To Be Honest, the Philly market SUCKS!

[ijwwac!]

I have never seen a dimmer market for lack of good radio, now it has become even more yuckier. You got rid of the smooth jazz - honestly Philly, take lessons from the Salt Lake City, UT or even better, the Fort Wayne, IN market (they have FOUR, that's right 4 hot AC stations while this market has none!). Not only that, but you posters are the rudest that I've ever seen. I'm SURE glad I don't live in this market! A rhythmic AC dance format is just stupid! It certainly doesn't add up to what WPYM Party 93-1 had or WPYO 95-3 Party in the Miami and Orlando, FL markets. They failed but that was because of irresposibility and bad business decisions - I don't think it had anything to do with the ratings. I can't opinionate on this market much simply because I haven't heard every Philly station to comment on, but it seems to have transpired on the BS crap that most major cities are now unfortunately getting.

 

[Rockin Rob]

I must say, it appears modern day radio isn't interested in us over 34. The suits reflect the attitudes of their offspring, insofar as they see anyone middle aged as expendable.

Look at the formats that have died in the past year or so...

Full time pure rock
Alternative
Oldies (55-66, outside of Motown)
Smooth Jazz
Light Gold-Based AC
Classical
B/EZ
Hot AC

 

[philadelphiawx]

I can't say I disagree that Philly radio is in the crapper.

Outside of XPN, MMR, and KYW, I don't listen to any of the other stations anymore and I had listened to Smooth Jazz and Sunny.

BTW, I'm only 30.

This may drive me to Sirius -- I had been thinking about switching over but if 104.5 flips to something I won't listen to I'm done with terrestrial.

 

[jayedwards]

Rob---- as I've noted before--- some of the suits themselves are under 40! (so what can we expect!!??)

 

[Jul]

And clearing national and sometimes local play by play has gotten poor in this market too. We don't even get to hear some national play by play games because stations like for example WIP skips some NFL games and ends up on the poor signaled station like 920 AM WPHY in Trenton. That's what make this market suck.

 

[SoulCrusher]

The #1 market in the country, New York City, actually sucks even more. A much weaker version of Free FM (thumbs up for Penn Jillette, thumbs down for everything else, including safer music selections that are only limited to weekends), no Active Rock or Alternative, no Country, no real Dance stations (two Rhythmic ACs masquerading as Dance), two Urban stations that sound pretty much identical, generic Smooth Jazz station (actually closer to AC - they were much better as "New York Chill"), etc. About the only thing I can stand to listen to is the Spanglish hybrid station La Kalle 105.9, a mix of reggaeton and hip-hop. At least it's a change from the status quo.

 

[disney fanatic]

Oldies (55-66, outside of Motown)

Try WOGL for oldies. This should work.

 

[Irishfl]

Oldies (55-66, outside of Motown)

Try WOGL for oldies. This should work.

As noted by the poster you quoted, OGL doesn't play 50-60's music much anymore, outside motown.

 

[philadelphiawx]

The #1 market in the country, New York City, actually sucks even more. A much weaker version of Free FM (thumbs up for Penn Jillette, thumbs down for everything else, including safer music selections that are only limited to weekends), no Active Rock or Alternative, no Country, no real Dance stations (two Rhythmic ACs masquerading as Dance), two Urban stations that sound pretty much identical, generic Smooth Jazz station (actually closer to AC - they were much better as "New York Chill"), etc. About the only thing I can stand to listen to is the Spanglish hybrid station La Kalle 105.9, a mix of reggaeton and hip-hop. At least it's a change from the status quo.

Yeah, New York radio IS worse. Thanks for the unfortunate reminder. At least G Rock comes in through a good chunk of Central Jersey so the drive from Philadelphia to NYC isn't a total waste.

 

[papaul1967]

both markets are crap now!!!!! its appalling!

 

[OHara]

Maybe 104.5 will go Active on a full time basis and put all the other stations to shame. But then again it could be 106.1..hmmmmmmm

 

[radioskeptic]

Note to Rockin' Rob, Disney Fanatic and Irishfl, re WOGL:

The CBS suits have written off the Oldies format. If Greater Media hadn't beaten them to the punch with "Ben-FM," they probably would have flipped WOGL to "Jack-FM" along with WCBS-FM/NY and WJMK/Chicago, a move that's been a disaster (especially in NY).

But CBS had been going in the wrong direction with this Oldies for years, and there is at least one piece of research to back that up: "Oldies Insights 2003: Is Newer Music Helping or Hurting?" from Coleman. You can read it at http://www.colemaninsights.com/onlines/Coleman Oldies Insights Winter 2003.pdf.

The chief findings were that (1) a heavy emphasis on Motown seemed to have no significant effect on ratings one way or the other; that (2) going heavy on Rock and/or '70s material (two categories that overlap) was harmful; and that (3) newer music doesn’t necessarily attract younger audiences. In fact, stations with older music actually had a slightly younger audience, though not by a statistically significant margin. The Coleman authors offered the following explanation for that surprising finding:

"While the newer stations [that is, stations playing newer music] are not appreciably older in audience than the older stations, the mere fact that they are just as old [in audience], if not actually a little older, is surprising. The answer to this apparent contradiction is that the listeners least likely to defect form an Oldies station are older listeners. While these listeners may not like the newer sound, they are extremely loyal to the Oldies station, so they stay with it. Younger listeners (25-to-54-year-olds) want an Oldies station to be more in synch with their expectations and are less likely to embrace the newer sound that an older audience sticks with. Thus, if an Oldies station gets too new, younger listeners are just as disappointed, if not more so, than older listeners.” (From p. 13 of the Coleman PDF.)

They also noted that, because so few stations play much Fifties music (typically much less than 10%), they were unable to make any correlations between Fifties content and ratings.

Older music would have a lot of potential appeal, for the 35-54 demo as well as for 55+, anybody cared to try to program it -- and promote it -- intelligently. But don't expect that to happen on 104.5. The suits at CC are certainly no more visionary than their counterparts at CBS!