Miss 103 changing formats!

[the golden boy]

Hah, made you look! ;D

Seriously, they'll be one of those stations that'll be here 200 years from now. However, the recent Fall (part I) trends from Arbitron shows them at their lowest ratings in quite some time. They fell to sixth place and even fell below a five share. They were even out-rated and out-ranked by Hot 97.7! Actually, country music in Jackson took quite tumble as WUSJ fell to 14th place. Two things I can think of: either people are becoming disenchanted with country or most of the diaries were placed in African-American areas of the metro (which could explain four of the top five stations in the market are targeted towards A-As, but not the slight loss in share all of them had).

Also, Y101 is enjoying a surge as of late. The 5.3 rating and the 4th-place ranking they have is the best I've seen in a long time.

 

[smashedcd]

damn! miss 103 once pulled in 20 shares

 

[flytrap]

maybe they should switch to 24hr Rascal Flatts. oh wait, they are already doing that. But seriously, maybe people are tired of hearing "watching you" every hour.

 

[robgrayson]

damn! miss 103 once pulled in 20 shares

Smashed... 62JDX pulled 20+ shares when I was there (in spite of the fact that I was there... ) But seriously, we hear about erosion of the available audience, losing people to iPods, satellite, etc. Maybe this is the sign that the "upwardly mobile" listeners (the ones who can more easily afford alternatives to free radio) are, in fact, going away. I believe one of the points which came out of the recent Sirius Radio "Arbitrons" was that the second most listened tier once you moved past the Howard Stern stuff was, in fact, the country programming!

 

[tzbarber]

damn! miss 103 once pulled in 20 shares

Smashed... 62JDX pulled 20+ shares when I was there (in spite of the fact that I was there...)

These younguns have a hard time understanding that things do change,Robert.Truth is, even I had a 20 share at JDX,and I was on at night! Back then Jackson only had about ten signals on the air,now we've got 25 or so,splitting up the pie.

 

[flytrap]

another thing is that most cars didn't have FM in them, and most of the stuff on FM was elevator music, preachers, hippie rock etc. There wasn't that much commercial pop and country stuff on FM. Plus now you've got out of town stations that have either moved the tower or upped the juice to get a signal into the big city. Its just too many stations out there. I miss the way it used to be. The hits on AM and the album cuts and artsy fartsy stuff on FM. People used to fuss about the screaming DJ's of AM, but now I kinda miss it. They used to really put on a show on the AM band. Now radio is just boring.

 

[menotti1]

miss 103 won't be changing formats.may have to tweak it.need to see the diaries to see what may have happened.and flytrap you are right.AM was alot more fun years ago.Years ago when I worked at WTIX,it was a trip.carts stacked to the ceiling ha and dam good personality radio like JDX was.Today it's all vanilla.

 

[buttonpuncher]

Hell I wish they would switch, it would be a dream come true if they went back to what was on that frequency in the late '60s thru '81. Good ol "hippie rock” as you guys call it. But to match modern times it would need to modernize and be something like KPIG or KGSR. Now that would be worth listening to! …and would develop a loyal following.

But I digress, much of good radio has died and gone to the heavens, where’s my satellite radio…

 

[flytrap]

What we really need is a good AAA, Americana or even a good college station. when i'm not listening to talk radio I sometimes catch myself listening to either bluegrass on WTWZ or Real Country on 970 (that is when the station isn't messed up) The little low power 102.5 was playing some good oldies the other night when I was in Canton. funny thing though, the RDS prompts you to tune to WMGO 1370.

 

[buttonpuncher]

AAA is close to what I was getting at, the stations I mentioned, KPIG & KGSR fall into that category which is quite wide and variable, that’s the beauty of it. http://kgsr.com/ http://kpig.com/

If the soul of WZZQ was revived on a station in Jackson, it should not be stuck in the past, or rock like 93.9. ZZQ played a variety of styles encompassing Rock, Folk & Blues. I just read an article on BeBop Records and one of their founders became PD of WZZQ.

I don’t live in Jackson, but got my rock education during my teens and 20’s from WZZQ and Jackson deserves better radio than you have now. The Suits just don’t get it.

I mentioned good radio dying and going to the heavens, here’s an article of a former ZZQ Jock who has a program on XM’s Deep Tracks: [Bill] "Fitzhugh's All Hand-Mixed Vinyl" http://billfitzhugh.com/fitzhugh_on_xm.html I’ve heard it a few times and it’s good.

 

[dareweair]

Women 18+ were fairly strong. Men took the tumble. The percentage of male diaries in this last monthly was extremely below Arbitron's target level. Also, the black community was way over-sampled.
Also, Y101 had a horrible extrapolated month of October. it remains to be seen whether or not they will continue their growth. They are going to be rolling off some stronger months in the next two phases. We'll see.
As for WUSJ....we'll see. It wasn't a good month for country, yet MISS 103 continues to beat USJ two or three to one everywhere you look.
It will be interesting to see whether or not all the marketing (TV) money both stations spent will pay off. And USJ spent a ton more than MISS 103.

 

[smokersotd]

Historically speaking, if there was a drop in a trend, The Radio People will analyze it carefully, and try to discover exactly what the problem is. Once the problem has been isolated, they will put together a plan to solve said problem. Many meetings will be held. The plan will be vetted all the way to the top of the management food chain. Budgets will be drawn up. There may even be charts. Once they have gone over every nuance of the new battle plan, one last meeting will be held. At this meeting, the aforementioned plan will be totally disregarded and replaced by the official Radio People Go-To Plan: They will fire someone. This entire process will take approximately 4 hours.

 

[Russ L.]

First off, it was just a trend, y'all. The country field in Jackson has a history of month on - month off relationship with trends. In addition to that, the sample size was off and skewed to Urban and/or Pop/Rock, Contemp. Get in line to complain to Arbitron.

Fact is Miss 103 and US both had a really strong July, the month that rolled off in the latest trend, hence the dramatic drop. The new month added (Oct) didn't come close to July numbers and barely reflects the beginning of various market or book efforts from any station. The next trend comes out Mon 12/31.

The best part of the marketing boom is that the competition level is increasing, along with budgets (not the corporate kind), and that's healthy for the market and industry.

As for comical "gameplan" mentioned above, count on Rusty Walker having a firm grip, whatever it is.