Progressive Talk to Jax

[smedge2006]

Former Democratic politician Andy Johnson has apparently leased WZNZ (1460 AM) in Jacksonville and will launch a liberal talk format Monday (1-14). Johnson has brokered time on mostly religious stations over the years. That's not a good thing, but the market for Jacksonville talk has always been lame and mostly brokered, partly because WOKV was born a syndicated station (in 1982) and never really stepped up to the plate with local talk. Johnson promises to have "more local talk than any North Florida station", which wouldn't be hard. Perhaps the most amusing aspect of this is that WZNZ has been owned by relatives of a Salem bigwig after it was spun off from that company.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/viewArticle.asp?articleID=48621

http://www.1460.us

 

[jaymarvin]

That's good news. Last time I was through there (last year) the talk radio there was lame.

 

[jaxonair80]

That's lovely. Him and his comrades will destroy any integrity that station ever had. The only thing consistent is change over there.

 

[jaymarvin]

What's with the "comrades" BS? What is about people like you that you can let politics go for one second? Try this: the more talk there is on the AM band the more cume it adds to the band and helps all the talk stations. People like you wear me out.

 

[ajhenderson]

http://www.1460.us/

This station is going nowhere fast. Jay has a point, but I'm not arguing politics. This is a mish-mash of local shows, sports shows, national shows, financial news, tape-delayed financial news, tape-delayed Jim Bohannon news, brokered weekday shows, one-day-a-week weekday shows, etc. WOKV may not be the best talk station one could hope for, and several of the top (right) talkers are not on in Jax, but give me a break.

 

[smedge2006]

Him and his comrades will destroy any integrity that station ever had.

Exactly when did 1460 in Jax have integrity? They've been a nonentity for years. The closest they came to shedding that status was with ESPN, but 1010 pretty much taken over that niche. I doubt this is their final lineup. Much of it looks like left overs from the Salem ownership, just waiting for contracts to expire.

 

[jaymarvin]

Chances are the station is sitting on a dead spot on the dial because its had so many formats. But good luck to them.

 

[ajhenderson]

Chances are the station is sitting on a dead spot on the dial because its had so many formats. But good luck to them.

Probably right, but at least why not give it a serious try, rather than the mish-mash they are promoting now?

 

[moonshadow]

What am I missing here? This is a RADIO discussion, right? This has crap to do with his politics. Andy Johnson is BAD RADIO...no skill, no style. Noise. But we're used to that around here, so we're discussing agendas rather than the quality of the programing. Typical, and telling.

 

[jaymarvin]

You are so right. Has nothing to do with politics has to do with doing radio right. A mish mash of programing will not work. But God bless them for trying because as I pointed out before the more going on with AM the more people you have a chance to bring to the band.

 

[smedge2006]

What am I missing here? This is a RADIO discussion, right? This has crap to do with his politics. Andy Johnson is BAD RADIO...no skill, no style. Noise.

Fair enough. The first time I heard Johnson I thought he was a right-winger. But you have to grade on a curve here.

Jacksonville is one of the worst talk radio markets in the South, if not the country. Always has been. The Las Vegas of the East. Tampa, Orlando, Miami and West Palm Beach all had talkers before the syndication craze hit ('82) and those stations did local content. WOKV signed on with a syndicated lineup and set the bar low for the entire market. Most other Jax AMs have always been about brokering time. Most sports talk in Jax has always been brokered. There has historically been nothing but bad radio on AM in Jax since the Big Ape gave up the ghost.

So a progressive talker is not going to be some programming-focused chain effort, there are no chains owning available AMs in Jax. Cox and CC own one each, and Salem bailed out of the market altogether. Any progressive talker in Jax is going to be a ground-upper. At least AJ has been brokering for years so maybe -- MAYBE -- he has a business model to build on as far as spot sales.

If the business model is viable, perhaps they can build the format by hiring a real talent from out-of-market to set the town on its ear... which is how talk radio used to work in the days before Rush. "U-Haul talk hosts", they were called. Some set the city on its ear and became institutions... others moved on down the road.

 

[preferprivacy]

Last time I checked, the stations cited as better because they do have (or did have) local talk shows ; Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and West Palm; are all doing FAR WORSE than WOKV in the ratings.

