Brooklyndon said:
neo11 said:
You've really lost credibility with this post. Building share from the ground up? Radically changing formats? That actually does not apply for most of the examples you've given.
All the success stories you mentioned are 10 years ago, and more in most cases. Those data are irrelevant to today.
Simple, simple way to break down Fresh: the Boston Consulting Partners Growth Matrix.
Fresh is a dog: Losing share, flat sales. You need to grow share to make it a star, how is playing AC Country ever going to grow share past its current ceiling?
As for Free FM building of K-Rocks target that's debatable, and as for Fresh bilding on Mix, Mix had no audience to build on.
You're actually proving my point. Mix didn't have much of an audience, and from that, Fresh has become top 5 in cume. Obviously, CBS Radio has done something right to bring that many listeners to a frequency that "nobody was listening to." If the TSL isn't high enough, that means that its the music that should be tinkered with, not the whole station!
The whole intent of Free FM in NYC was to build off of K-Rock's (and Stern's) audience. They were hoping those listeners would stick around and embrace Free FM, but that didn't happen. The problem is, they haven't stuck around for a Stern-less K-Rock either.
Getting back to 102.7: Fresh isn't really losing share...it's been fluctuating up and down in the ratings between the mid 2's and the mid 3's. Lite's holiday music did eat in to their audience, it seems, so I don't think it would be fair to draw conclusions from the last couple of trends that have come out. And, as I've said before, perhaps CBS would be wise to have 102.7 go head-to-head with Lite next Christmas, instead of having CBS-FM play the Christmas music, which really didn't seem to benefit it very much.
As much as I personally find the weeks of non-stop holiday music to be annoying, it really is a winner, as Lite FM showed. However, it's a winner for the right station. CBS-FM has the label in the market of being an "old timers'" station, so most younger listeners who want to hear the holiday tunes will go to Lite FM, which also has the benefit of being established with the holiday music for the past several years now.
Fresh probably lost many of those listeners who were seeking holiday music to Lite FM and not to sister station CBS-FM, while CBS-FM saw only a very modest increase in holiday music, probably from listeners who just happened across it, or who had the station somewhere deep on their presets and "discovered" the holiday music while scanning around. Fresh, by going all holiday, will step the tide of listeners migrating over to Lite FM, and could pull listeners from other stations like PLJ, who want to hear the holiday tunes as well.
I have also heard Fresh in many businesses, but during the holiday season, most of those businesses went back to 106.7. I wouldn't be surprised if some of those businesses kept the radio on 106.7 after the holidays as well. Fresh could avoid such a loss if it goes all-Christmas next holiday season.
Now, as for the success stories...they are all from 10+ years ago because there just haven't been many radical format changes in recent years. Let's go through the list again:
92.3 K-Rock -> Free FM - > K-Rock... same target audience, bad ratings all around
101.1 CBS-FM -> Jack -> CBS-FM... Jack's 12+ numbers fell sharply and there was lots of negative publicity attached to the change, BUT, Jack was performing fairly well in its target demos and was showing growth, especially among younger listeners. CBS-FM is doing well overall, but it has the same problems it faced pre-2005: an aging audience and numbers in the higher end of the demos.
CD 101.9 -> RXP.... CD 101.9's billing was way down and the station was stagnant, though still in the mid 2's-3's...Fresh territory (but with an older audience). Problem wasn't the format flip though, it was the way RXP was, and is, executed. Like I said...Elton John, the Ting Tings, Heart, Linkin Park and Led Zeppelin do NOT, NOT, NOT work on the same station.
102.7 WNEW -> FM Talk -> CHR stunting -> Blink -> holiday music -> Mix -> Fresh.... this actually goes back about a decade to start with. However, just like with K-Rock, there was a rock station that was replaced by an FM talk station that was geared towards the same male demographic. Not really much of a radical change, but the talk station failed, and the numbers actually declined versus those of WNEW when it was rock (which weren't stellar to begin with). Then we have a radical change to CHR stunting, which lasted for a few weeks before giving way to Blink. Blink was really a pop music version of RXP. Jennifer Lopez and The Doors on the same station just doesn't fly, and accounts for its abysmal numbers, despite heavy advertising of the station, which made up for any "radical" change on that frequency. However, listeners did tune in for the holiday music, and the station showed its highest numbers (I believe a 2.2) in years. They used that as a launching pad for Mix 102.7, but the numbers stayed at that level...low 2's...despite going after the same target audience as Blink. Now, from Mix to Fresh, we don't have a very radical format change, but we see that Fresh's numbers go up as far as the mid 3's, which 102.7 had not seen in a long time, and we see that the station is top 5 in cume. That shows that Fresh has, in many ways, been successful.
105.1 AC/Hot AC/Modern Rock -> Jammin 105 -> Power 105.1... the AC/Hot AC stations were going nowhere. Jammin was a radical change from that, and worked out for a while, but the numbers began to drop. The change from Jammin to Power was somewhat radical...almost like going from oldies to CHR, but there was some overlap in the target audience. But, radical or not, Power succeeded and has often beat Hot 97. And this was less than 10 years ago.
What other radical format changes have there been in the past 10 years? Most stations have stayed put...93.1, 93.9, 94.7, 95.5, 96.3, 97.1, 97.9, 98.7, 99.5, 100.3, 103.5, 104.3, 106.7, 107.5 haven't changed much in recent years, so how could we possibly cite any more examples without going back further in time?
) and actually think it's a pretty good station with potential. 92.3 has a heritage (which Fresh does not) in the K-Rock name and is doing much worse. 102.7 isn't changing the landscape of NYC radio, necessarily, but it seems much more viable to me. JMO.