Out of the 5 Country Stations in Columbus, witch one needs to go the most?

[Nu_Roo_2]

Well, one thing's for sure, and that is that the basic economic equation includes supply in addition to demand.  There may be plenty of demand for country in Columbus, but there's such an over-supply that it's way out of kilter with demand.

 

[KevinFodor]

I wouldn't argue that the supply is well over the demand there for country stations now.

And, the more stations, the greater the format tends to expand. But, Columbus has always had a big format hole for country. That's one of the reasons why WCOL was so easily able to exploit it when it flipped in '95.
(Though admittedly, the $50,000 to $75,000 promotion budget almost every book, not counting the money for TV ads certainly helped that cause.)

But when anyone asks why the country market is so big, you only have to understand that the "Columbus Radio Market" doesn't stop at the city limits. Once you include Union, Delaware, Marion, and Licking counties, and the Lancaster area, too just to name a few, the country market potential explodes.

And since the demos you get with country are most desirable by advertisers, you can understand why certain companies might want to launch a flanker or two to "siphon" small pieces off the big guys if they can get away with it. But, yet, as I've said...I agree 5 stations is a bit much...

 

[gr8oldies]

In fairness, T100 is still primarily a Licking County/SE Ohio station. I'm sure lots of potential buyers have shown up at the Pricers' doorstep with checkbooks to make it a move in, but so far it hasn't happened.

 

[gr8oldies]

Then again we have 5 (if you count BZI in Dayton!

 

[xmusicmatt]

That's one of the reasons why WCOL was so easily able to exploit it when it flipped in '95.
(Though admittedly, the $50,000 to $75,000 promotion budget almost every book, not counting the money for TV ads certainly helped that cause.)

WCOL "Continuous Country Favorites 92.3 with its powerful no static signal" launched on Feb 14th 1994 at 6pm if I remember right. They stunted with a robotic countdown prior to launch and launched with 10,000 songs in a row (twice) if I remember before the added personalities ..

Ofcourse I know that isn't the subject of this thread.. I suspect WCOL will be country for a long time to come.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Backing up to the original question, "Out of the 5 Country Stations in Columbus, witch one needs to go the most? "

I'd have to say, whichever one drank the most.

 

[V.Riley]

That's one of the reasons why WCOL was so easily able to exploit it when it flipped in '95.
(Though admittedly, the $50,000 to $75,000 promotion budget almost every book, not counting the money for TV ads certainly helped that cause.)

WCOL "Continuous Country Favorites 92.3 with its powerful no static signal" launched on Feb 14th 1994 at 6pm if I remember right. They stunted with a robotic countdown prior to launch and launched with 10,000 songs in a row (twice) if I remember before the added personalities ..

Ofcourse I know that isn't the subject of this thread.. I suspect WCOL will be country for a long time to come.

Feb 14th of 1994 would have been a Monday. If I recall (which I may not) they flipped formats on the weekend. Don't remember the time, but I know I drove into work Saturday night listening to one format, and then drove away from work Sunday morning listening to a country format.

I much preferred the 92X days. Even used to have WXGT92.3 as my password back then.

 

[Allfirdup]

That's one of the reasons why WCOL was so easily able to exploit it when it flipped in '95.
(Though admittedly, the $50,000 to $75,000 promotion budget almost every book, not counting the money for TV ads certainly helped that cause.)

WCOL "Continuous Country Favorites 92.3 with its powerful no static signal" launched on Feb 14th 1994 at 6pm if I remember right. They stunted with a robotic countdown prior to launch and launched with 10,000 songs in a row (twice) if I remember before the added personalities ..

Of course I know that isn't the subject of this thread.. I suspect WCOL will be country for a long time to come.

Feb 14th of 1994 would have been a Monday. If I recall (which I may not) they flipped formats on the weekend. Don't remember the time, but I know I drove into work Saturday night listening to one format, and then drove away from work Sunday morning listening to a country format.

I much preferred the 92X days. Even used to have WXGT92.3 as my password back then.

no there was about a week with a countdown clock that lead up to the format kick off, like xmusicmatt said. and i do remember the 10,000 in a row done twice,

now the switch to oldies Cool 92 form WXGT, happend really quick, and they did let the old format and staff say good by as they were on the way out

 

[Corky Marlowe]

If I had pick one to change formats I would go with 102.5.. It's nothing more than a placeholder jukebox to keep the signal warm while WHIZ Media Group tries to sale it. (some of the songs played don't even have segues set so you get breif dead air between elements).

