-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
Scott Jameson becomes 3rd PD for Dave FM
- Thread starter rho01
- Start date
OutOfTheBiz said:
They need both, music adjustments AND a morning show. You're right that the music is all over the place and hopefully they will fix it. But a morning show is NOT simply an expense unless it does poorly. You need a morning show to get endorsement money, higher-value appearances, content into which clients can be sold, high profile personalities to shake clients' hands, etc. You can't do that on a more-music approach. And you're statement that "No morning show in the world will draw people or hold people to a station if the potential P-1's don't like the music" is just plain factually wrong. Q and Rock 100 (and half the stations Howard Stern was on during his terrestrial radio days ONLY prospered because of a strong morning show. Most of them tank/tanked after morning drive. And the reason those numbers dip so dramatically after 10AM is because of precisely what you're incorrect about....their listeners love those shows but don't care for the music. Someone else once said on this board a long time ago - and it's 100% true - that you can't find one example in FM rock radio of a morning show pulling in long term decent numbers with a more music approach.
OutOfTheBiz said:
Exactly... they are going to weather the storm and see what happens. Even stations with good ratings can't sell anything right now. Why hire a show?
Right now they have Orff at a steal... Sully's not making anything. They only talent making budget hurting money is Mara.
To wooder-I disagree and stand by my earlier comment about Shaffer. I think the demographic for Dave has changed over time yet the station hasn’t moved along with it. Not all conservatives listen only to talk radio. Many in the 30-45 age groups actually like music as well as intelligent thoughts. That combination is not in Atlanta radio anywhere.
I have an idea,flip Dave to country and hire Rhubarb Jones to do the morning show,his contract with citadel is up on April 1,witch is just a month and a half away.
wooder said:
If you're going to quote me, at least do it in context, please. I said that Dave being a AAA station - must build it's P1s by attracting them to the music - as any AAA must do. It's a format that must attract passionate music fans, not fans of talk or humor-driven shows. And that a morning show alone will NOT make a AAA station successful.
Although - in your reply - you made my own argument. Stern and others that drew listeners to a morning show who all jumped ship after 10AM did NOT make successful STATIONS. They did not make P1's of their morning show cume, which was my point all along.
Dave must build P1's to the music FIRST. Then attempt to expand with a morning show. The River has shown a textbook case of how it should have been done. Where is THEIR high-profile morning show that you claim is needed for revenue streams and all the "extras?"
Jameson needs to get with Margo and focus the music not only with the gold, but get those gold titles to in effect "preview" the types of new music they will be going with down the road. It seems a lot of the currents don't "match" up with the gold that we're already familiar with, and that creates some messy train wrecks. Margot gets it and has the gut to do it right, but apparently during the Wheeler of Misfortune days, she had to deal with his ineptitude regarding titles and how the music has to be properly massaged.
Regarding imaging, they just need to find something and stick with it but not be so airy, glossy and trippy. Please some normal "radio" sounding imaging without the bells and whistles, but not the typical Triple A attitude. This market doesn't "get" AAA, so don't force feed that attitude, just do the music right and leave the overly imaged stuff out.
With the talent he needs to prevent himself from becoming the third Ronald McDonald in that office and realize that he needs to streamline the jocks. Meaning that at this point in time every daypart has very, very different personality style and it's frankly a pretty jarring change when the shifts change. He needs to get everyone running on the same speed to become a focused and coherent station in the future. That being said it may be time to tell Mara McCheese that she's not running the joint anymore.
Holla
Regarding imaging, they just need to find something and stick with it but not be so airy, glossy and trippy. Please some normal "radio" sounding imaging without the bells and whistles, but not the typical Triple A attitude. This market doesn't "get" AAA, so don't force feed that attitude, just do the music right and leave the overly imaged stuff out.
With the talent he needs to prevent himself from becoming the third Ronald McDonald in that office and realize that he needs to streamline the jocks. Meaning that at this point in time every daypart has very, very different personality style and it's frankly a pretty jarring change when the shifts change. He needs to get everyone running on the same speed to become a focused and coherent station in the future. That being said it may be time to tell Mara McCheese that she's not running the joint anymore.
Holla
Radio's not brain surgery, it's just that radio managers attack it with lots of knives and anesthesia.
Decide (once and for all), what you're going to be and who you want to talk to. Give your overall station a consistent image and a personality. Get jocks in all dayparts that truly represent who your audience is. Try to make those jocks smart, witty and most important of all, likeable. Leave them alone and let the listeners and the ratings judge them. Promote yourself in town as aggressively as the Bert Show. Done.
