The Wave Is Playing Fewer Instrumentals?

[davideduardo]

In the 2008 BIA report, The Wave was #9, just ahead of KRTH in that firm's estimate of station earnings. It was CBS's #2 LA station in earnings, with KROQ #1. 2009 is not out yet but I doubt THAT much can happen in a year... that The Wave can go from hero to dead man walking in 365 days.

BIA provides an updated-daily data service, not a report. And they report billings, as nobody knows the earnings of each station. The billings figures are approximate, as many cluster combo sales are arbitrarily allocated; MK does not really break indivuidual stations apart other than what the cluster management says.

LA billing in 2009 was off more than 200 million from 2008, or well over 20%. And in 2009, we got the first full year of PPM in LA, and definitely the first real PPM buying. KTWV fell in PPM, and if I had to guess, CBS would not have slipstream changed the format unless the station had cratered. I'm guessing it went to last in cluster billing behind all but KFWB, which is not in the cluster anymore anyway.

The Wave is likely to sound the most today as it did then.

You do realize that by anyone's standards they have changed format?

No one else so far has mentioned remembering when The Wave played New Age, such as George Winston or Andreas Vollenweider. Or when the Wave had actors doing skits at the top of the hour in place of DJ's... or Cheryl Bentyne of Manhattan Transfer singing a summery of the news.

I spoke today with one of the creators of The Wave for Metromedia... there are plenty of people who know exactly what they did in 1987.

Those were the days when Metromedia owned KTWV and it really was a pioneering radio station.

Necesity is the mother of invention and of radio formats. The old Metromedia rock format was dead, and needed to be replaced. A team came together, including Frank Cody, Owen Leach and Paul Goldstein, and created several alternative formats... and the Wave name when the new age / light jazz option won the most favor.

 

[calguy]

Necesity is the mother of invention and of radio formats. The old Metromedia rock format was dead, and needed to be replaced. A team came together, including Frank Cody, Owen Leach and Paul Goldstein, and created several alternative formats... and the Wave name when the new age / light jazz option won the most favor.

The format had help in dying. Metromedia euthanized it. They were inept and ran it into the ground. At that point they had to unplug the life support. They had no clue how to fix it. It didn't help that the ethnic makeup of the market shifted radically. When the WAVE first went on the air it was horrible. It took several years of fine tuning to make it viable. Then for the last several years it stagnated. Now it's morphing into something else. Funny thing is, the person who is changing it is doing it the old fashioned way, just like he fixed KRTH. All of these companies have been trying to run stations on a shoestring, with research and voice tracking and small promotional budgets with zero creativity. Then along comes an old school pd and viola, he's resuscitated a format that everyone thought was dead in this town, and he'll probably do it with the WAVE too. Yes, I know he believes in and relies on research, but he balances it with old fashioned radio know how. Something that's been lacking in the business because of the cookie cutter, let the research program it all approach. Maybe some of these other PD's can learn something from that...

As to who actually created the WAVE's original format, doesn't John Sebastian have a differing opinion?

 

[davideduardo]

When the WAVE first went on the air it was horrible. It took several years of fine tuning to make it viable.

It was an instant success, with excellent ratings from the offset. The format was put into syndication and the creators installed it on many other stations.

All of these companies have been trying to run stations on a shoestring, with research and voice tracking and small promotional budgets with zero creativity.[/quote]

Research is expensive... cheap stations cut research, and lose touch with the indvidual listener.

Then along comes an old school pd and viola, he's resuscitated a format that everyone thought was dead in this town

What caused the resurgance of oldies was, first, the late decision to get out of the 60's and second... and mostly... the PPM which allowed a station that was nobody's favorite but many people's second or third choice to get back into the top 10. Of course, KRTH had WOGL's PPM data and format development going back to 2002 to look at.

As to who actually created the WAVE's original format, doesn't John Sebastian have a differing opinion?

The Wave was created by Frank Cody, Owen Leach and Paul Goldstein. Owen and Frank pulled the smooth jazz name out of perceptual research in Chicago for WNUA when NUA did not want to pay Metromedia to license the Wave name.

 

[calguy]

An instant success? The WAVE? The flavor of the moment perhaps and better than KMET's final numbers, but it wasn't doing that well at first, and it did sound horrible in my book. They had to tweak it for a while and bring in jocks, because it was pretty lame that first year. Just because others jumped on the bandwagon doesn't make it an instant success either, they did their tweaks in the other cities too. Not every station that jumped to be JACK did well. Yes, yes, I know you'll come up with numbers to prove your case, but it wasn't a dominant station at that time like KIIS, Power or even KOST who had a pretty good run from the end of the 80's to the early 90's.

Look I agree that the PPM and leaving the 60's behind helped KRTH immensely, but the format had to be executed correctly and they got the right man for the job. It wasn't going to happen with his predecessor. We could debate this and I'm sure you'll be back to take me to the woodshed, but I'm going to bed. I gotta work tomorrow.

 

[wpiv926]

Just stumbled across the Wave online this past week and fell in love with the station. For some reason, the streaming is not working at all this weekend. I actually called the studio line on the website and a human answered. What a surprise! He said he would tell the engineer about it, but it's still not working - and I've tried different computers in 2 different locations. Oh well....