That must have been the one I heard driving back home from Columbus yesterday! That's considered a major market station? I wouldn't describe the dead air as "brief"...It was more like 3 or 4 seconds after each song. Hopefully someone can do something with it, because it did seem to have a strong signal.

 

[rubberchicken]

102.5 is just being kept on until someone buys it in the Columbus market. The "studio", er, automation computer is in Zanesville.
Having said that, it can't be that hard to have someone set proper end tones on songs in the system!

 

[V.Riley]

That's one of the reasons why WCOL was so easily able to exploit it when it flipped in '95.
(Though admittedly, the $50,000 to $75,000 promotion budget almost every book, not counting the money for TV ads certainly helped that cause.)

WCOL "Continuous Country Favorites 92.3 with its powerful no static signal" launched on Feb 14th 1994 at 6pm if I remember right. They stunted with a robotic countdown prior to launch and launched with 10,000 songs in a row (twice) if I remember before the added personalities ..

Of course I know that isn't the subject of this thread.. I suspect WCOL will be country for a long time to come.

Feb 14th of 1994 would have been a Monday. If I recall (which I may not) they flipped formats on the weekend. Don't remember the time, but I know I drove into work Saturday night listening to one format, and then drove away from work Sunday morning listening to a country format.

I much preferred the 92X days. Even used to have WXGT92.3 as my password back then.

no there was about a week with a countdown clock that lead up to the format kick off, like xmusicmatt said. and i do remember the 10,000 in a row done twice,

now the switch to oldies Cool 92 form WXGT, happend really quick, and they did let the old format and staff say good by as they were on the way out

I remember the countdown clock. Had no clue what they were counting down to, and also believe I remember WNCI advertising for the listeners to switch to WNCI which I thought was rather strange. Had I been paying attention to the radio and not the drive to and from work, I would have figured it out.

 

[KevinFodor]

That's one of the reasons why WCOL was so easily able to exploit it when it flipped in '95.
(Though admittedly, the $50,000 to $75,000 promotion budget almost every book, not counting the money for TV ads certainly helped that cause.)

WCOL "Continuous Country Favorites 92.3 with its powerful no static signal" launched on Feb 14th 1994 at 6pm if I remember right. They stunted with a robotic countdown prior to launch and launched with 10,000 songs in a row (twice) if I remember before the added personalities ..

Of course I know that isn't the subject of this thread.. I suspect WCOL will be country for a long time to come.

Feb 14th of 1994 would have been a Monday. If I recall (which I may not) they flipped formats on the weekend. Don't remember the time, but I know I drove into work Saturday night listening to one format, and then drove away from work Sunday morning listening to a country format.

I much preferred the 92X days. Even used to have WXGT92.3 as my password back then.

no there was about a week with a countdown clock that lead up to the format kick off, like xmusicmatt said. and i do remember the 10,000 in a row done twice,

now the switch to oldies Cool 92 form WXGT, happend really quick, and they did let the old format and staff say good by as they were on the way out

I remember the countdown clock. Had no clue what they were counting down to, and also believe I remember WNCI advertising for the listeners to switch to WNCI which I thought was rather strange. Had I been paying attention to the radio and not the drive to and from work, I would have figured it out.

OK, if you say '94...I'll buy it. When I go back more than 10 years, my memory gets a bit fuzzy.

But, I do remember this. We switched to country on a Monday night at 6 pm. I was on the air from 9 pm to Midnight that night, (the 2nd jock on the air), and spent that night at the hotel in the Convention Center, as I wasn't living in Columbus yet. That afternoon, I was in the "big office" way up at the top of Plaza One with PD Michael Cruise, Nationwide VP (the late) Mickey Franko and President, Steve Berger.

We were told, "For the first 6 months of operations, there is no budget. Anything you guys think you need to make this work...anything...don't ask...go buy it." I couldn't believe what I was hearing.

I was also involved with the switch from 92X. I thought the decision to let the jocks say goodbye was a good thing. The station was down in the 3 share range then 12 plus at that point, so I don't think it mattered to management that much. The 92X staff was, pretty much all totally professional about it...no one seemed to be holding a grudge. And we felt kinda bad, because they were decent people and we would have been happy to have their professionalism as part of our staff. But, we were there because Great Trails was horrendously in debt, and oldies was a cheaper format to run.

The "countdown clock" to country...wow! Believe it or not, it was an old Radio Shack computer with the program loaded in it. It started on a Thursday or Friday, and ran through Monday night at 6 pm.

In addition to "counting down", the computer was also programmed to say certain sentences. Though this might not have been the exact language, one sentence was something like, "Stay tuned. A new, clear radio station will appear on this channel Monday night at 6."

