strategies on more than just switching bands.

This afternoon we had to drive to a family event in the south end. I wanted to see what, if anything, KIRO was saying about the Sarah Palin resignation. But, KIRO was running the Mariners game on AM and FM?!?

I'm very confused. I thought the baseball games were going to be on 710-ESPN?

Now, it seems like the weekend games are on AM & FM. And now they just pick an arbitrary Friday for games as well?

Maybe, it's more than the switch to FM that has caused the loss of audience.
 
Re-read my post. I didn't suggest ALL posters made that comment. I said it made me laugh to see all the posters who are showing such acute 20-20 hindsight. Clearly there is some merit in moving to FM, otherwise KOMO wouldn't have gone to the simulcast. I would agree on your comment about simulcasting Mariners games; that may have been a mistaken strategy committed to during contract negotiations.
 
Ahh yes. I'm writing to you on this glorious 4th of July morning from my patio in the San Juan's with the sun shining on downtown Seattle in the distance. Other than Bellingham, this is a lovely place indeed. Happy 4th of July to all! But I digress.. On to the topic at hand:

When it comes to the KIRO-FM move debate, perhaps we're missing the real issue here; that being we've already agreed (well most have anyway), that in the long-standing diary ratings method had respondents merely voting for a particular station in the final survey days, verses having actually had listened to those stations. Fast forward to the move to FM for KIRO. I agree with one of the posters, I think it was SeattleRadioPro, who commented that KIRO perhaps should have opted to simulcast on AM and FM longer at least until one had enough PPM data to know how the audience would be making the band-transition in the new rating world.

Had KIRO remained solely on AM, I firmly believe by all indications they would be in the exact or lower position as they are now. You see, I don't think the fall of KIRO has anything to do with what band KIRO is broadcasting on, but the demographics of the station are and their programming combined. Frequent AM listeners are an older demographic (45+) that aren't used to listening to spoken-word on FM, we get that. The problem for KIRO is in the interest of becoming a preset with the already existing younger demographic on FM, they didn't allow enough time for the older set to get the habit of FM listening, instead they just jumped assuming the older demos would follow.

It's clear by the looks of the weekly PPM numbers, that the younger demos that have made the transition or started listening, don't like the fractured older-appeal day-parted programming. Is KIRO a serious news station with morning anchors that sound like they're mailing-it-in, a pompous sounding left-leaning midday host followed by a Barney Rubble sounding right-leaning host? And that PM drive show.. What can one say about it, other than if the programming department wanted to appeal to a younger male demo with these guys, they really missed the mark (and opportunity)

By getting all worked up about whether KIRO should or shouldn't have switched to FM is misdirected. The more salient question should be as to whether KIRO's current news/talk line-up is relevant to what listeners want today on any band.
 
Hindsight is best sight LOL, however everyone in my circle was shocked that KIRO would flip . . .everyone. If it isn't broke . . . .be interesting to see how Bonneville handles this situation will it not?
 
I think Bonneville has shown a appalling lack of awareness about its own product and how it might respond in the PPM world. The core product -- minus the play by play sports -- was a mediocre talk station with the news block. A station like that will not see huge cume gains and will see AQH share and ranking decline.

In a sports radio friendly town such as Seattle, actual play by play hours will do well enough, but unless you're in a pennant run the numbers will be watered down by the (again) mediocre performance of local or syndicated sports talk.

Even in it's glory days, when its core news product performed significantly better than KIRO's core talk product today, the station was able to pile on the Mariner and Seahawk numbers to put a scary distance between KIRO and its competitors.

The sports and newstalk should never have been separated. The real question is do you put that on AM, FM or simulcast? When you look at the top 10 25-54 in the June PPM -- what do you see? Hot AC, Classic Hits, Classic Rock, Adult Hits, Christian, Country, County, Soft AC, Active Rock, CHR. I'm not convinced from a financial point a view that a KIRO simulcast is worth it. PPM can surprise you. Formats you might think are saturated in a market can suddenly "expand." Look at AMP in LA. Wake up! You've got two country stations and Christian station in the top 10!

What would the sports/newstalk station look like in a simulcast? Probably pretty close to what KOMO has now. What would the sports/newstalk station on 710 AM? Maybe not all that different during baseball season.

The bottom line is -- and has always been about PRODUCT. KIRO's talk and news product is mediocre on AM and clearly designed with old fashioned models and images in mind. That product will never do well on FM until it provides CONTENT appealing to the FM core demos. Easier said than done and maybe beyond the will or expertise of Bonneville. At least in the short term, hunker down on AM. I think Bonneville had it partially right when they realized simulcasting the FM and heritage 50kw AM would never make $sense in the long run. They just couldn't evaluate themselves and admit they had a product no where near strong enough to make the move.

They've been so dumb they make the plodding, reactive KOMO look smart!
 
Has anyone taken this off-board and hit up the brass at B'ville? A GM here or a PD there? Cuz all those folks ALWAYS read these boards, you know. Granted, we shouldn't have to tell them how horrible their stations are "performing". In all this web 2.0ness, don't forget one of the longest standing technologies of the information superhighway: EMAIL.
 
Fornax said:
The bottom line is -- and has always been about PRODUCT.

They just couldn't evaluate themselves and admit they had a product no where near strong enough to make the move.

They've been so dumb they make the plodding, reactive KOMO look smart!
Click to expand...

well, well, well said! Product should have been ready to go from day one and not taken for granted that it would have worked as is.
 
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