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rbrucecarter5
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I would vote to bring back KRLY
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New Urban on the way to Houston ?
- Thread starter wprt949
- Start date
I would vote to bring back KRLY
Plus I think if the station uses the "93-7 The Beat" branding, it could make some listeners think there's no creativity with the name, like they are only somehow copying "97-9 The Boxx".
I would say maybe "V93-7" or "V94".
Granted the anniversary I'm referring to wasn't a major milestone but I recall KKBQ pushing their 9th birthday and a free concert in the weeks before it became known they would be changing formats back in 1991. By the time the Rock Hits stunt came about there was no mention of it anymore. So it wouldn't be impossible for that to happen. CC Houston staff may be just business as usual with the Arrow until the word gets handed down from corporate office to drop the ax. I wonder when this will happen. Maybe Thanksgiving? Would be fitting considering it launched Thanksgiving 1993.
Yeah, We all Love 94. It was a good RnB station. Back in the day, it was Majic 102's main rival station. Old school RnB all day, Slow Jams at Night, Hardcore Rap during the weekends, and Gospel Music all day on Sundays.This is what Houston needs, And it'll be modeled after Q93.3, New Orleans' longtime dominant radio station.
Uh, I'm no expert but I thought that word died sometime in the 90's. Maybe it started to lose its usefulness in the early part of that decade, even.
Insiders scoop it's 93.7 kiss fm. Much like Dallas. CC doesn't have format in H-town. Decision now on talent. Elvis Duran, Kane Show or whatever they do in Dallas for mornings,Seacrest to host live concert to launch and do either mid-day or afternoon.
Unless this "Kiss FM" is a model of what used to be NY's WRKS, the change to CHR isn't happening. There are already 2 CHR's here (the heritage station & the one beating it in the ratings), there's no need for a 3rd.
Q93 is a mainstream urban nowadays due to co-ownership with urban ac WYLD. The potential urban here would be much better off being a FULL SERVICE urban contemporary (18-49 audience) in order to successfuly tackle the Radio One monopoly. Just take cues from full service urbans like KTCX down the road in Beaumont or the major market stations like KMEL, WVEE, KPRS or WPGC. Daypart the station, and have a 10 pm-2 am slow jam show (something The Box hasn't had in years).
Urban flip?
Is Liberman still in financial trouble and willing to sell some more of it's stations?
Here are my guesses:
1. KTJM 98.5 flips back to y98.5 as Urban AC, or as 98.5 The Jamz (Doubtful)
2. KRBE flips as Power 104, or 104 The Beat as Urban AC, or Urban. Heritage doesn't last forever. Doesn't Cumulus still own KRBE. And didn't Cumulus own "Power 97.5"?
3. Cox flips KHPT as Party 106.9 Houston's Hip Hop and R&B station. (Doubtful because 106.9 increases KEGL's cume, and ratings)
4. KHMX flips to Urban AC as 96-5 RNB. With Steve Harvey in the mornings?
5. KMIC "Radio Disney 1590 flips" as MIC 1590, or some other moniker. Then again, they could buy the KYOK calls from 1140 and swap them. 1590 had extensive history as an Urban formatted station. That AM station(1590) has a good signal all around Southwest Houston.
I place my wagers on 4, 2, and 5.
Is Liberman still in financial trouble and willing to sell some more of it's stations?
Here are my guesses:
1. KTJM 98.5 flips back to y98.5 as Urban AC, or as 98.5 The Jamz (Doubtful)
2. KRBE flips as Power 104, or 104 The Beat as Urban AC, or Urban. Heritage doesn't last forever. Doesn't Cumulus still own KRBE. And didn't Cumulus own "Power 97.5"?
3. Cox flips KHPT as Party 106.9 Houston's Hip Hop and R&B station. (Doubtful because 106.9 increases KEGL's cume, and ratings)
4. KHMX flips to Urban AC as 96-5 RNB. With Steve Harvey in the mornings?
5. KMIC "Radio Disney 1590 flips" as MIC 1590, or some other moniker. Then again, they could buy the KYOK calls from 1140 and swap them. 1590 had extensive history as an Urban formatted station. That AM station(1590) has a good signal all around Southwest Houston.
I place my wagers on 4, 2, and 5.
I wholeheartedly agree. The lack of urban competition in such a huge radio market with a very large black population base is one of the main reasons why I have no respect for the Houston radio market. Hell, even KMEL in San Francisco has way better musical programming than the Box even without direct competition.
CBS ought to be the company that flips a property to challenge Radio One because they do show the desire to want to win over every available ear or eyeball that is into the urban musical format regardless of racial or ethnic background. Clear Channel will half-ass it then syndicate it out which inadvertently bore the audience to tears with its mundane programming habits outside of its flagship stations.
My vote is CBS dumps KHMX's current format and program it exactly like sister station WZMX, which is a mixture of WVEE and WPGC programming methods. It will guarantee the station will be a threat to the Box's dominance and raise some major eyebrows at Majic. Additionally, it wouldn't hurt for CBS to take some programming cues from WVEE and bring back the breaking of new contemporary R&B and soul songs back to Houston radio. A neo-soul specialty show wouldn't hurt either because this market has a huge 25-40 urban professional population that loves that genre of urban music.
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I can already count out #2. Cumulus literally will shift a station away from any form of the urban format to make money. See Baton Rouge for an example. They are not interested in obtaining or gaining any additional urban stations.
Additionally, the average age of the market's urban music listener is very similar to Atlanta's, which is between the ages of 25-34 years. An urban AC might not be the wisest thing to program towards especially when most within this age group are still very much into contemporary hip-hop as they are into R&B and throwbacks.
