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Time to flip The Lake to Oldies?

O

Obtuse

Guest
Oldies, Standards, or a mix of both could work (now that WECK and KB are history, and WHTT is playing "The greatest hits you once heard on Rock 102"). With WNY's aging populus, seems like a natural.

Could this be part of Entercom's plan?

(Personally.....I'm still holding out for the return of WUWU).
 
I can't see this happening on the FM dial.

But someone may do it on AM.
 
Re: Time to flip The Lake to Oldies?/WJJL

> I can't see this happening on the FM dial.
>
> But someone may do it on AM.

I've long thought 107-7 would be a great place to put KB Oldies - one big problem - as mentioned in another post, Oldies is a not a popular format with Entercom. Word has it David Field doesn't like the format. KB 107-7 FM would be great, but won't happen.

It shows the utter money based nature of the radio business - or should I say the advertising business - they market themselves toward you and want to be part of your lifestyle, etc. - until you're too old - then you're demographically impure. I remember my elders complaining about WBEN going too contemporary for their tastes back in the 70s. Now it's baby boomer's turn to be ignored. Generation X'ers - beware! You're next!

One possibility, WJJL is still playing Oldies, according to their website. Perhaps some of the KB gang could go over their, if their interested in working strictly as a labor of love(I hear JJL ownership has money problems??).

Their email address is on their homepage. Tell everyone you know to write them. Y'never know.
 
Time to flip The Lake - but not to Oldies

For reasons ably stated below, 107.7 won't go oldies as long as Entercom has it.

But what I would do, if I were David Field, would be to pay more attention to the numbers that the signal draws in the other market it hits - Rochester.

It's been showing surprisingly well here for a signal with zero promotion and a signal that's OK but far from spectacular. That shouldn't really be a surprise - this is a relatively upscale market, compared to Buffalo, with far less competition for the classic rock audience, and no local AAA (except for a few hours a day on noncomm WRUR.)

If it were promoted in Rochester - and maybe even run out of Entercom's Rochester cluster instead of Buffalo - it just might be at least a small player here.

(And if not for WNVE on 107.3, it actually would have had the potential to become a pretty decent move-in signal, but that bird has flown.)<P ID="signature">______________
Tower Site Calendar 2006 JUST RELEASED! - <a target="_blank" href=http://www.fybush.com/nerw.html#calendar>www.fybush.com</a></P>
 
Re: Time to flip The Lake - but not to Oldies

> For reasons ably stated below, 107.7 won't go oldies as long
> as Entercom has it.
> But what I would do, if I were David Field, would be to pay
> more attention to the numbers that the signal draws in the
> other market it hits - Rochester.

The Lake probably does well with mobile listeners because it comes in well on decent car radios all the way from St. Catharines to Geneva. I don't know how well it comes in on poorer quality home and office radios (and on a Walkman, forget it).

> (And if not for WNVE on 107.3, it actually would have had
> the potential to become a pretty decent move-in signal, but
> that bird has flown.)

But The Nerve is a station that Clear Channel would probably part with happily, and allow to be taken dark---at the right price. With 107.3 then gone, and the closest first-adjacent still as far away as Sentinel Heights in metro Syracuse (further away than the Hamilton/Burlington 107.9 is to the Lake now), you might theoretically be able to move The Lake to Pinnacle Hill with 50,000 watts ERP at 500 feet HAAT and do a city of license change from Wethersfield to Rochester. I have no idea what format would work best on a full-market-coverage station on 107.7 in Rochester...it owuld be the fuil Class B to sidle into the market and upgrade from rimshot status since The Fox edged in from the Bristol Hills, and only the second in 41 years.

Speaking of which...if Entercom REALLY wanted to clobber WHAM, lock its own WBEE into the number one position in the market indefinitely, and make some serious money out of the 1520 signal, wouldn't it make more sense to move what's left of WWKB to Rochester, rebuild the transmitter in North Greece with a simple two tower DA-N and somewhat looser nighttime pattern, move the studios into their Mill Street complex, and go head to head against WHAM with a serious and predominantly local talk lineup? They could turn a 1.5 in Buffalo into a 7.5 share in Rochester and make some serious bucks while helping their stablemates at the same time, in a way the signal-impaired WROC never will. They'd have to hire five fulltime and two part-time hosts to cover weekdays and weekends respectively, plus a few fulltime board ops and three or four fulltime news people plus one weekend part-timer. But pick your staff well and you'd be profitable in short order...and not only make that station pay for itself, but get the ancillary benefit of helping the whole cluster and outflanking rival groups.
 
