Q102

[lovejamminoldies]

Ok. Bonneville now owns Q102. All I know is that Bonneville is like a "mormon" company as my friend said. What do you think will happen with Q?

A. Going straight Mainstream CHR
B. Other CHR format
C. Staying the same
D. Other format

From what I can hear, they have gone more CHR BUT Bonneville you said, does not tend to CHR.

What do ya think?

 

[NoWayNoCC]

I can't imagine them being anything harsher than AC (something along the lines of Warm 98) with Bonneville.

But I guess the FCC isn't going to step in to stop Bonneville from killing off a legendary 35-year heritage station.

 

[content]

Bonneville operates WTMX in Chicago which is also Hot AC. In general Hot AC, is one of the more family friendly formats, so I would not anticipate any major concerns over Q.

 

[marko83]

Bonneville also owned CHRs in San Fran and DC. They changed formats due to low ratings, not because they were evil. I think you guys are overacting. I mean, if they bought a hard rock station with satan in the morning..then yeah they would make big changes. But that's not a problem in Cincy.

 

[NoWayNoCC]

Bonneville also owned CHRs in San Fran and DC. They changed formats due to low ratings,

CHR's usually get good ratings. So you know they were doing something wrong.

 

[Kent]

CHR's usually get good ratings. So you know they were doing something wrong.

Mainstream CHR hasn't worked in San Fran for the last 15 years regardless of who tried it. Bonneville shouldn't be faulted for not making it work, unless you fault them for doing CHR when it just plain didn't make sense. Washington DC should probably count against them a little more because they don't embrace rhythmic artists very well, not even when rhythmic was hot (and, for the most part, it still is). However, what really damaged them was that Clear Channel signed on a CHR with a better stick. 104.1/103.9 has had problems around the area for a long time and has never performed well with competition. It did well as oldies until WBIG signed on and ran it into the ground. Same situation, different format and owner.

As for Q-102, I wouldn't look for it to change much, if at all. It's up in the latest book and is billing reasonably well. Q-102 and WUBE should be safe in format if nothing else. I'd be a little more concerned if I were The Sound and, especially, The Wolf.

 

[marko83]

The Sound and The Wolf are not going to be touched for a while at least..give it up people.

 

[lovejamminoldies]

I disagree. The Sound and The Wolf may be newer stations but they are the weakest of the pack. I don't mean by signal I mean by programming. Q's been around for forever and they are starting to do fairly well. B is the "family fun" country station. That's going nowhere. The Sound & Wolf make sense. First, why have two country stations that I'm sure share a similiar playlist. Second, Bonneville doesn't really appreciate Alternative. They'll flip it. Probably Movin' on 94.9 or 97.3.

 

[NoWayNoCC]

Mainstream CHR hasn't worked in San Fran for the last 15 years regardless of who tried it.

That's because nobody except Bonneville tried it.

 

[Kent]

I disagree. The Sound and The Wolf may be newer stations but they are the weakest of the pack. I don't mean by signal I mean by programming. Q's been around for forever and they are starting to do fairly well. B is the "family fun" country station. That's going nowhere. The Sound & Wolf make sense. First, why have two country stations that I'm sure share a similiar playlist. Second, Bonneville doesn't really appreciate Alternative. They'll flip it. Probably Movin' on 94.9 or 97.3.

While I don't think Bonneville will give up the exclusivity it has in the country arena, I don't see them keeping Entercom's "Wolf" branding on 97.3. Why keep such a "unique" format (in Entercom's words) when you don't have access to the people who created it? In other words, my sometimes-working crystal ball sees 97.3 staying country but with a new image and name. If Bonneville were to abandon its wall of country, someone else would pick it up in a hurry.

As for The Sound, I would agree that it's probably not going to anywhere in the short-term. However, I'm also not convinced that Bonneville will give it as much time as Entercom would have had they kept it. Hopefully, they get it right quickly. They have a good PD coming in. So, that's a start.

When it comes to Movin', I don't see it happening in Cincinnati, or much of anywhere else. The format is a dog, plain and simple. There's a reason a megaphone on a tower in Syracuse is the only station to pick the format up since it was rolled out nationally. Outside of Seattle, Movin' has been a total disaster (as have its knockoffs). It's funny, but, even in 2001, some people on the old board were talking about how Emmis should take KZLA in Los Angeles to a format that resembles today's Movin'. I told them it would never work, and they blasted me repeatedly for even fathoming the notion such a format wouldn't work in a heavily-Hispanic market like LA. I don't hear much from them now!

 

[Kent]

That's because nobody except Bonneville tried it.

WRONG! Emmis tried it in the late 80's/early 90's with X-100. It was a complete and total failure, and it abandoned the format in 1991 after it was sold. I seem to remember it being tried on a class A stick as well and failing. Also, remember that someone else would have picked the format up if it had any potential. There are too many floundering sticks there not to do so!

Certainly, Bonneville isn't the most adventurous when it comes to doing CHR, but they have had some success with it in the past. Pure CHR fans don't like the way the program the format, and I don't know that I blame them. I just don't expect them to do much with Q-102 because (a) hot AC is more in line with what they do and (b), more importantly, Q-102 is moving up and starting to do very well. You don't tinker with something that's working.

 

[NoWayNoCC]

WRONG! Emmis tried it in the late 80's/early 90's with X-100.

Um, that was more than 15 years ago. Besides, I have some old M Street directories that show X-100 doing quite well, considering the number of stations in that market.

X-100 was killed off before its time.

You don't tinker with something that's working.

Yet radio people always do. I remember how one company destroyed both CHR's in Lexington in 1992.

