Garrett said:
Eli,
You've made some very good points, but I respectfully disagree with you about this. Normally, I'd say you are correct about heritage. However, there was a purpose for which 105.7 took on the WROR call letters. The WROR call letters were only gone for 5 years, since the orignial call letters disappered in 1991, and came back in 1996. This is not a long time. Second, it is logical to think that the folks at 105.7 had done research that showed people missed the calls, or they would not have switched to them. When 105.7 came on as WROR, they adopted the slogan "The songs you remember, from the station you remember." So, for them, heritage did matter, and it I would bet that the current WROR considers itself linked to the original.
Maybe for a short time in the mid-90's, but they only got a very limited amount of mileage out of the call letter novelty. The ratings didn't show that they were holding listeners, and they weren't sucessfully competing with WODS, which by then had established itself as the current, consistent leader in the format for the previous nine years.
What ultimately mattered was whether people liked what they were currently playing and how they were presenting it, not so much what call letters they were using. That's why they kept tweaking their format various different ways.
This incarnation of WROR started at 105.7 as 60's/70's/80's oldies (without saying the word "oldies") and the WROR jingle package, and ratings remained poor against WODS after a couple of years. Then they tried dropping the poppier oldies and the soul hits and going "Classic Rock lite" to compete with WZLX. They even briefly tried adding deep "FM AOR" era album cuts in late 2001, a disasterous ratings experiment for them.
Then they went back to basic Classic Hits in 2002 and eventually bested WZLX, and then set their sights on trying to get a piece of the large WODS pie by adding some more pop, R&B and even a few disco hits to the rotation while keeping distinct with a Classic Hits rather than Oldies delivery (no jingles), which is where they're at currently.
Garrett said:
Third, if WROR didn't care about beating WODS, then they wouldn't run promos comparing themselves to WODS, which has jingles (WROR does not).
WROR certainly does care about competing with WODS, but I'm sure they know they can't beat them, not at this time anyway. Maybe in another five or ten years the demo who likes jingle-based oldies will become considered "too old", but not yet. The best WROR can hope for currently is the biggest slice of the pie they can get against WODS. They're trying to attract people who like their non-jingle approach to the format, with less mid-60's pop oldies than WODS, and still a few of the most popular 70's FM album rock tracks mixed in that WODS doesn't play.
Garrett said:
And by the way, I have an aircheck from 1996, where WROR was using a jingle package based on some of the heritage jingles used by the original. My point is, if heritage no longer mattered to 105.7, they would no longer be using the WROR call letters, and I see them keeping their format in tact, and indeed a competitor to WODS, and perhaps Mike FM. To say anything else is to split hairs, in my opinion. And it IS just an opinion. But I respect yours...
If the heritage jingles had translated into ratings, they would've kept using them, but the jingles and call letters just didn't interest enough people. They couldn't sucessfully compete with WODS as a jingle based oldies station, regardless of their call letters. They had to develop their own sound and presentation to create their niche, which they finally did over the past five years, and then they began getting decent ratings (beating WZLX, not too far behind WODS). This had very little to do with their call letters, but there also has been no need to drop or change them.
The original question was whether WROR should change to some completely different format. I don't think they would get the ratings and billing they're getting now with any other available format, even as second fiddle to WODS for oldies/classic hits.