Gee whiz...wouldn't you just know that some listeners ran the words, "new" and "clear" together to form the word, "nuclear"?

So...in the front door at Broad and South Young marches a Columbus police officer demanding to know what what we meant by announcing we were launching a "nuclear radio station"? I'm not kidding!

Oh yeah...Nationwide owned us at that point for about 60 days. So, if WNCI was telling people to switch, it was, in all likelihood, just another part of the chess game to keep people guessing about what we were going to do.

Something else interesting which I can tell now...that I couldn't tell for years: Nationwide did a research study looking for the "biggest format hole" in the market. Whatever that study decided, they were going to do. Had the biggest hole still been oldies, we never would have flipped. But, the biggest hole was country...hence the change.

Closely watching us across town was WBNS-FM. I was told on very good authority (high ups then in the 'BNS chain of command at the time), that they had been thinking about flipping 97.1 to country. But, when we announced a change, they decided whatever direction we went...they would go the other way. We went country...they stayed with oldies.

We got the better of that deal, obviously.

I seem to think, though that, at first, we announced it as 5,000 in a row. Then, at the end of 5,000 (about 9 days), we had a promo that said, "Hey...this was so much fun, let's do it again! Here's song one of ANOTHER
5,000 in a row on Columbus's new choice for Continuous Country Favorites...(jingle)."

Two stretches of 10,000 in a row would have taken about 46 days...and I don't think even Nationwide wanted to wait that long for revenue. Still and yet, if I remember correctly, we got a great spot rate for that first commercial after the 10,000!

And, I'm sure if JBC reads this, he'll back up at least most of this...

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Something else interesting which I can tell now...that I couldn't tell for years: Nationwide did a research study looking for the "biggest format hole" in the market. Whatever that study decided, they were going to do. Had the biggest hole still been oldies, we never would have flipped. But, the biggest hole was country...hence the change.

Maybe, but surely management must have been rootin' for country after seeing the smashing success of co-owned WGAR Cleveland and WPOC Washington? If the result had been a tie between country and another format, don't you believe the company might have leaned toward country for that reason (and/or because the River was doing so well with a lesser signal at 98.9 -- which was actually powerful compared the rimshots that predominate today)?

 

[xmusicmatt]

I seem to think, though that, at first, we announced it as 5,000 in a row. Then, at the end of 5,000 (about 9 days), we had a promo that said, "Hey...this was so much fun, let's do it again! Here's song one of ANOTHER
5,000 in a row on Columbus's new choice for Continuous Country Favorites...(jingle)."

Your right it was 5,000 now I remember.. It had been so long I couldn't remember if it was 5k or 10k when I commented earler.. I remember the first song was Alan Jacksons "chattahoochee" if I remember right.

 

[imadethisusernamemyslef]

Thier are to many, but witch one do you think needs to go the most?


and...crap. I just realized I spelled my username wrong when I registered on here.

Well, Dayton has just lost a Country station. How come it won't happen in Columbus?

 

[dawg4life]

Thier are to many, but witch one do you think needs to go the most?


and...crap. I just realized I spelled my username wrong when I registered on here.

Well, Dayton has just lost a Country station. How come it won't happen in Columbus?

How come it won't happen in Columbus you say?

They just want to piss everyone off who posts at radio-info.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Thier are to many, but witch one do you think needs to go the most?


and...crap. I just realized I spelled my username wrong when I registered on here. 

Well, Dayton has just lost a Country station. How come it won't happen in Columbus?

How come it won't happen in Columbus you say?

They just want to piss everyone off who posts at radio-info.

One of the key rules here is that you just can't compare Columbus to normal markets (i.e., everywhere else in the top 75), or it will drive you crazy.  Columbus radio is uniquely and doggedly* weird, in a bad way.

*no offense intended, dawg

This is also the only market that is so bizzare that there could conceivably be some truth to dawg's last statement, even if it's largely subconscious.  Look at WLZT, quite possibly a living testament to wasting a rare major signal to perpetuate a vendetta, despite whatever official "let's pretend" justification may exist for its mainstream AC approach.

 

[dawg4life]

Dog gone it Roo, you know I love puns!

A three-legged dog walks into a saloon in the Old West.

He slides up to the bar and announces: "I'm looking for the man who shot my paw."

 

[dawg4life]

Come to think of it, Columbus radio is like crossbreeding a Malamute and a Pointer.

Malamute + Pointer = Moot Point

Columbus is also like crossbreeding a Terrier and a Bulldog.

Terrier + Bulldog = Terribull

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

LOL x2!  Perfect timing, too -- I had one of those vintage Westerns on the tube when I read the first one