I also recall when WOKV had local talk, the ratings where nowhere near what they have now.

Do the names Mike Miller, Mike Dorwart, Marc Little, or Gregg Knapp, ring any bells?

Why do you suppose Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity do very well on WOKV while
Schnitt struggles on WFLA (and WIOD for that matter).

I seem to recall learning early on that giving listeners what they want will increase ratings.

 

[smedge2006]

Last time I checked, the stations cited as better because they do have (or did have) local talk shows ; Orlando, Tampa, Miami, and West Palm; are all doing FAR WORSE than WOKV in the ratings.

I also recall when WOKV had local talk, the ratings where nowhere near what they have now.

Do the names Mike Miller, Mike Dorwart, Marc Little, or Gregg Knapp, ring any bells?

Why do you suppose Neal Boortz and Sean Hannity do very well on WOKV while
Schnitt struggles on WFLA (and WIOD for that matter).

I seem to recall learning early on that giving listeners what they want will increase ratings.

WOKV never had a local lineup in the sense that WFLA, WIOD, or even WKIS in Orlando had in their heyday. They had one or two local shows AT MOST -- usually one or less. Their original 1982 lineup was entirely syndicated except for morning drive. Standard for far too many stations today, they were doing it back in 1982! Their current ratings are mostly Jaguars-driven (compare fall to spring if you believe otherwise), and remember, they have 50,000 watts daytime on AM plus an FM simulcast. The Jags and moving to 690 built OKV, not dumping local talk. But since OKV introduced talk to Jacksonville, it also helped set low expectations for the listeners. Canned syndication was all they knew, unless they had moved in from another market. Jacksonville talk listeners have been conditioned to sub-mediocrity like Pavlov's dog. They have been taught to not like, or at least not to desire, localism. Of course, if the only localism they know is self-indulgent brokered shows, who can blame them?

OKV is in a smaller market than Miami or Tampa or Orlando, thus shares are larger because the pie has fewer slices. It has also NEVER EVER EVER had any sort of meaningful competition. WIOD-WFTL, WDBO-WFLF or WFLA-WWBA -- none of these talk battles are as lopsided as OKV versus -- nothing. The nearest thing OKV ever had to a competitor was WPDQ when it was on 690 in the early 90's. That station was, however, fatally flawed by a willingness to broker. Soon WOKV was able to buy the signal and put the closest thing it had to a competitor out of business. There was also a station on 1320 (WJGR) that was owned by Jacor, but Jacor never tried to build it into a competitor. For example, Jacor would not move Limbaugh there. 1320's morning drive was every bit as haphazard as 1460's is right now. Mostly for the last 15 years, the AM band in Jax has been 690, 930 and the other signals brokering paid religion. There was also an FM talker in Jacksonville in the mid-90-'s, poorly thought out and all syndicated. OKV has shadow-boxed its way to success.

 

[kaufcom]

Now we can't accuse Salem of carrying 0 lib talk. Yes, this is a Salem station. Chesapeake-Portsmouth Broadcasting is owned by Nancy Epperson, who is the wife of Stuar Epperson founder and CEO of Salem.

 

[ajhenderson]

Now we can't accuse Salem of carrying 0 lib talk. Yes, this is a Salem station. Chesapeake-Portsmouth Broadcasting is owned by Nancy Epperson, who is the wife of Stuar Epperson founder and CEO of Salem.

A little off topic, but the more I think about it, the more I like Salem's model. I don't particularly care for any of their formats as a listener, and its unfortunate the way they run some of their stations, but as CC (and a couple of the others) is seeing, you can't be everything to everyone everywhere. I think as we go forward, you may well see more companies focusing on certain areas like Salem. Southwest Airlines has/had a long track record of beating the airline market by only flying 737s, streamlining pilots, mechanics, etc. It used to be (in the stone ages) companies would own 1 or 2 stations in a market or maybe 1 or 2 stations in several markets. You could focus better with similar or several different formats, or with stations in the same region. Now, the biggest companies run any format imaginable in every market. Salem may not be that exciting, but their focus on three basic formats seems to be one reason they can operate in such a lean fashion.

 

[preferprivacy]

Sorry, but Winter, Spring, and Summer ratings for WOKV-AM and WOKV-FM were
better than FALL 2008.

