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New PD For WBEB WOGL

I wish Tim Herbster well. While I’m not familiar with AC WBEB and whatever issues that station and format are facing in Philly, I have long known Classic Hits WOGL. My career brought me to the city of brotherly love 4 or 5 times. I visited there for vacation once. It was always a destination I looked forward to as I genuinely enjoyed listening to WOGL on the radio vs. streaming.

I can’t understand how the once dominant station in the market has declined in the way that it has without intervention sooner. IMO, Entercom doesn’t do a particularly good job in understanding the uniqueness of the markets in which they serve. When the classic hits format was 70s intensive and CBS Radio was at the helm at WOGL, the station was truly the soundtrack of Philly with its Motown/Soul/Rhythmic lean.

WOGL, at one time, featured an incredible mix of music. The station played songs few others in the classic hits format featured. While I understand times change and the music needs to advance, the 80s decade offers many hits that would have offered “the lean” described above. It could have been done and should have been done. I’ve long spoken about the importance of “consistency in sound” in programming. Yes, advance the music. Staying true to what defined WOGL's past success which is a reflection of the market served should have been the programming course.
 
John FL said:
I wish Tim Herbster well. While I’m not familiar with AC WBEB and whatever issues that station and format are facing in Philly,
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WBEB, over nearly 60 years, was the most consistently and constantly successful FM station in the United States. For nearly 50 years, it was the markets highest biller, generally highest rated an probably most profitable station under Jerry Lee.

The current owner is ruining it quite spectacularly.
 
The question may be--how? What has changed dramatically, or what changes weren't made? (And of course, we'll never know how it would have fared under the 2020 circumstances under the previous owner). Not trying to be facetious, but putting a listener hat on, I'm not hearing what has "gone wrong" to that magnitude.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
The question may be--how? What has changed dramatically, or what changes weren't made? (And of course, we'll never know how it would have fared under the 2020 circumstances under the previous owner). Not trying to be facetious, but putting a listener hat on, I'm not hearing what has "gone wrong" to that magnitude.
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First, they cut back the talent and reduced enormously the research. Jerry Lee did continuous perceptual and music research and even did research for clients to identify the best way to promote on the air. Then they cut almost all the outside promotion, including contesting and advertising.

The station had thrived with those investments, year after year. Now it is way off its peak.
 
DavidEduardo said:
WBEB, over nearly 60 years, was the most consistently and constantly successful FM station in the United States. For nearly 50 years, it was the markets highest biller, generally highest rated an probably most profitable station under Jerry Lee.

The current owner is ruining it quite spectacularly.
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One needn't be a member of the Psychic Friends Network to have predicted what would happen to WBEB after it passed from an independent owner who was demonstrably passionate about the station to a conglomerate. Did anyone really think that Entercom was going to give WBEB the level of research and attention it enjoyed under Jerry & company? That isn't even really feasible the way these companies are run nowadays.

WBEB was Jerry Lee's crown jewel for as long as he wanted it. He decided to sell it and good for him. But the reality is that the sale took B101.1 from an industry-renowned stand-out success story to just another radio station in the portfolio of a major broadcasting corporation. Like most other stations in 2021, WBEB will receive just enough attention to remain profitable--no more and no less. Unless there are any remaining major market independents out there (are there?), this is pretty much what terrestrial radio is nowadays.

We will probably never fully understand what was being done that is no longer happening...or what is now being done that was avoided in the past...but I'll bet Jerry knows exactly what it is. He won't likely be sitting for any interviews to spill the beans on his special ingredients (beans perhaps?) but we can't pretend that things didn't change just because we don't know what things changed. Look at those numbers. The drop was rather instantaneous and the lower numbers are now pretty consistent.

I, as a consumer, don't fully understand why B101 is no longer of interest to me. I used to enjoy the station but in recent years, I found myself listening less frequently and for shorter stretches. I'm clearly not alone in that experience. (I didn't even listen to them for Christmas music this year which is really saying something!)

Remember "New Coke?" The world collectively was not on-board with the new formula. None of us knew what had been changed...but that didn't mean nothing had been changed! And the not knowing certainly didn't make us want to drink the stuff!
 
Yeah, for this exercise I was approaching from the listener view. And while they may not be doing the research, as an example, I have a hard time telling the difference in the music, notwithstanding that the music always evolves. Christmas by and large sounded the same to my ears, musically. Maybe it wasn’t. But not being in the target demo, I may be missing some important nuances.

Contesting is noticeably different, sure. Apart from the morning show staples, mostly the standard national text to win contests. Even "Best Christmas Ever," while local so far as I can tell, moved from multiple call-in prizes per day to a text-in prize per day.

The weekenders are gone for the most part, and they filled the midday slot in a couple of different combos since last spring. If nothing else, they didn't drop it entirely from a personality standpoint.

It's just interesting, and the pandemic would, I think, skews things to some degree. And perhaps it's death by a thousand paper cuts. All little things adding up to big results--and not in the good way.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
Yeah, for this exercise I was approaching from the listener view. And while they may not be doing the research, as an example, I have a hard time telling the difference in the music, notwithstanding that the music always evolves. Christmas by and large sounded the same to my ears, musically. Maybe it wasn’t. But not being in the target demo, I may be missing some important nuances.
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It's subtle, but involves both the station promotion and adjusting the library and the rotations of individual songs frequently. A song that was, for example, right on the border of a higher or lower rotation might have been put into the higher category... but 3 months later, if it tested lower due to a bit of burn, it would be lowered.

Other songs may have to be rested as they became very marginal. Other songs, against the target ages, may enter broad acceptance as years go by. Or a song featured in a TV show or even in a commercial may get higher than normal scores.

