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Star 94 takes the weekend off while B98.5 alphabetizes

jal41

jal41

Star 94 has temporarily stopped playing top 40 music through the weekend. They are playing all-80's music.

I think this is an attempt to get back at B98.5 over Steve and Vikki by programming it on the weekend of the "Steve and Vikki's Welcome Back Concert" aka "The Regeneration Tour" (at the same time that Star 94's Starfest).

Star 94 discontinued their Friday Night 80's block a while back. With the departure of Steve and Vikki, they went more in a CHR direction. I don't recall them (in recent memory) doing this until this weekend. This sounds like one major step backward for them. Anyone in their core audience looking for top 40 this weekend will tune to Star, hear 80's music, and if they are not interested, flip to Q100.

Meanwhile...the king of theme weekends, B98.5, is filing through their musical library in alphabetical order by song title, doing the same thing that they did last Labor Day weekend. The themes are getting predictable, just like their playlists (side note - there will be almost 600 individual songs on this without repetiton, in contrast to 300 songs and 8 "currents" repeating four times a day as standard operating procedure).
 
I agree that this is a major screw-up on Star's part. They're sending those younger demos that they risked the farm to woo over to Q100. And just when it looks like they were starting to make some headway.

Pretty boneheaded in my opinion.
 
Some 90s mixed in too .... at 10:56 Saturday morning Star just went from Christina Aguilera "Genie in a Bottle" (1999) to Guns N' Roses "Sweet Child of Mine" (1988), at 11:00 Wham "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" (1984), to at 11:04 Bon Jovi "Living on a Prayer" (1986), then at 11:07 Cyndi Lauper "Girls Just Want To Have Fun" (1984).

At least the 18-34s grew up on the 90s music.
 
I'll listen to Star this weekend, but I'm in my early 40s and won't be back on Tuesday. As I said on another thread, I grew out of CHR back in the Power 99 days in the late 80s.

Definitely boneheaded.

Frankly, I'm surprised that B98.5 hasn't done more 70s or 80s weekends to try and become the #1 Station For Listening Not At Work...it wouldn't be much of a playlist tweak to do that.
 
I remember when WRRK in Pittsburgh did an A to Z stunt. It took them over 10 days to get through their entire playlist. Granted, half of those songs only got airplay once a year. But that was still a hell of a big library of songs.
 
This makes no sense. Talk about schitzoprenia. Star starts playing Kanye West and Flo Rida, adds the Morning Mess and hot new imaging, and then has an 80's weekend?

The station was already schitzophenic, with a 12-34 morning show and an 25-54 afternoon show. And what other CHR sounds hotter in the morning than in the afternoon? It should be the other way around.

During the past 2 weeks, I think I've noticed a move back toward hot AC in middays; they've even played Sarah McGlaughlin.

I'm not sure what to make of this, unless we turn on our radios Tuesday morning and hear Cindy & Ray. Even the "we're taking the weekend off" liner seems to say, "Go to Q100. We'll be back on Tuesday."
 
RoddyFreeman said:
This makes no sense. Talk about schitzoprenia. Star starts playing Kanye West and Flo Rida, adds the Morning Mess and hot new imaging, and then has an 80's weekend?

The station was already schitzophenic, with a 12-34 morning show and an 25-54 afternoon show. And what other CHR sounds hotter in the morning than in the afternoon? It should be the other way around.

During the past 2 weeks, I think I've noticed a move back toward hot AC in middays; they've even played Sarah McGlaughlin.

I'm not sure what to make of this, unless we turn on our radios Tuesday morning and hear Cindy & Ray. Even the "we're taking the weekend off" liner seems to say, "Go to Q100. We'll be back on Tuesday."
Click to expand...

Did they really tell their listeners to go to the competition! If they did, they need to put their foots in their mouths. That is like if the CEO of Home Depot was to recommend Lowe's to his friends.

Star 94 has had an identity crisis for years. Star 94 has had a 25-54 morning show, an 18-49 afternoon show, and a 12-34 music format. Steve and Vikki left for B98.5, and now Star has a 12-34 morning show to fit the music format (but the afternoon 18-49 show remains).

Star 94 needs to flip to hot AC (80's, 90's, now), which is what they should have done a long time ago. With Q100 100kw at 99.7, the game appears to be over.
 
Star 94 has had an identity crisis for years. Star 94 has had a 25-54 morning show, an 18-49 afternoon show, and a 12-34 music format.
Click to expand...

Jal, I don't agree with you at all about that. Star had been a women 25-44 station for years, and they were consistent across all dayparts (except possibly at night when you could say they were 18-44). Their music was not 12-34, which is why the station edited out songs on American Top 40. You don't get ratings and billings like Star had for years with an inconsistent sound.

The problem was that Steve & Vikki slowly started skewing older than Star's target audience. After Steve & Vikki ended, Star could just have moved Cindy & Ray into mornings and continued with the format equity that Star had built over the years. Some people have said that would have messed up (no pun intended) 2 dayparts, but I think it would have been a chance worth taking. Yes, they would have had to get someone good for afternoons, but that could have been done with one talent.

And yes, a lot of us expected Steve (with or without Vikki) to show up again on Atlanta radio but not until at least July 1. Star would have had 7 months to establish C&R in the morning, which probably wouldn't have been difficult given their following in the afternoon. I agree that people who follow legends are often disliked, but Cindy & Ray had a fan base and probably could have made it work.

My biggest question is why Star decided to make a semi-format change. That's what I still can't fathom. And it led to the inconsistent sound that's on the station today. The ratings show that Atlanta doesn't have room for 2 straight-ahead CHR's. (Keep in mind The Beat gets ratings help from Atlanta's heavy ethnic weighting.) With B98.5 being the market's only AC, Star would seem to have a shot at higher 18-49 and 25-54 ratings by going back to the format they had for years, between Q100 and B98.5.
 
The problem now is that Q100 has a similar format (at least during the day) that Star previously had, thus you can say that there are two Adult CHRs in the ATL. Star started playing Kanye West and Flo-Rida so you can arguably say they've gone a tad more straight-ahead CHR.

The dayparted adult CHR format on Q100 is a formula that Cumulus likes to use on their CHR stations. Go look at KRBE, WHOT and WZYP on Mediabase to see the formula.
 
You're right that Q100 is your Rob Thomas headquarters. But Jan Jeffries was directing the music on Q for at least a year and a half before Star went younger this year.
 
Did anyone notice the old 90s Star 94 jingles in use over the weekend? The format sounds almost Rhythmic AC. It is funny how all of the 90s songs played this weekend were popular at that time but were never played on Star 94 at that time because they were too rhythmic leaning and totally against Star 94 rules in the 90s and today.
 
wait....I am not back in 1989? I was looking forward to being two again.

Love Star this weekend. The playlist is amazing, but not the smartest thing to do. I think the last nail is finally going into the heart of the beast. R.I.P. Star, you really helped me get through the ackward years of middle school.

Wait that was 99x. Star sucks :)
 
I'm lovin' Star's weekend off. However, I don't know what the regular audience that was expecting the hits is thinking, or what they're tuned to right now.
 
I know what they are tuned to, it's Atlanta's number one Top 40 station. You know the one on that bigger even more powerful signal.

Notice the new records on Q? Sounding really good.
 
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