All the ratings you now see online (from this site and others) no longer include WOKV-FM
ratings - as WOKV is now using Total Line Reporting and all historic data for FM in no longer available - and effective with the most recent trend, all listening is credited to the AM.

BUT having printed out the data when it was available, I see
their 12+ ratings were only down two tenths (0.2) of a SHARE in Winter and only one tenth (0.1) in Spring than there were in Fall 2006.

Hardly Jaguars driving ratings.

It's even more pronounced A25-54, with Spring being substantially higher than Fall 2006.

 

[Don62]

the market for Jacksonville talk has always been lame and mostly brokered, partly because WOKV was born a syndicated station (in 1982) and never really stepped up to the plate with local talk.

That explains the dull as drywall sound of the station when I heard it (WKOV) a couple of weeks ago whilst I was in town.

Weekends? Mostly repeats of the boring weekday shows. Kind of like WFLA :'(

I was wondering why there weren't any other real talk stations in that market. The morning show was all-news, no call-ins, as opposed to WWBA, which takes calls in the a.m. drive show. So the station has zero local talk. Yuck.

Might as well just be a translator station for WSB or WABC. No better than some repeater in remote Oklahoma or Utah.

Seems like one of the Christian stations, 1530??, is 50kw (days). Wouldn't that have made a good NT?

 

[jaymarvin]

KCJB doesn't most Salem stations suck in the numbers? I jusr saw the 25-54 breakouts for LA and NYC and the Salem stations, much like Air America, have no numbers. If anything I think the wave of the future is talk stations with hosts who are a little right of center and a little left of center. Not all the way right or all the way left.

 

[raccoonradio]

In Boston Salem conservatalker WTTT doesn't show up at all in the ratings (12 PLUS) but either they're
making money on their other, religious signals, or maybe WTTT shows a very slight profit (or break even)
from running national (and some local) ads. Clr Chnl's WKOX and WXKS used to show up, at least,
with prog talk but plug was pulled over a year ago in favor of "Rumba" (getting similar numbers). Not sure
how they're doing with ad money.

Yet in Boston, an area seen as left-leaning, a full time conservatalker that doesn't get ratings is still on
the air while the 2 prog talk stations are not. Salem is putting about as much effort into WTTT as
Clr Chnl did with WKOX/WXKS (promotion-wise; NO local hosts weekdays) but they're still committed
to it. The slogan "Boston's Conservative Talk" is similar to the prog talk slogan ("Boston's Progressive
Talk"). Note that WTTT isn't the only station in town with conservative or middle-of-road talkers:
WRKO, WBZ, and WTKK do, also (and get good ratings).

http://www.talk1150.com
http://www.bostonprogressivetalk.net (group trying to bring it back)

 

[ajhenderson]

KCJB doesn't most Salem stations suck in the numbers? I jusr saw the 25-54 breakouts for LA and NYC and the Salem stations, much like Air America, have no numbers. If anything I think the wave of the future is talk stations with hosts who are a little right of center and a little left of center. Not all the way right or all the way left.

You're basically correct, Jay, although Salem does not run its NT format in NYC. KRLA/LA (as of late), KKNT/Phx, KNUS/Denver, and a couple others have done better than the Salem average.

The difference is the Salem owns it own talk stations and the network it buys the stations to run. They can string together bad stations in most of the top markets and make money in volume. Of course, they broker the entire weekend (or as much as they can in each market) and prices that are on the high end, and I suppose if you have enough AEs making decent salaries (Salem takes longer to fire AEs than most companies, I'm told), you can get enough people in each market to buy spots at low rates.

My point was not that Salem will be an influential programming presence, but that their business model of buying stations to program with, more or less, exclusively their own content (where they also make money), that runs on the cheap, and that they can streamline staff with, is the future. When you think about the dozens of formats CC employs, they HAVE to have as many stations as they do. Imagine if you could have one national PD for 50 talk stations because they all ran the exact same lineup. Just hookup a satellite feed and some phone lines for sales and you've got your studio. I suspect we'll see more non-mainstream networks buying marginal or bad AMs in different markets as AM slides further into disarray. An example of how this is already happening is Business Talk Radio and Lifestyle Talk Radio networks.