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PLJ SOLD

TheBigA said:
Yet somehow, WBAI is still there after over 50 years. And WPLJ is not.
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WBAI is gone. Pacifica is just in denial - as always.

Remember, they were evicted from Empire.

They are ruining a full Class B signal.

Just as Family radio did with 94.7 by never bothering to move to Empire when they had the chance.

If there is anything to be said for the corporate side of radio in NYC, is that at least they upgraded and got the most of the signals. the same can not be said for their non-coms.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
 
badjef said:
WBAI is gone. Pacifica is just in denial - as always.

Remember, they were evicted from Empire.
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And they moved to Times Square. So no, they're still on the air.

BTW I wouldn't be totally shocked if at some point EMF leaves ESB.
 
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mikerock said:
You are not the target demo. I suspect they will pick-up quite a bit of the WPLJ target demo in recent years. Only the lyrics have change so there is not reason it will not appeal to them.

Of course those that have a beef with Christians or hard rockers are going to have a problem with the new format. People that were not targeted and/or did or do not matter before or after the format change.
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Woah, that's just straight up false and being the exact opposite of the truth makes it a lie plain and simple. A heck of alot more than just the lyrics have changed. The music now on 95.5mhz in New York City is a bunch of really really bad rip offs of Daughtry type music of very low quality. Compared to what WPLJ was playing before sign off, the K-Love music has a much more boring, unimaginative instrumentation, along with hooks and choruses that are boring and lack any kind of quality or creativity. Also, there was very very few Daughtry type garbage on WPLJ in the last few years as well.
Go take a look at the ratings fro K-love in Los Angeles, Portland and Chicago. The WPLJ target demo will not want to listen to really bad music, and even if they are Christians the mention of god and jesus in the lyrics that are never more than 45 seconds away will not make them stick around.
I'm just keeping it real. This music now on 95.5 is really bad and if anything Jesus and all the Christians of this world truly do deserve better to be done in the name of their faith.
 
Since I'm being as objective as one can possibly be here I have a duty to state that the Lauren Daigle song "You Say" is a fantastic song and Daigle is a great vocalist. However, she's it, and her music really stands out and sounds odd on K-Love since it is of so much better quality than all the other offerings.
 
badjef said:
Too bad these non-comms don't report. It would be interesting to see how the new WPLJ affects WAWZ, Star 99.1.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
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The one in Chicago is still reporting into Nielsen. Not sure if they all do or not. Chicago pulls in about a 1.2 12+ and WLUP pulled in about a 1.5.

Here in Minneapolis (a pretty liberal market overall), we have a CCM "powerhouse" that predates KLOVE by several decades (KTIS). In the last ratings period, they were number 2 (12+) with a 6.4 share, and have been a top 10 station here for as long as I can remember (although usually pulling in closer to a 4 share).

While CCM isn't MY cup of tea, it certainly has an audience. KTIS would regularly beat our AC station (when we had one).
 
mnradiofan said:
The one in Chicago is still reporting into Nielsen. Not sure if they all do or not. Chicago pulls in about a 1.2 12+ and WLUP pulled in about a 1.5.

Here in Minneapolis (a pretty liberal market overall), we have a CCM "powerhouse" that predates KLOVE by several decades (KTIS). In the last ratings period, they were number 2 (12+) with a 6.4 share, and have been a top 10 station here for as long as I can remember (although usually pulling in closer to a 4 share).

While CCM isn't MY cup of tea, it certainly has an audience. KTIS would regularly beat our AC station (when we had one).
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Here in Philly, K-Love subscribes, and they tend to bounce around a bit. Their lowest was the holiday book where they pulled a 1.8. But from March to April, they jumped 2.2 to a 3.4. (12th overall. But still far behind the perennial AC powerhouse B101.1, and over a point behind newcomer 106.1 the Breeze).

I don't know the breakdown of where people are listening from... but there IS an audience there for it. It's not my cup of tea, but people listen.
 