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No chance, at least not so long as Cumulus keeps the station. Even if Cumulus sells it, the chances of KRBE flipping are slim-to-none. Heritage may not last forever, but KRBE is still a cash cow and, even though KKHH beats it from time-to-time, it still does better in the money demos. It also has the second-highest cume in the market. You don't drop something that's making money.
Put this one in the slim-to-none category, too. Mix may not be what it was even a year ago, let alone several years ago, but it's still getting the 25-44 females and is top-5 in cume. Lower-than-normal ratings over the last few months don't mean a death-knell for this station, at least not yet and probably not anytime soon.
But The Box is an Urban station, and KMEL is a CHUrban. The Box has only 25% Hispanic listening in a market that is over 30% Hispanic, and has only around 11% non-Hispanic white listeners. KMEL is a coalition, with Hispanics being a third of the listening even though the market is much less than 1/3 Hispanic. And it has over 40% non-Hispanic white... only the smaller remainder is Black.
But CBS will be the first to see that even getting half of The Box' share is not a winning position.
KHMX bills much more than 50% of what The Box bills, so there is no way to win big enough over time to make up for the cost of a change (they'd lose all the existing billing) for that to be practical.
Well Majic 102 has gotten its act together since late last year when they improved their sound by adding more blue eyed soul (i.e. Hall and Oates), 90s rnb, new jack swing and some old school hip hop, so they are more balanced now with all the decades intact. But I don't like that R1 Houston shows favoritism toward its cluster as an excuse to protect 102 like an "uppity" urban outlet. They made The Box cancel its slow jams program in 2004 after a few months on, worrying that Marco Spoon might lose listeners, but that still left an audience void who grew up on 90s R&B slow jams. And before Praise flipped to News 92 they also worried that the 24/7 gospel outlet took some listeners from 102. But I do give R1 the biggups for allowing The Box (despite being poorly programed) to be live and local including the morning drive.
Unlike the urban ac's in Atlanta nowadays which are 80s and beyond, KMJQ still plays 70s soul and funk artists in regular rotation still and sprinkle in a Motown song here and there.
Every market ethnic and racial demographic composition is different, so what is the REAL difference between KMEL and KBXX on their formats classification? The Box still bills themselves in some trades like Mediabase as a rhythmic and BDS as an urban, but so does KMEL. The only difference is their programming methods (KMEL dayparts and the Box doesn't). You cannot deny how poorly programmed the Box is when compared to KMEL.
If CBS does decide to bill as rhythmic but attempts to program itself towards the wider 18-49 "urban contemporary" audience (like WZMX) does it truly matter? The issues with the Box's billing has more to do with their piss-poor musical programming rather than its format classification. CBS might see an investment worth the risk if they strategize on how they would program the proposed CHurban station. That seems to be the strategy with their recent format flips in other markets.
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Would love to see Y98.5 come back. Made my time at SHSU wonderful. Loved that station. The Best Variety of the Hits and Dusties!!!!
Stations don't "bill themselves" as anything in the real-time monitoring services... those services use an evaluation of each station, its demos and its playlist to determine how they will classify stations. Similarly, the format names we see online on the sites that list ratings are given by the site proprietory.
My point is that KBXX can, quite successfully, target African Americans. KMEL can't, as there is not the population base of Blackes to sustain it. KBXX is mostly Black targeted, while KMEL is mostly Hispanic targeted, but with a coalition of other and Black.
The Box is one of the most successful Urbans there is, relative to population base in the market. The are, in fact, the industry leader that showed how to recover from the initial impact of PPM, fix up the programming, and return to the same dominant position they had in the diary. Few stations have done that as well as KBXX.
The station is #1 in 12+, 18-34, 18-49 and 25-54. Not only is that a huge recovery from the earliest PPM test days in Houston, it is the mark of a station with good usage and acceptance. The fact that it was not even in the top 10 for a while shows that its target knows what it wants and does not listen when it is not good.
Even with KBXX at a high level, there is no guarantee that any new competitor would be able to shave more than a few points off
of them initially... and that would put them way outside the Top 10. That also means losing all the existing revenue and starting over at zere, and losing money for as much as a year as they get back on buys.
And if a new station only goes after the fringe of KBXX, as a CHUrban might, they have to create a coalition big enough to justify the initial revenue loss by giving a big payback in the second year and beyond. In today's economy, that is rather risky and usually only seen where a station is actually at or near unprofitability.
Based on your prediction. Only 4 has a slight chance of happening. Not in the way you state it to but 96.5 will change before any of the others do.
KTJM's problem is it's signal. Which is why those formats didn't stick to begin with.
Cox is having much success with the simulcast of KGLK on 106.9 causing The Arrow to slip further and further back in the ratings. Spinning it off would be just plain stupid. The Arrow seems like the likely candidate to change.
KRBE reverting back to their old moniker from the 80's, "Power 104".... No... just, No... Don't see it going Urban. KRBE does well. I don't believe heritage has anything to do with it remaining CHR after all these years.
KMIC just makes no sense at all. Not only does no broadcaster want to do music on AM anymore but an attempt to play on the history would be lost on the target demo, they wouldn't care. No kid is going to say "Cool they're playing Hip Hop on a station my parents/grandparents used to listen to when they were my age!". My experience with 1590... very unlistenable in Kingwood. Poor signal reach. AM quality is just very unattractive to younger listeners. Would you listen? I've listened to stuff on AM recently and even my 11 y/o daughter, who was virtually unaware of AM's existence, asked me why it sounds so bad. She thought something was wrong with the radio.
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