A number of posters on this board suggest that K-Rock should go full time active. I think a full time active rock station would fail miserably in a market as educated as New York.
I completely disagree.
Active Rock does great in places such as Denver, Minneapolis, and Seattle.
It does fairly well in San Diego, Atlanta (where Project 9-6-1 is putting 99X out of business), and Boston. Hell, CBS was so concerned about WAAF that for a long time WBCN was a pseudo-Active Rock station, not a true Modern Rock station.
When the now defunct KSJO in San Jose / San Francisco was a full-fledged Active Rock station (i.e. before they lost a popular morning show & gravitated toward Mainstream Rock), it was often the top rated rock station in San Jose and barely trailed Live 105 in the composite San Francisco market numbers -- and this was when Live 105 had Stern! This is despite the fact KSJO had a terrible signal in much of the northern 1/3 of the market.
You act as if the target listeners would be residents of Manhattan & no one else.
Earlier posters were on target with their comments. K-Rock in its current form is a failure because the brand has no cohesion. I completely agree with the look of the web site -- it is PATHETIC. Looks like something you'd see in market #100. The morning show and music do not mesh well with each other. The whole product is poorly construed.
The CBS brain trust has not done a good job at executing modern, AAA, active, & mainstream rock stations in recent years.
Let's look at the track record:
--New York's K-Rock: persistent music tweaks, then a flip to talk, and then a flip back to rock with a half-assed presentation. The ratings are just as bad today as what WNEW had during its final couple years as a rock station.
--Pittsburgh's K-Rock: terrible ratings, even when Stern was still airing in mornings
--San Antonio's K-Rock: terrible ratings, with the exception of one book
--San Francisco's Live 105: did well for maybe 2 years after Stern moved over from KOME. Since then, the ratings have stunk.
--Las Vegas' X107-5: did well until the suits messed with the brand by changing the identifier to "X-treme ROCK Radio" yet add a LOT of non-music programming (such as O&A to middays). TERRIBLE move. They are still trying to recover. Damage was already done by the time Dan Mason came in.
--Portland's KUPD: ratings have been lackluster since Stern left.
--Cincy's Channel Z/ New Rock 97-3 / Everything Alternative 97-3: never did that well out of the gate, but the ratings became worse when CBS tried mixing Stern with gold-based adult friendly modern rock.
--Detroit's K-Rock / Xtreme Radio: this one died a long time ago. Xtreme Radio was a clone of Las Vegas' X107-5 and did somewhat better than its predecessor, K-Rock. The ratings still lagged behind WRIF by a mile, though, and revenue wise the results were even worse.
--Memphis' 93X: terrible ratings the entire time CBS owned it
--Boston's WBCN: even before WAAF began simulcasting on 97.7 in Brockton, they were frequently within shooting range of WBCN, and often beat them in certain demos / dayparts. Pretty pathetic when you consider WAAF's main transmitter is 40 miles outside of downtown Boston.
--Buffalos' WBUF: made minimal inroads on 97Rock and The Edge when it was a Mainstream Rock station
--Sacramento's KXOA / KHWD: terrible ratings each & every book. No threat whatsoever to 98Rock.
--Cleveland's K-Rock: one of a VERY few CBS rock launches over the last decade that has been mildly successful
--Washington's KTGB: ratings suck almost as bad as its predecessor, 94.7 WARW.
--Atlanta's 92-9 Dave FM: ratings are no better than when the station was classic rock Z93. They can take a little solace in the fact their ratings aren't as bad as 99X, though. They trail 97-1 The River by a mile.
--Philadelphia's WYSP: station with great ratings several years ago was trashed to make room for syndie talkers. Numbers sank, especially when the station was 100% talk from 6AM - 7PM. The station then cut back on talk and added more hours of music programming. Ratings rebounded. Revenue remained EXCELLENT.
Did they learn their lesson? Nope. Stern retires. Big wigs decide to blow up the entire station and go mostly talk. Now, instead of retooling one daypart, programmers were faced with the daunting task of retooling every major daypart. What a great maneuver! :
Revenue falls almost by half. Now the staton is back to all music again. Too bad its former listeners have by & large already found new homes (WMMR, WMGK, WRFF). Also, it's a shame the playlist of the reincarnated WYSP looks too much like a watered down version of WMMR.
Bottom line: CBS cannot do Rock to save its life. They need to bring some new lifeblood on board. Some people who are actually familiar with what works outside of Los Angeles.
Their track record in the format is absolutely abysmal, outside of the persistent ratings and revenue success of KROQ in Los Angeles.