Buffalo To Rochester Shuttle

> Speaking of which...if Entercom REALLY wanted to clobber
> WHAM, lock its own WBEE into the number one position in the
> market indefinitely, and make some serious money out of the
> 1520 signal, wouldn't it make more sense to move what's left
> of WWKB to Rochester, rebuild the transmitter in North
> Greece with a simple two tower DA-N and somewhat looser
> nighttime pattern, move the studios into their Mill Street
> complex, and go head to head against WHAM with a serious and
> predominantly local talk lineup? They could turn a 1.5 in
> Buffalo into a 7.5 share in Rochester and make some serious
> bucks while helping their stablemates at the same time, in a
> way the signal-impaired WROC never will. They'd have to hire
> five fulltime and two part-time hosts to cover weekdays and
> weekends respectively, plus a few fulltime board ops and
> three or four fulltime news people plus one weekend
> part-timer. But pick your staff well and you'd be profitable
> in short order...and not only make that station pay for
> itself, but get the ancillary benefit of helping the whole
> cluster and outflanking rival groups.
>

That's an interesting, if not idealistic proposal, Bob. But would it pass the accounting litmus test? Another issue: Would moving KB to Rochester, which requires FCC approval, open up competing applications for CP's for every other AM station on 1520 wanting to improve and upgrade their facilities at the expense of KB?

Many years ago, a station on 1520 in Long Island challenged KB's then Class II-B status and it cost a lot of money for the owners of KB to defend its turf. I can only imagine that a CP to move from Buffalo to Rochester would create more trouble than its worth for Entercom. Additionally, proposing to move a radio station from Buffalo to Rochester would put Entercom in the best light "politically.".

This is a good topic for discussion.
 
Re: Buffalo To Rochester Shuttle

> That's an interesting, if not idealistic proposal, Bob. But
> would it pass the accounting litmus test? Another issue:
> Would moving KB to Rochester, which requires FCC approval,
> open up competing applications for CP's for every other AM
> station on 1520 wanting to improve and upgrade their
> facilities at the expense of KB?

I can't speak to the accounting side of it. I can take a stab at the engineering and political side of it.

Moving 1520 to the Rochester market would be considered a "major change," and can't be done until and unless the FCC opens another window for AM major changes. They tend to do that about every three years, and the last one was in early 2004, so it's a pretty good guess that we'll see another one sometime in the next couple of years.

Because a 50-kilowatt 1520 on the west side of Rochester would be mutually exclusive with the present licensed facilities of KB, competing applications would not pass FCC muster, and Entercom wouldn't risk losing its big signal by filing such an application. It would have to file a showing that the move would serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity, which it could easily demonstrate by applying to license the station to, say, Gates as its "first local service."

As for my esteemed colleague Mr. Smith's suggestion of moving 107.7 to Pinnacle, it wouldn't fly, for several reasons. Even if Entercom were to buy the WNVE license and return it to the FCC, the 107.3 allocation to South Bristol Township would remain on the books and would have to be protected, whether there's a license for it or not. You'd also have to address the sticky wicket of eliminating "first local service" to Wethersfield Township. And there's an issue with the spacing to 107.9 in Syracuse, too, if you're talking about putting a full 107.7B in the middle of Rochester.

(Are there solutions? Yes, there are - but that's the sort of thing I charge my consulting clients a fair but not exorbitant fee for... :)<P ID="signature">______________
Tower Site Calendar 2006 JUST RELEASED! - <a target="_blank" href=http://www.fybush.com/nerw.html#calendar>www.fybush.com</a></P>
 
Has anyone actually seen or heard what the Lake's rtings are? Did they fall, or is everyone just hoping? The last rating was in the 3's 12+ which deserves the death penalty juding by the comments of this board. It's ironic that The Lake is generating some of the best ratings the 107.7 frequency ever had in Buffalo (and Rochester!) But because it's not what you guys like, it deserves to die.

PTR

> Oldies, Standards, or a mix of both could work (now that
> WECK and KB are history, and WHTT is playing "The greatest
> hits you once heard on Rock 102"). With WNY's aging populus,
> seems like a natural.
>
> Could this be part of Entercom's plan?
>
> (Personally.....I'm still holding out for the return of
> WUWU).
>
 
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