TheBigA said:
Only if the current rock is as good as it was 30 years ago. The best option would have been to go classic rock before Q104.

WNEW stayed rock later than PLJ and you see what happened there.
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I can't speak for NYC as a market. I think that mass of the market doesn't lean towards Modern Rock well. I don't take any issue with that. There's a reason that we saw a mass exadus of rock stations on the East Coast, where variants of Rock and Alternative (when still in it's more rock sounding days) survived on the West Coast.

My issue with rock on the radio was that the whole Free Form movement is what made it shine in the late 60s and 70s. When the whole playlist because cookie cutter payola songs with over played classic rock acts is when I feel people left in droves. There are pleanty of acts out there that could reignight rock as a format. SiriusXM's Octane is just one place where many acts are played that are never given a chance on FM. The same for its Alternative station. The issue with FM is the limited playlists in my opinion.
 
Least said:
My issue with rock on the radio was that the whole Free Form movement is what made it shine in the late 60s and 70s. When the whole playlist because cookie cutter payola songs with over played classic rock acts is when I feel people left in droves.
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The facts don't bear you out. The classic rock stations are among the highest rated radio stations in most markets. Take a look at Philadelphia and Boston. And free form radio never had any ratings. That's why John Kluge hired the consultants for WNEW-FM. That's why WPLJ hired Larry Berger. They wanted to make money. Tight playlists make money. You want free form radio now? Listen to WFMU. It was free form in the 60s and it hasn't changed. But hardly anyone listens.
 
This does bring up an interesting point in radio's future. With this evolution, if you want to call it that, you have to believe more stations will be bought by non-traditional companies or religious-based NPs. What happens if three or four more stations are eventually bought in NYC, etc? Suddenly the radio dial becomes contacted for traditional music formats like Urban, County, CHR, Classic Hits. If you are not a talk/sports fan, then your options become so few that there really is no reason to listen to traditional radio. Could these subtle changes to the dial eventually drive people to have no other choice than pay for music options and help SiriusXM, etc.?
 
TheBigA said:
You want free form radio now? Listen to WFMU. It was free form in the 60s and it hasn't changed. But hardly anyone listens.
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'Hardly anyone' is enough to support the station. Like EMF and WFUV, WFMU is supported by donors, not ratings. FMU provides supporters with the kind of programming they enjoy and aren't finding anywhere else. They do it without corporate sponsors or CPB. Unlike Pacifica, they have a functional board of directors and a financial model that adapts to reality. It takes a dedicated management to keep that model afloat, but it works. Like any donation-driven outlet, WFMU's supporters are passionate about the programming and the concept.

To have come of age when FMs had to split off from their AMs and ended up programming some interesting things is a blessing. The creative programming of the late 60s and early-mid 70s still exists on streams and some non-commercial outlets. With a few quirky exceptions, it hasn't existed on the commercial FM dial in over 40 years. And that's fine. Commercial radio is aimed at lowest-common-denominator audiences. There are plenty of outlets for the rest of us.
 
badjef said:
Too bad these non-comms don't report. It would be interesting to see how the new WPLJ affects WAWZ, Star 99.1.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!
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One does not "report" to Nielsen. Nielsen monitors all encoded stations, subscribed or not. And encoders are provided at no cost to all stations that are "home" to a market (meaning licensed to anywhere in the Metro Survey Area).

In fact, in many markets we see more unsubscribed stations than subscribed ones because, generally, those daytime AMs and non-Hiispanic ethnic stations and ultra-suburban stations do not subscribe.
 
