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One Year Anniversary

T

toddjammin

Today is the one year anniversary of Bob FM. To be honest, I thought the format
would only last about 6 months. The ratings proved me wrong. Does anyone know how the other Bob and Jack stations are doing now across the country?
 
I know that Jack is doing well 12+ and 25-54 in Nashville.
 
Jack is also doing extremely well in Dallas. It was #1 25-54 for a while, not sure if that's still the case, but it's doing great.
 
Bob in the 'Burgh is different from Jack because:

a) They don't have the consultative restraints that the official "Jack" stations do, where they're required to hire the company that licenses Jack to consult them.

b) This is local ownership, which for better or worse, shows us that sometimes the local guys actually do know the market better than the big boys.

c) Can anyone remember when this frequency performed better on a one-year average than they have since they flipped to Bob?

d) Big Ben's performance this year shows that he's the poster boy for the Wear Your Friggin' Motorcycle Helmet When You Ride Your Bike, Or Dire Results Will Ensue That Will Erase All Memory Of Your Incredible Super Bowl Year campaign.

Sorry... choice "d" was a digression.
 
They don't have the consultative restraints that the official "Jack" stations do, where they're required to hire the company that licenses Jack to consult them.
Click to expand...

That's flat out wrong. Steel City Media is paying for the license to use "Bob" and the "We Play Anything" slogan just as other stations pay a license for the Jack name and positioning.

Furthermore, Joel Folger--as he does for about a dozen other Bob stations around the country--is being paid by Steel City for his consulting services.
 
Joel Folger--as he does for about a dozen other Bob stations around the country--is being paid by Steel City for his consulting services.

Not that Mr. Folger doesn't deserve what he makes, but doesn't it seem sad that there isn't a single, solitary radio professional in the entire city of Pittsburgh who could pick songs to play at random for the Pittsburgh audience at least as well or better than Mr. Folger? At least, the people at Steel City don't think there's anyone in town good enough for that job.

People get on me for not showing enough respect to the radio pros here in Pittsburgh. Isn't bringing in an outside consultant like this an even bigger insult to local radio people than anything I've ever said? Isn't this an example of Saul telling everyone in Pittsburgh that "none of you are good enough, I'll hire someone from out of town"?
 
Steel City has been using consultants for a long time. I think McVay Media has been doing LTJ for several years now. It's just become sort of an industry standard that owners hire consultants rather than putting all the eggs in the basket of the local PD. And the Bob format is not "picking songs at random" but a combination of research lists from a few different formats that all target various segments of the 25-54 pie.

In my mind, that explains why the Jack-Bob-etc variety formats are enjoying the degree of success that we've been seeing... most of what's been out there has been too narrowly drawn, and these formats are taking the overlaps of what might have been 3 or 4 stations worth of listeners... maybe not thier first-choice station, but by becoming the second choice of people from a bunch of stations, you get big numbers.
 
Steel City has been using consultants for a long time. I think McVay Media has been doing LTJ for several years now.

Which means they've been insulting the radio professionals who live and work here for a long time, like for several years.

It's just become sort of an industry standard that owners hire consultants rather than putting all the eggs in the basket of the local PD.

It's that way in lots of industries, not just radio. It's the opposite of the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. Senior managers no longer believe that their own employees could possibly know anything, only an expensive outside consultant's expertise can be trusted. That's why so many businesses are going broke.

And the Bob format is not "picking songs at random"

No, it just sounds like songs picked at random. It's like when a woman pays a couple hundred bucks to her hair dresser to make her hair look like it hasn't been combed in a month.

I'll wager that if some other station would do the same amount of advertising that WRRK has done, and would simply load a 100 disc CD changer with nothing but compilation CD's of "Greatest hits" from the same years that WRRK uses and put that changer on "random play", that station would do as well as WRRK is doing. And they wouldn't have to pay any consultant fees.

I'll also wager that if sample playlists from WRRK and that imaginary "random play" CD were both shown to the 20 top PD's in Pittsburgh, most of them couldn't tell which one was which.

