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New Rock station coming to DFW?
- Thread starter Kramer
- Start date
Hey, no judgement Sir. 👹
In 1990, were ROCK stations playing music from the 60's?
Yes, KSHE occasionally included Chuck Berry in between Led Zeppelin and G&R. That's what I want in a station...REAL VARIETY. pre-historic, yesterday, and today. If it was ever called rock or rock and roll, stick some in there. And not only the number 1s, an occasional #10 or 20...or 40...
That "flower power" initial surge in harder rock started towards the late 60's. "Whole Lotta Love" was '68 or '69 IIRC (I played it both on my Top 40 station and my FM rock station back then).
Chuck Berry was mostly 50's, not 60's.
Yeah stick it all in there and watch that 30th place Eagle happen alllllll over again.
Geez, Kramer....you just can't get no...Satisfaction. (They sure as hell were.)
Active Rock? No. But in 1990, "Classic Rock" hadn't really found its own, and played a more Mainstream Rock format, albeit heavy on the 70s and 80s, but my local classic rock station would absolutely play current songs from those artists, rarely.
I think that's what people are struggling with regarding this format. Looking back, even in 1990, classic rock stations were a thing, but they were called Mainstream Rock stations, even though they were classic heavy with the occasional new track thrown in. Of course, as those 1970s artists stopped making new music, they stopped playing "new" music, because the REST of the rock world didn't really fit in with the "sound" of the 1970s (outside of a few tracks) and the "hair bands" of the 80s really didn't have a home in mainstream rock, so Active Rock was born. (Of course, I recognize that Active Rock stations in 1991-2 played a handful of Zepplin, Pink Floyd, etc, but it really was just a handful, and they really did play mostly music released in the last 5-10 years).
Now, the problem with what "The Eagle" is trying to create is, Active Rock is STILL being made today, but they are largely ignoring anything made in the last 19 years (much like Classic Rock stations did in the mid-late 90s, again outside of the latest Eric Clapton track, etc). Obviously someone researched the format and made a decision to exclude those artists, and even newer work from core artists, but for me it's still REALLY hard to argue that they aren't inventing the "next" classic rock format before our very eyes, or at least trying to.
Just a sidebar:
Whether done locally or across multiple markets, radio stations do extensive listener research both on image/concepts/talent and on individual songs.
Debating whether a song or an artist "should" or "should not" be on a particular station may be amusing and fun, but the fact is that stations have very sophisticated listener research on which to base song selection... and that is based on initial research to define the style and scope of the format.
This is not WKRP.
Whether done locally or across multiple markets, radio stations do extensive listener research both on image/concepts/talent and on individual songs.
Debating whether a song or an artist "should" or "should not" be on a particular station may be amusing and fun, but the fact is that stations have very sophisticated listener research on which to base song selection... and that is based on initial research to define the style and scope of the format.
This is not WKRP.
I spanned 3 decades. And it fit in perfectly. The (young) hispanics painting the neighbor's house right now are listening to a mix of 70's soul and 80's rock. There's something wrong with these market research guys. They keep coming up with the wrong answers. I'll add that the only "big" corporate station owner that ever did it right was Fairbanks (through maximum local authonomy).
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I agree with you and Kramer on this point. Going back to something that wasn't working two years ago isn't likely to work today either. The only way to get it to work is to cut costs to the nub and hope to keep billing the same. That would make for a boring radio station, but, if Ben & Skin are coming back, that doesn't seem to be in the offing either.
Problem is, other stations are playing your target audience's favorite songs, and you need to play them, too, if you want to get members of that audience to listen. It's radio, not rocket science. Figuring out your target audience's favorite songs is easy, and you don't have some formula no one else does. When stations don't overlap at least a little, that either means they're targeting a completely different audience or aren't going to get enough listeners. When 94.5 The Edge was new, it was a cool station for a small audience, but even it added a handful of songs stations like Y95 and The Eagle played fairly quickly.
While they might do better with women than The Fan or The Ticket, WFAN and KLAC aren't great performers among women, at least not regularly, by any objective measurement.
Of course, they're different. That's why KSCS and KPLX get a higher percentage of the female audience than KKGO and why women in New York don't have that option. While some rock stations might overindex among females, you're not likely to find one that's in the top-5 among women. Fluke surveys happen once-in-awhile, but rock, sports, talk, and hip-hop aren't formats that attract many women. That's not going to change much across the country. Dallas and Atlanta aren't so different that women there want rock and sports talk in droves. While the Big A is correct that advertisers care more about reaching women than men, if no one cared about reaching men, no one would program to them. Granted, talk and sports tend to be better at getting male buys than music formats, but enough businesses need to reach men that radio has to have several approaches to target them.
It might still be around in a few places, but, in most markets, AOR stations got squeezed between classic, active, and alternative rock and couldn't survive. Only a handful of heritage AOR's are still around, and most of them either didn't have the competition in one of those directions and changed lanes before someone else could assume it or bought a station or already in one of those formats, flipped it, and took over that lane themselves.
A sample of a couple of "guys" outside working is not representative. When people pick a station, their mood is part of the situation. Each listener in the PPM averages around 6 to 7 different stations used each week, so we have different choices when we are picking radio for our own use... not a group.
And what is generally found is that broad excursions away from the core identity of a station cause more tune-out than tune-in.
Without going too deep, I will say that when you do a music test among your listeners or potential listeners, you find that there is a broad scattering of songs that a few people like a lot, while most are barely tolerant of them or dislike them totally. You can't program to keep a listener "happy" without knowing the how far from the core a station can go musically. Any further explanation takes cluster/factor analysis and I'm not doing math classes today.
And while we’re on the topic of what we listen to in the real south (Texas/Louisiana 😂). Someone let me know what the 25-54 will be for Dallas’ country stations next month now that KEGL is back. listeners in the south sample country/rock more than other parts of the country. KEGL is going after many stations with this move. It won’t make sense now. But, it will later
What doesn't make sense is only two weeks of the April book have been released so far, with Week 3 to be released next week; and KEGL's flip occurred during May Week 1 (Apr 25 - May 1), so even the initial weeks of the re-born Eagle won't be seen for another several weeks.
Second quarter ended recently didnt it? Decisions are made now
What decisions?
The Second Quarter for those whose fiscal year is the same as the calendar year ends on the 30th of June.
A quarter is three months. Q1 is January to March, Q2 is April to June. We are only a third of the way through it.
And we don't have quarterly "books" in PPM markets and have not since about 15 or so years ago.
This is screaming "Get the expense of the Freak off the books ASAP" first and "worry about when we get PPM ratings" second, at least to me.
One should note that Chuck Berry was from St. Louis, and passed away at his residence near Wentzville.
The cost of a format switch is enormous compared to the airstaff cost. Lost revenue is the #1 expense, and no matter what a station tries to do to keep existing clients, they will lose many. Clients will say, "Okay, when you have a few good books, call us again".
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