And the rules on blending softer, medium and more up tempo songs may have to change to match the latest test. Using factor analysis we find which songs are less liked by certain subgroups of listeners and they are coded to not play too close to each other.

All this takes research, and then a skilled programmer who can take into account all the "evidence" and make the station sound good to all the potential listeners.
AbrahamJSimpson said:
Contesting is noticeably different, sure. Apart from the morning show staples, mostly the standard national text to win contests. Even "Best Christmas Ever," while local so far as I can tell, moved from multiple call-in prizes per day to a text-in prize per day.
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An AC station is by nature not "active" and listeners need to be reminded and even incentivized to keep coming back.
AbrahamJSimpson said:
The weekenders are gone for the most part, and they filled the midday slot in a couple of different combos since last spring. If nothing else, they didn't drop it entirely from a personality standpoint.
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This is what happens when sales background folks dictate programming. True, nights and weekends don't sell a lot. But if your regular listeners find the station less "nice" to listen to if they listen in the evening or on Sunday afternoon, they may not be back on Monday or the next morning.
AbrahamJSimpson said:
It's just interesting, and the pandemic would, I think, skews things to some degree. And perhaps it's death by a thousand paper cuts. All little things adding up to big results--and not in the good way.
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You are right that this is the weakening of all the strong points of the stations, making it go from excellent to adequate. But the station owner is famous for accepting mediocrity.
 
DavidEduardo said:
You are right that this is the weakening of all the strong points of the stations, making it go from excellent to adequate. But the station owner is famous for accepting mediocrity.
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Who would have been a better buyer? That's the problem here. Jerry didn't plan well. He's not the only one. There are a lot of aging single station owners around the country who haven't planned for the next step. At the time, Entercom was seen as a good steward and a lot of their issues didn't become apparent until later.
 
Hypotheticals are fun. What about Beasley? Just for the sake of speculation (and for that same sake, assuming they did whatever else was needed to make it viable). WMMR and WMGK seem to cruise along more or less on course. Interesting to think of the possibility.
 
In fairness - and I cannot believe I'm about to semi-defend Entercom here - WBEB did not have 106.1 The Breeze with which to contend during the last several years of Mr. Lee's ownership.

I would be curious to know how WBEB's ratings performance today compares to the time Sunny 104.5 was around.

I really enjoyed the sound of 101.1 during its "More FM" phase. Was not surprised David Field ditched that branding; he referred to the station as "B101" in the press release announcing the acquisition!

One could argue Entercom made a mistake by not flipping 96.5 to Soft AC to block iHM from flipping 106.1 to such a format. Under such a scenario, 96.5's incumbent Adult CHR audience largely would've wound up at 101.1, in all likelihood.
 
Interesting scenario had it played out.

Also preferred the More branded era, and as much flack as was generated when they made the change, I understood where Jerry Lee was going, the same as moving away from EZ to the B. The More image struck me better, but hey...if they believe(d) a return to the B era was the best course, it's their property. I wonder, did they really do extensive research before making that move? I'm not suggesting they didn't do any, but it felt haphazard at the time.

Sunny's second era vs the Breeze is an interesting discussion on its own. Sunny kind of bounced around while the Breeze picked a lane and has stuck with it (more or less). Now, you've got those dynamics plus the questions of where to maneuver. Against Sunny, WOGL was in the mix as a competitor. A whole other dynamic there.
 
Oh yeah, that conversation is rather infamous to me. Gunsmoke + Julius. No thanks. Haha. That conversation, while interesting, was one of the things that kinda "turned me off" of this site for a while. I had never blocked anyone on this site until that day. Looking back on it, it's really interesting to see how much of what we were saying came true. Also, I had forgotten that we suggested KYW simply removing the "ten sixty" sing from the jingle and a few years on, take a listen to that jingle!

I wonder if we can somehow monetize our prognostications. :D
 
I don't live in Philly, but I just listened to B101.1 through Radio.com for about an hour during a walk. The station sounded good in terms of imaging and overall sound, but the jock on the air was not befitting of a leading station in a major market. I don't know whether he was tracked and realize it's Sunday, but with all the talent Entercom has around the country that can voice-track, I would have expected better. And I also realize weekend jocks are not considered an important element on such a music-intensive station.
 
Pre pandemic, they had some good folks who sounded, to my unprofessional ears, as good as weekdays (or at least a reasonable approximation). Of course full timers worked weekends as well, but they had several others.
 
I figured to chime in. I was a weekly listener of WOGL from 2009-2017. I stopped listening because Entercom took away everything that was the station. The imaging, the playlist, and most of the DJs. It just is no longer the same station. It sounds very cheesy with a limited playlist of mostly 80s music. I'm not too bummed. It's 2021. I have plenty of streaming options to satisfy my tastes.
 
tvk5195 said:
I figured to chime in. I was a weekly listener of WOGL from 2009-2017. I stopped listening because Entercom took away everything that was the station. The imaging, the playlist, and most of the DJs. It just is no longer the same station. It sounds very cheesy with a limited playlist of mostly 80s music. I'm not too bummed. It's 2021. I have plenty of streaming options to satisfy my tastes.
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I've recently been exploring the stations at Amazon Music and have been amazed (amazonazed?). Tons of stations, loads of genres, all programmed surprisingly well. When a song comes on that I don't particularly want to hear right now, I just say "Alexa, skip!" Wake me up when terrestrial radio can do that!
 
Miguelito said:
I've recently been exploring the stations at Amazon Music and have been amazed (amazonazed?). Tons of stations, loads of genres, all programmed surprisingly well. When a song comes on that I don't particularly want to hear right now, I just say "Alexa, skip!" Wake me up when terrestrial radio can do that!
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See: Jelli.
 
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