The hardest part is getting jocks who are likeable. That's a very organic thing between the jock and the listeners. Unfortunately most radio managers have an extremely hard time even knowing what a likeable jock is because socially...well, managers usually aren't the biggest people-persons in the room.
Decide (once and for all), what you're going to be and who you want to talk to. Give your overall station a consistent image and a personality. Get jocks in all dayparts that truly represent who your audience is. Try to make those jocks smart, witty and most important of all, likeable. Leave them alone and let the listeners and the ratings judge them. Promote yourself in town as aggressively as the Bert Show. Done.
The hardest part is getting jocks who are likeable. That's a very organic thing between the jock and the listeners. Unfortunately most radio managers have an extremely hard time even knowing what a likeable jock is because socially...well, managers usually aren't the biggest people-persons in the room.
crguy said:
Astonishing. This is the reason radio fails... substituting common sense with a fat load of seminar generated, over-researched fertilizer and jargon like P1 that has "fine tuned" our business right into the graveyard. The standard answer of program geniuses who couldn't actually DO a listenable show if their lives were hanging in the balance: focus even more narrowly on your already shrinking audience, squelch creativity, scare up a bunch of clip board crap that worked once somewhere else and beat it to death. Take one of the only genuine personalities in town (Mara) and puree her into a card reader... make everyone on the air sound the same. Coherent? A one note dirge in my opinion.
Why gut Mara Davis to make 92.9 monolithic? Why not put something on both sides of her show that doesn't induce a coma? I don't listen to Mara for the music; I listen for MARA! If Jameson is more concerned about budget than content, he'll lose. If Jameson can't come up with anything better than warmed over Indianapolis, he and Wheeler will be smoking a cigar together down at the mission this time next year.
Come to think of it, the last radio people who came to Atlanta from Indianapolis were The Morning Mess. Not that that means anything.
Dave needs some personality. Orff is like a geeky fanboy he might do a decent job but I do not foresee a day where Orff rules the marketplace. Sully and Renee. Listening to them makes me think that Tylenol PM would wake me up? Let Mara breathe. She pulls in the numbers let her do her own thing. Find some people that appeal in the other dayparts as well they do not need to be carbon copies of each other.
Looking at Dave's playlist it is a who's who and who isn't of every solo male artist. Primarily it bores me and I am a 40 year old male who whould fit nicely into their demos.
Looking at Dave's playlist it is a who's who and who isn't of every solo male artist. Primarily it bores me and I am a 40 year old male who whould fit nicely into their demos.
You've probably seen the tv commercials where the shipping company is running the school, and the homeroom's dispatcher tracks the missing "Callahan" and reroutes him to detention. Imagine the radio industry was in charge of World War II. "Talent" comes up with D-Day and Midway. Management tries to win with the Maginot Line.
Most program directors consider creativity "risky". They can't find it in their focus group summaries, can't control it and therefore fear it. Worst of all, they can't take credit for it. What seems to be working at Dave and what isn't? Start with what's working, and then come up with entertainment to get that audience back when something else is on.
Most program directors consider creativity "risky". They can't find it in their focus group summaries, can't control it and therefore fear it. Worst of all, they can't take credit for it. What seems to be working at Dave and what isn't? Start with what's working, and then come up with entertainment to get that audience back when something else is on.
I listen to Mara too, but not because she's Mara, but for the music she plays...well most of it anway.
But Dr. Kimball I agree with you wholeheartedly about NOT working towards getting everyone to sound the same. I'm suggesting that other dayparts be allowed and prodded to open up and create features and more during their particular dayparts and create there own vibe during their particular daypart.
Anyone can hear that dave becomes something very different in mids than what we hear in mornings, afternoons and nights. And it's pretty apparent that past PD's have been scurred to both pull Mara back A LITTLE, but at the same time allow other dayparts to become more foreground. At this point it's apparent this has hurt the station when it only has what you call, "one genuine personality" who frankly sometimes gets in the way of the music on a music station.
Radio Free Lunch is terrific, but where are the other listener generated features on the station? Four years into this, and still no PD could get any of that talent to come up with anything? Lame.
A good PD needs to allow all dayparts the opportunity to fail or flourish, but at the same time keep the reins in on anyone going rogue. Ok maybe a little rogue is good, but not to the degree we've seen.
RhubarbFan said:
OH GEEZ... Jones in the morning on DAVE fm.. LOL... Sidesplitting Laughter...uhhhhhh NO !
- Status