That is an excellent question. They really are presenting music without comment. The non-drivetime airstaff does occasional artist front announces, but everything else is station promotion and sponsor tie-ins. They really don't even front sell.
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Seattle's "Rock" Station
- Thread starter Delete My Account
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I have to hand it to KISW, they know what they are doing. While the music mixture is not always my taste, I find myself turning in pretty frequently. Why? The shows they feature are just too interesting to miss. I’d say the station really is more of an “adult” talk radio station than anything else, but it sure is fun to listen to. The format on it’s own is nothing that another company would want to try because they don’t have the hosts to back it up. Hubbard tried for a while on 98.9, but their run at a rock format proved that a music-intensive active rock format was not going to fly. For modern rock to work, I think you’ve got to take a CFOX approach and combine alternative and “regular” rock.
I wonder if KISW should go all Hot Talk or Male-oriented Talk in middays and evenings too? It seems to work in Florida on 102.5 WHPT Tampa and 104.1 WTKS-FM Orlando. If the station plays little or no music in AM and PM Drive, why play music in middays and evenings?
I do notice that KISW's ratings aren't as strong as they once were. It was only a couple of years ago that the station was #1 or 2 or 3. Now I see it's #8. Although I assume in the key male demographics, it's likely still at or near the top. It may be the reason why Sports Radio KJR-FM underperforms since its launch on FM. If guys want to hear talk, they tune in KISW, even if they're sports fans.
I do notice that KISW's ratings aren't as strong as they once were. It was only a couple of years ago that the station was #1 or 2 or 3. Now I see it's #8. Although I assume in the key male demographics, it's likely still at or near the top. It may be the reason why Sports Radio KJR-FM underperforms since its launch on FM. If guys want to hear talk, they tune in KISW, even if they're sports fans.
That would require expensive talent during times there is less chance of revenue, let alone support that expensive talent.
Drive times are prime times. Mid-days and certainly evenings, not so much.
You aren't seeing their target demo ratings.
We've discussed here many times, that sports formats don't rely on ratings to be considered successful. Certainly not 6+
That's pretty much the way radio is done these days. The music elements are just "there." No comment before or after, even if it's a new song in its first day on the playlist. If listeners are curious about what they're hearing, though, they can just feed a line or two of the lyrics into Google or speak them into a device and up will pop everything they'd ever want to know about song and artist.
I was listening to Country Line Radio, a UK-based country music station, online last night, and heard the DJ talking up the music coming up after the next commercial break. He gave the usual three artists, much as American stations tease what's next, but actually added personal opinion into it by calling one of the songs he'd be playing in a few minutes "the superb new song by Mitchell Tenpenny." When's the last time you heard a jock say something like that on American radio?
East Coast is different than the West, or Midwest.
I tuned into KISW for a minute or so during an FM bandscan recently. Heard the same Smashing Pumpkins track I probably heard the last time I tuned into them over a month ago. If I'd have heard any of the three songs mentioned originally in this thread, I would have thought "wow, cool -- it's not something I've already heard a thousand times."
I like their HD2 metal channel, though. It's well programmed.
As for veering into alt territory, Seattle was a big alt-rock music town in the 1990's. The alternative thing wasn't lost on KISW, back then, or later on. There were a few harder edged alt-rock cuts (aside from Nirvana, PJ, Soundgarden) played on KISW in the early 90's.
I like their HD2 metal channel, though. It's well programmed.
As for veering into alt territory, Seattle was a big alt-rock music town in the 1990's. The alternative thing wasn't lost on KISW, back then, or later on. There were a few harder edged alt-rock cuts (aside from Nirvana, PJ, Soundgarden) played on KISW in the early 90's.
Do you really want to program a station using songs whose biggest fans were in their 20s some 30 years ago?
But they are wedded to "mood" and that is what drives listening, whether to individual on-demand song picks or a playlist or a radio station or programmed stream.
That's a great point. Millennials and Gen-Z have much more varied tastes in music than the days when the only choices were the radio stations in their listening orbit with equally limited formats. Radio nerds who grew up on the stations in their orbit, think that's the way it is today. Music listeners have many more choices with equally much more variety.
I thought we established a few years ago that middays was now the most listened to time period in radio! I remember this surprising me at the time. I think it came from Arbitron so it's been awhile.
Yep mood is good. I think a lot of radio folks missed Old Town Road a few years ago. They focused too much on the artist and the genre, and not enough on the mood.
Right now country stations are playing a song by an artist known as Jelly Roll. He's not a country artist, although he has a country record deal and he was born in Nashville. But he's also getting airplay in alternative.
I agree, which is once again why genre of music doesn't matter. If you know your audience, you hopefully know what they like.
That applies to PPM measurements only
And a damn good country song it is. I've also seen video of a similar artist, stylistically and visually, trying his hand at country and coming across as very convincing in doing so. He goes by the name of Post Malone; you may have heard of him. The difference between him and Jelly Roll is that Jelly wrote his country song based on his own life story, the way good country songs ought to be written, while Post was just playing with a cover version to see if he could sing country. I have a feeling he'll meet a lot of resistance from radio and fans if he ever records a country album.
Radio listening has changed a lot since those days. For one thing: A lot more competition for ears.
The greater use of radio in middays was noted even in the first PPM tests in 2001-2002 in Philadelphia. When the service launched in Houston in 2008 and expended to 48 total markets by 2010, we saw middays, then afternoons and then mornings as highest usage. That has not changed since then.
In the diary, the same Morning, then midday and then afternoon levels are still noted.
The PPM reduces the average time each person listened by about 30% to 35% depending on the market (the variable is commute time).
During the first 24 months of the pandemic, in-car dropped and slowly recovered, making at home listening in middays even higher proportionally.
Thanks for clarifying David, but you have to admit, that was 20 years ago. How many stations, including in Philadelphia, that has made a big talent investment in mid-days since 2001? How much was carryover from the morning?
And to that point, we discussed earlier that Eastern listening habits are different than West, Middle, or South.
Covid was an unusual situation. In car has seen increases during drivetimes again and mid days has leveled or gone back to pre-pandemic habits.
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