Question: Sunny's Audience & Who's Listening to HD

[BlueHen]

In the Sunny 104.5 thread a few days ago here, rtetro mentioned how they’re running a standards format on their HD-2 channel.

Just wondering… What’s the rationale for putting music which is supposedly targeted to the older demographic on where they’d be least likely to hear it? Would it make more sense to air it on regular FM where this audience can listen to it simply with the turn of the radio knob as they’ve always been accustomed to… and leave the more advanced media outlets for, say, an alternative music format whose audience is perceived as more technologically savvy?

 

[DStroyerNEPA]

> Just wondering:  What's the rationale for putting music which
> is supposedly targeted to the older demographic on where
> they d be least likely to hear it?

I'm just guessing here...

Since almost nobody has HD radios yet, they need to keep the (Sunny) format that's been making - and should continue to make - the most money on the most accessible outlet, which at this time is still regular FM radio.

There's nothing saying that they can't eventually move Sunny to HD-2 and the standards format to HD-1/analog once enough people buy HD radios.

And, on a sidenote: Every station that's doing the HD thing should be giving out the hdradio.com web address at least 3 or 4 times an hour. I'm not in the area... Are they doing it?<P ID="signature">______________
D. Stroyer
Celebrating 10 years of idle radio message board speculation.. Minus those 2.5 years when I actually worked in radio fulltime.</P>

 

[Slinky]

> And, on a sidenote: Every station that's doing the HD thing
> should be giving out the hdradio.com web address at least 3
> or 4 times an hour. I'm not in the area... Are they doing
> it?

Wasn't keeping track of the interval, but the Clear Channel stations have been running spots for hdradio.com every so often.

 

[rtetro]

> Would it make more sense
> to air it on regular FM where this audience can listen to it
> simply with the turn of the radio knob as they’ve always
> been accustomed to… and leave the more advanced media
> outlets for, say, an alternative music format whose audience
> is perceived as more technologically savvy?

Listening around to HD-2 Channels, I'm hearing Hurban on WIOQ, more RnB on WDAS-FM, Traditional Jazz on WJJZ, a different blend of country on WXTU, more rap on WUSL, as well as the Standards on WSNI. Separate classical programming is running on WRTI (I wonder if they're doing jazz after 6PM as on their main channel), and WHYY is - well - who knows what they're doing? Sometimes they run the same programming as the main channel, sometimes not. It seems like the majority of their programming is from BBC World Service.

It will be interesting to see how things eventually settle in. I do hope that there will be at least one outlet for fulltime classical when all is said and done.

Rene'

Rene' Tetro,
Chief Engineer
WNTP/WFIL
Philadalphia, PA