GEDA1990 said:
Playlist of the last four hours of WPLJ (source : https://onlineradiobox.com/us/wplj/playlist/1)

11:59 - Huey Lewis & The News - Hip to Be Square
12:09 - Queen - Bohemian Rhapsody
12:22 - Cheap Trick - I Want You to Want Me
12:38 - Jonas Brothers - Sucker
12:44 - Lionel Richie - All Night Long
12:55 - Donny Osmond - Solider Of Love
13:10 - Marshmello Feat Bastille - Happier
13:29 - Backstreet Boys - Everybody (Backstreet's Back)
13:40 - MKTO - Classic
13:44 - Cynthia & Johnny O - Dreamboy/Dreamgirl
13:59 - Five for Fighting - Superman
14:03 - The Romantics - What I Like About You
14:06 - Ellie Goulding, Diplo & Swae Lee - Close To Me
14:25 - Frank Sinatra - New York, New York
14:30 - Goo Goo Dolls - Better Days
14:34 - Fountains of Wayne - Stacy's Mom
14:38 - Maroon 5 feat Christina Aguilera - Moves Like Jagger
14:42 - Panic! at the Disco - High Hopes
14:45 - Europe - The Final Countdown
15:00 - Bon Jovi - Never Say Goodbye
15:05 - Rob Thomas - One Less Day (Dying Young)
15:13 - Huey Lewis & The News - Doing It All for My Baby
15:19 - Dave Matthews Band - Crash into Me
15:26 - Bruce Springsteen - Glory Days
15:32 - Bob Seger - Old Time Rock 'n Roll
15:36 - Del Amitri - Roll To Me
15:49 - John Lennon - Imagine*
15:55 - Hall & Oates - W-P-L-J*

*Don't appear on the Onlineradiobox's website
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Wow, there's some good stuff here. On a Hot AC! I would never have expected Sinatra.
 
Least said:
My issue with rock on the radio was that the whole Free Form movement is what made it shine in the late 60s and 70s. When the whole playlist because cookie cutter payola songs with over played classic rock acts is when I feel people left in droves.
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Expanding on BigA's post: progressive rock was done in a lot of markets because it was the "best" format for cash-cow AMs to put on their formerly simulcast FM when the FCC demanded an end to most simulcasting in the late 60's. It was a good choice not for ratings, and certainly not for revenue. It was the right choice because there was no way it would take revenue or ratings from the mother ship, the profitable AM.

Over the half-decade between 1967 and the early 70's, many of those stations began to do fairly well in ratings. But that was until a young programmer at WQDR in North Carolina proved that you could apply modern formatics and rotations to progressive rock and get even better ratings while shedding the "hippie station" sales image to some extent.

Lee Abrams' "Superstars" format and its variants from other consultants killed or severely damaged the free form stations, and they either disappeared or gradually faded into oblivion. And it can be said that those AOR stations helped drive the increase in FM penetration, particularly in cars that moved the band to parity with AM listening by 1977.

"Classic rock" was the much-later evolution of AOR stations once two things happened: first, the existence of a big enough library of superhits in the format and, second, the decline in production and, some would say, quality, of newer rock that was acceptable to the partisans of the songs of the late 60's, 70's and into the 80's.

Finally, how do you sustain the idea of rock survive on the West Coast? KLOS in LA, even with no competition is not a top 10 station, nor are the two alternative stations as a rule. KFOG in San Francisco is an also-ran. KINK in Portland is on a gradual listening decline, despite heritage billing levels.
 
tbolt909 said:
Jesus wants "all demos", but even God thinks the new format sucks. He's listening to Bob Marley on vinyl right now...
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That would be your personal opinion, not that of the listeners who sent over $200 million to EMF last year.

There are some formats that would be torturous for me to listen to but which also do well within their business model. I don't say that they suck. I admire any successful radio operation today, and don't hurl invective at them just because they program some form or music or talk I don't like on a personal level.
 
DOB said:
I thought that there was nothing more painful than listening to Nickelback but I was wrong, a Nickelback wanna be rip off singing about Jeebus on K-Love is the worst thing that I have ever heard. All this music sounds the same. NO WAY it doesn't sound anything like today's pop, it's all like Creed, Nickelcrack, 3 Chords down crap with the Christian stuff. BTW, nothing positive or encouraging about forcing poor minority women to have their baby they can't afford and then not allow any gay couples to adopt who could give that baby a good life.
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!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
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