 

[sfradio]

WRONG! Emmis tried it in the late 80's/early 90's with X-100.

Um, that was more than 15 years ago. Besides, I have some old M Street directories that show X-100 doing quite well, considering the number of stations in that market.

X-100 was killed off before its time.

You don't tinker with something that's working.

Yet radio people always do. I remember how one company destroyed both CHR's in Lexington in 1992.

yeah z95.7 didint do all that bad, they started to decline when they whent more to modern ac in its last days, thanks to a bad radio company

 

[WyllyWylly]

Why have two country stations that I'm sure share a similiar playlist.

Because there's enough market share (and concordantly) advertising revenue to support two country stations in town. The music may be somewhat shared, but that happens in the case of Cumulus' Warm 98/WGRR combo, as well as WEBN/Fox etc. Yes, those examples are of different formats, but trust me - the music overlaps quite a bit.

The Wolf exists to capture a younger, more female skewing demographic. The programming is mostly Ken and Kitty, but there is at least someone on all day long (whether tracked or not). When you factor in the all-important advertising revenue, Bonneville would be making a bad business decision by getting rid of or changing the Wolf. You a) open yourself up to competition and b) lose the attractive advertising/agency package of having ALL of a market's country listeners.

That doesn't mean that Bonneville *won't* make some stupid business decisions, those happen every day. But I don't think they're going to come in and make sea changes in their new properties either (any of them), because they don't know them well enough yet.

 

[uppendowndadial]

I'm thinking that the folks on Reading Road are jumping up and down. Bonneville is probably the only well-run company left in the industry..ok, maybe Emmis too. Whether or not they will change anything remains to be seen, but given the history of WYGY of late, it wouldn't surprise me.

 

[titoisradio]

Why have two country stations that I'm sure share a similiar playlist.

Because there's enough market share (and concordantly) advertising revenue to support two country stations in town. The music may be somewhat shared, but that happens in the case of Cumulus' Warm 98/WGRR combo, as well as WEBN/Fox etc. Yes, those examples are of different formats, but trust me - the music overlaps quite a bit.

The Wolf exists to capture a younger, more female skewing demographic. The programming is mostly Ken and Kitty, but there is at least someone on all day long (whether tracked or not). When you factor in the all-important advertising revenue, Bonneville would be making a bad business decision by getting rid of or changing the Wolf. You a) open yourself up to competition and b) lose the attractive advertising/agency package of having ALL of a market's country listeners.

That doesn't mean that Bonneville *won't* make some stupid business decisions, those happen every day. But I don't think they're going to come in and make sea changes in their new properties either (any of them), because they don't know them well enough yet.

'

I think they could safely drop one of the country's and no one else would pick it up, as what station would flip. At Clear Channel, the Fox, WEBN, Kiss, & Mix are all going to remain in their current formats, the WIZ won't flip country, and Cumulus isn't going to flip any of their stations either. I see the Wolf going away.

 

[lovejamminoldies]

Well this sure is interesting. Everybody sure does have a "interesting" comment, LOL. I listened to Q last night and they sounded pretty damn good. Even though some guy filled in for Holly, I was impressed with the music. It was more of a CHR feel and since they were playing the regular format with it, I thought this was the new format. I then looked at what was played from midnight on and it really did not impress me. But yes, it's true, why tinker with something that's working? I don't know how in the world Q beat KISS with the boring "soccer mom" format they have but they did it. I guess. :-\

 

[Kent]

Um, that was more than 15 years ago. Besides, I have some old M Street directories that show X-100 doing quite well, considering the number of stations in that market.

Fine, it was 16 or 17 years ago. 15 years ago was a ballpark time frame anyway. No one says that expecting the time frame to be exactly from January 19, 1992 to January 19, 2007. X-100 did so well it was killed as soon as Emmis gave Peter Bedford the keys. My point remains that CHR never did much since the end of the KYUU days. As I said before, with so many stations below a 2 share (including every CBS owned FM), someone would be doing it if it were viable.

Yet radio people always do. I remember how one company destroyed both CHR's in Lexington in 1992.

I was a frustrated CHR fan in the early 90's myself. I remember highly rated CHR's bailing on the format left and right. My own CHR at the time went from sounding like a high energy major market top-40 station to wimping out to hot AC. It also went right down the toilet in the ratings as people, including myself, turned them off and started listening to AOR and classic rock. I even replaced the button for that station with, GASP!, the oldies station. The problem is that there's a difference between success in ratings and success in business. CHR didn't make much money in the early 90's. It was tough to sell. It got mostly its default audience (kids) while being unable to get the young adults to tune back in due to the quality of music product. Advertisers didn't like that. I remember working at a CHR a few years ago when the PD ordered me to put more callers on the air but to make sure they weren't kids. It was a nearly impossible task because adults, by and large, weren't calling. Love or hate the Telecomm Act (and I know your position on it), it did help bring CHR back. There were several large markets, Cincinnati being one of them, that didn't have a true CHR until someone assembled a large cluster and felt they could sell it in combination with their AC or rock station.

 

[lovejamminoldies]

Cincinnati being one of them, that didn't have a true CHR until someone assembled a large cluster and felt they could sell it in combination with their AC or rock station.

And Cincinnati STILL does not have a true CHR. Q is more adult-leaning almost Hot AC and KISS is more Rhythmic. They need one, that's for sure.

 

[radiorob2.0]

So I'm taking a wild guess Bonneville wouldn't allow Q102 to perform a new millennium version of "The Chris Collinsworth Is Hard Up Party", give away T-shirts to folks who have underwear on their heads, or allow the program director to proclaim during an on-air ratings celebration "We're the only station in town that's worth a s***!"