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Play 98.7 - is this how we now launch new stations?

M

marklarsen

OK... Is this REALLY how you launch a new station today? The music ain't bad. Admittedly, I'm only listening maybe 15-20 minutes at a time. But let's start with the web site. R U kidding? "http://play987.radio.com?" That's like inserting a hyphen in a URL -- not cool. I Googled Play 98.7 and the first hit was this:
http://play987.radio.com/shows/smooth-jazz-wsjt-98-7-hd-2/ The jazz was more prominent than Play!

Shouldn't there be a van on the road? Even if manned with part timers or interns? Handing out something? Anything? (If they are out there, I'm not hearing it.)
And Events? When launching new stations, we used to highjack events that weren't ours, until we'd get established. Nothing on their Events page but crap out of the newspaper. Jeezuz - this is supposed to be the launch of a new station?

Sorry, I guess I'm too old school -- you know -- connecting with listeners and stuff like that. I just saw in a previous post that Soccer Mom 100.7 is going live & local @night. No doubt music tweaks are coming, too.

CC learned their lesson when 97X ate too much of 98's lunch. 98 is back and I'll guess CC will circle the wagons faster this time with 100.7.

We live in a world when "right now" means yesterday. Even in '89 when we launched the Power Pig with NO MONEY, we hammered down out of the box. No guessing, no lag time, no apologies. Going way back, we did the same thing with B97 in New Orleans.

When we launched 95YNF here in '81, the SALES PEOPLE were required to show up early one day each week, throw on station tshirts, take the van to a high profile intersection, hold up banners & wave during drive time. I know - I was in sales at the time with the current CBS cluster manager (who is a swell guy).

CBS should know -- can we all remember when WiLD launched? They were EVERYWHERE slapping their stickers on anything with a hard surface. How many road signs still have those stickers attached right now?

Signal notwithstanding, I always hope to see at least a little excitement when a new station launches. That's why I glommed onto 97X (besides liking alt rock). The station exhibited an immediate attitude and "soul" that was missing at 98. Ditto 93.3, etc....
Even when we tweaked 1040 in '02; I was the only local guy -- but along with a promo person and interns, we crashed every local on-demo event we could and pushed that light bulb to a 1.7 with no budget.

Prediction: 100.7 will tweak fast and hold the fort. I can get everything 98.7 offers right now on my mp3 player. Comments?

-Mark Larsen
http://www.markinthemorning.com
 
CBS might as well give up on the 98.7 frequency. They could stick anything on there and it still won't succeed.

And the website, CBS has been putting all their stations under *CBS station*.radio.com since March-early April.
 
I can't get 98.7 on any radio in the house. Only in the car.
 
marklarsen said:
OK... Is this REALLY how you launch a new station today? The music ain't bad. Admittedly, I'm only listening maybe 15-20 minutes at a time. But let's start with the web site. R U kidding? "http://play987.radio.com?" That's like inserting a hyphen in a URL -- not cool. I Googled Play 98.7 and the first hit was this:
http://play987.radio.com/shows/smooth-jazz-wsjt-98-7-hd-2/ The jazz was more prominent than Play!
Click to expand...

The website is simply play987.com. It forwards to the play987.radio.com. All CBS station websites do this.
How they show up in a Google search is a good point Mark.
 
marklarsen said:
OK... Is this REALLY how you launch a new station today? The music ain't bad. Admittedly, I'm only listening maybe 15-20 minutes at a time. But let's start with the web site. R U kidding? "http://play987.radio.com?" That's like inserting a hyphen in a URL -- not cool. I Googled Play 98.7 and the first hit was this:
http://play987.radio.com/shows/smooth-jazz-wsjt-98-7-hd-2/ The jazz was more prominent than Play!

Shouldn't there be a van on the road? Even if manned with part timers or interns? Handing out something? Anything? (If they are out there, I'm not hearing it.)
And Events? When launching new stations, we used to highjack events that weren't ours, until we'd get established. Nothing on their Events page but crap out of the newspaper. Jeezuz - this is supposed to be the launch of a new station?

Sorry, I guess I'm too old school -- you know -- connecting with listeners and stuff like that. I just saw in a previous post that Soccer Mom 100.7 is going live & local @night. No doubt music tweaks are coming, too.

CC learned their lesson when 97X ate too much of 98's lunch. 98 is back and I'll guess CC will circle the wagons faster this time with 100.7.

We live in a world when "right now" means yesterday. Even in '89 when we launched the Power Pig with NO MONEY, we hammered down out of the box. No guessing, no lag time, no apologies. Going way back, we did the same thing with B97 in New Orleans.

When we launched 95YNF here in '81, the SALES PEOPLE were required to show up early one day each week, throw on station tshirts, take the van to a high profile intersection, hold up banners & wave during drive time. I know - I was in sales at the time with the current CBS cluster manager (who is a swell guy).

CBS should know -- can we all remember when WiLD launched? They were EVERYWHERE slapping their stickers on anything with a hard surface. How many road signs still have those stickers attached right now?

Signal notwithstanding, I always hope to see at least a little excitement when a new station launches. That's why I glommed onto 97X (besides liking alt rock). The station exhibited an immediate attitude and "soul" that was missing at 98. Ditto 93.3, etc....
Even when we tweaked 1040 in '02; I was the only local guy -- but along with a promo person and interns, we crashed every local on-demo event we could and pushed that light bulb to a 1.7 with no budget.

Prediction: 100.7 will tweak fast and hold the fort. I can get everything 98.7 offers right now on my mp3 player. Comments?

-Mark Larsen
http://www.markinthemorning.com
Click to expand...