In my mind, that explains why the Jack-Bob-etc variety formats are enjoying the degree of success that we've been seeing

In my mind, WRRK is the only station in Pittsburgh that has been doing anything new or different since K-Rock appeared. And, given that all the other stations are playing the same, tired, boring stuff, it doesn't take much to be new and different. It's like winning a bikini contest at a senior citizen's home.
 
i think it just points to the fact that, the job of "program director" has changed...there is a "program director" of bob-fm...and i'm sure they're very busy...but there is a whole other bunch of people who decide what is put on the station...not just him...but i'm with you, if they are paying someone for "bob"....that's dumb...in 1990 i worked for a station with one owner, the company owners son, , and we didn't become number one, so he said "only play songs that were in the top ten"!, so we were playing the jaws theme into hungry like the wolf....that station is gone...so is he...but that is what "bob" is now...how things change...i actually liked it then..."bob" should get more adventurous...i heard gordon lightfoot on the pickle the other day, and couldn't get it loud enough!
 
I have to make a public apology and retract something I said earlier. I had always dismissed most production stuff as mere "sonic parsley" that didn't really make a big difference on how a radio station sounded. I also only knew what they played on Bob-FM by reading the playlists on Yes.com. Today, after a few hours of my co-workers subjecting me to more of pre-season Christmas music, I convinced them to cut me a break and change the station. They switched it to Bob-FM.

For the first time, I not only knew what songs they were playing, I heard the imaginary "Bob" referring to himself in the third person. And doing it often.

That really, really sucks. That is more than annoying. That's downright offensive. Though I would never deliberately tune in a station that wasn't playing music I liked just to hear the DJ, jingles, and other filler, even if WRRK were to only play songs I truly and deeply enjoyed and wanted to hear, I wouldn't put up with those arrogant third-person references to Bob.

What were those people thinking?

And how can normal people (aka listeners) put up with that?
 
Very, Very, Good Point Radio Realist. I listen to Bob FM every now and then and I can't stand that third person reference. Okay, its cute with the Bob FM commercials they play, but when the DJ's talk about Bob as if he is a real person, it is quite scary. In my day if you talked about something that wasn't real and yet referred it to a person, you would be considered crazy. Okay, bad attempt at a joke. But honestly, it’s very annoying. Do any of you know if Jack FM stations do this?
 
The SAM station in Greensburg says "our call letters are WGSM, but we want to be known as SAM." That's about as far as it goes - to me that's no more than saying "we're WBZZ, but call us B 94."

I agree that the DJs referring to BOB is beyond ridiculous - I picture them having the same look on his face that Don Cannon gets every time he has to do a story about Survivor or Paris Hilton. "I quit drinking for THIS??!?" What's more offensive to me, though, is the "Bob used to go to West View Park" crap. BOB DOESN'T EXIST, AND EVEN IF HE DID, HE DIDN'T EXIST BACK THEN.
 
Radio_Realist said:
Steel City has been using consultants for a long time. I think McVay Media has been doing LTJ for several years now.
Click to expand...

They were using McVay primarily during the 80's, then Dick Stadlen in the 90's. Either way, they're firm believers in consultants.
 
corporateradiosucks said:
The SAM station in Greensburg says "our call letters are WGSM, but we want to be known as SAM." That's about as far as it goes - to me that's no more than saying "we're WBZZ, but call us B 94."
Click to expand...

Outside of AM drive, SAM FM has no jocks, since they're using Westwood One's syndicated Simply About Music format, unless that changed recently. During the mornings, they concentrate on news, music, entertainment and just about everything you'd find in a typical morning show, but there's none of that hokeyness surrounding a mythical person that controls the radio station.
 
Corperateradio, you still have me laughing about the Don Cannon joke! HAHA. I can get a Jack station out where I live (though its fringe coming from Ohio) and they don't do the whole creepy third person thing. It would be funny if someone did a comedic spoof on Bob Fm's third person thing.
 
Actually, our Jack FM does refer to the imaginary "Jack". They have a phone line set up to record callers' comments to "Jack" which are then produced into liners. They also have "personality" liners that talk about Jack. They even have a cartoonish logo of what he's supposed to look like though they still try to create an air of mystery about him. I believe many other Jack stations do the same, yes?
 
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