While in general I agree with you, it is in general a concept that seems to have fallen by the wayside.

And Mix's new night show isn't live OR local, it's VTed from Columbus, OH.
 
It is still better than Tesh. Anybody know if the overnight guy is live or local. The fact that they have a personality on overnights is amazing whether he is local or not. I can't think of any other commercial station that doesn't go to robo and liners after midnight not counting those that do that all day too. I like hearing a personality after midnight beside Tesh or Delilah. Maybe that is old school, but I like it.
 
man, cbs just should sell 98.7. i lived in brandon for a year and the only radios it came in on was my shortwave radio and car radios. even then, the signal sucked. i bet some christian organization would love to have it... just saying. or put talk or something that can be broadcast in mono and that would help signal issues a little bit. at least you would not get the fading you get now. and yeah, the processing is real harsh... was in brandon a few weeks back and remember thinking "what the hell?"
 
marklarsen said:
OK... Is this REALLY how you launch a new station today? Comments?

-Mark Larsen
http://www.markinthemorning.com
Click to expand...
It is a 6th sense that radio station personnel doesn’t care. It is a radio station and that is supposed to be enough.
Radio is composed of 2 lines for mono and 3 lines for stereo: 2 - one way lines for stereo and 1 - two way line for the interaction.

The third line is not engineered into the broadcast. It is human. It is missing. It was yanked out by the decision makers deciding it was no longer necessary.
Your MP3 allows for that. It is that which “3rd line” in radio is no longer there.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
austingrace said:
man, cbs just should sell 98.7. i lived in brandon for a year and the only radios it came in on was my shortwave radio and car radios. even then, the signal sucked. i bet some christian organization would love to have it... just saying. or put talk or something that can be broadcast in mono and that would help signal issues a little bit. at least you would not get the fading you get now. and yeah, the processing is real harsh... was in brandon a few weeks back and remember thinking "what the hell?"
Click to expand...

Get over the 98.7 signal issues. If someone lives in Brandon, I guess this isn't your "over the air" radio station. That's like me in St. Pete bitching about not being able to receive Max 98.3. Last I checked, Brandon is closer to Lakeland than Seminole. So just because YOU live on the fringe, isn't a good enough reason for CBS to sell it. And by the way, the 98.7 signal probably reaches the majority of the Tampa Bay market... and that's where they're probably selling ads. So I doubt you'll be seeing remotes or promotions anytime soon out in your area... because they apparently don't broadcast there.
 
i don't live in brandon anymore. i think 97x puts a little better signal over brandon... and by little i mean very little. oh well. the saga continues :). i forgot how far south 98.7 was. that was my mistake. i had no idea it was out in holms beach. that explains a lot. ahhaha lol.
 
I just Googled it and play987.radio.com came up first then second came up the 98.7 out in LA.

But I also Yahoo! Searched it which I normal use and the first two links go to the Play 98.7 website.

Anyone wanna do a Bing Search ;)
 
billalm said:
Last I checked, Brandon is closer to Lakeland than Seminole.
Click to expand...

Brandon is EXTREMELY close to Tampa, you know the biggest city in TAMPA Bay, and is a major suburb situated in Hillsborough County. Speaking of Hillsborough and big cities, Brandon is the second biggest city in Hillsborough County with about 90,000 residents. Its population is almost as big as that of Clearwater. So not being able to penetrate Brandon properly is a problem, and that problem extends to parts of the city of Tampa.
So let's see now. Hillsborough County is the most populated county in Tampa Bay, and 98.7's signal runs into problems in its two biggest cities. But hey, at least you can pick it up loud and clear in Seminole ::)
 
CHRles said:
billalm said:
Last I checked, Brandon is closer to Lakeland than Seminole.
Click to expand...

Brandon is EXTREMELY close to Tampa, you know the biggest city in TAMPA Bay, and is a major suburb situated in Hillsborough County. Speaking of Hillsborough and big cities, Brandon is the second biggest city in Hillsborough County with about 90,000 residents. Its population is almost as big as that of Clearwater. So not being able to penetrate Brandon properly is a problem, and that problem extends to parts of the city of Tampa.
So let's see now. Hillsborough County is the most populated county in Tampa Bay, and 98.7's signal runs into problems in its two biggest cities. But hey, at least you can pick it up loud and clear in Seminole ::)
Click to expand...

There are 1 million people in Pinellas. Add in some of Tampa, some of the Bradenton area, that's plenty of reach.
 
I live in Brandon and 98.7 comes in clearly on my kitchen clock radio.......while the signal isn't as big as 100.7.....I think the ''problem with the signal'' issue is sometimes somewhat over-stated.......it's still 50k in a major metro......adjacent counties is where there is a huge huge difference between some signals and others
 
CBS doesn't need this station to be a winner. They only need it to be competitive in the female demos with Mix, Magic, FLZ and The Point. If they get similar ratings as those stations and maybe beat a few of them it will be a big improvement over Smooth Jazz. Now that Play 98.7 is on the air, all of the focus of CBS management is on keeping Cletus T. Judd out of rehab.
 
Pinellas is the most densely populated county in the state.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
MsMusicRadio said:
I can't get 98.7 on any radio in the house. Only in the car.
Click to expand...
Your reception problems can be cleaned up with a better radio with a better aimed antenna.

Brandon is close to the antenna farms in Riverview. Radios differ greatly in their designs.

Radio Shack has a good selection of radios that will do the trick ranging in price and flexibility.

I pick 98.7 and 92.5 up fine.

My problem used to be 99.5. Since the move from Tower Plaza earlier this year, it has greatly improved. (Thank You, Ralphie boy).

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
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