V102.5 flipped? Anyone want to trade for an aircheck?

[icycool7227]

I can't believe V102.5 flipped! It was a decent hot AC though could have done better if there was work put into it. I didn't even get this one airchecked though I did get a chance to listen online. Would anyone like a trade? Aircheck site upon request. Now Nashville has no hot AC station and two top 40s. How can there be radio without hot AC pop? (Lol, coming from a market with two hot ACs and one time a 3rd one).

 

[firepoint525]

We had a hot AC with Star 97, but they squandered that to go after the oldies market, and they have been floundering ever since! But they at least have a slightly better signal (over Nashville as a whole) than 102.5 does.

 

[olddog56]

They "floundered" (your words) as a Hot A/C too.

 

[firepoint525]

They "floundered" (your words) as a Hot A/C too.

Point taken. But they didn't constantly "flip" back in those days, either! :

 

[Tibbs4]

Star 97 was not REAL Hot AC except for about a month. They screwed around with that format for
years (80's this, lite that) and blew it every chance they got. Had someone had the guts to
take a stand and do it right, it would have been okay. But they screwed with listeners loyalty
all the time. The 80's format was 31 overplayed AC songs. They couldn't figure out what they
wanted to do. When they finally sounded incredible and were a REAL Hot AC station, some
dumb--- on the inside must have felt threatened by someone who knew how to program a
REAL radio station (I believe the villian who progarmmed it right was Scott Chase who had to go
to Q-108?) and it was back to Cyndi Lauper and Bore 97.

I admit Hot AC has been pretty much unappreciated by listeners in Nashville. I have to believe
it's been more the local delivery than the overall national product (playlist)...this market is ripe
for that demo to want to listen. They just haven't had anything GOOD to listen to.

BTW, for a mid-40 male I have to say The Party sounds great! That's because even my wife
likes it and I am doing what I am told. Additonally, I hear even Scott approves.

Seriously, why couldn't WVNS have been that good?

 

[beatlenut]

In Scott Chase's defense, he was not a bad programmer. His hands were tied by Jan Jeffries, who would do things like label Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" in a country catagory, so it never came up in rotation. Jan would intentionally do stuff like that, take the station from a 2.5 to a 2.0, fire the PD, make some changes (like a format change), then the ratings would go back up to a 2.3, and Jan would look like a hero. This happened several times while I was at Cumulus. Jan never gave the programmer freedom to program; he wanted to do it himself, always adding that he once worked for WLS.

Jan was demoted as OM & PD of Star 97 when Cumulus bought Stratford, his consulting company. When that happened, we had no PD, so I took control over my show, and I was #2 Women 18-34 and #2 Women 25-54. Jan had no idea what happened, but took credit for all of it. Jan hired Scott Chase, told him what to do, the ratings fell, Scott got fired, then I got fired because by that time, I was making too much money.

Not to toot my own horn, but I work hard and I get good ratings at every station I've worked for. I get along with people, and try not to burn bridges. There were at least 7 full-time openings in this town last week. Everyone had my demo. Nobody called. With my experience, I would've thought someone would ask me to work for them. Bitter? Yes. I love radio. I must, to have put up with the crap that comes with it for 26 years. Hurt? Yes, because the people that make the decisions know me, and know what I'm capable of. The only thing I can come up with is, they are jealous of something, or God is pushing me in a different direction, probably because radio is causing its own demise.

Radio is the mother that eats it's own young.

 

[radiorob2.0]

In Scott Chase's defense, he was not a bad programmer. His hands were tied by Jan Jeffries, who would do things like label Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" in a country catagory, so it never came up in rotation. Jan would intentionally do stuff like that, take the station from a 2.5 to a 2.0, fire the PD, make some changes (like a format change), then the ratings would go back up to a 2.3, and Jan would look like a hero. This happened several times while I was at Cumulus. Jan never gave the programmer freedom to program; he wanted to do it himself, always adding that he once worked for WLS.

Jan was demoted as OM & PD of Star 97 when Cumulus bought Stratford, his consulting company. When that happened, we had no PD, so I took control over my show, and I was #2 Women 18-34 and #2 Women 25-54. Jan had no idea what happened, but took credit for all of it. Jan hired Scott Chase, told him what to do, the ratings fell, Scott got fired, then I got fired because by that time, I was making too much money.

Not to toot my own horn, but I work hard and I get good ratings at every station I've worked for. I get along with people, and try not to burn bridges. There were at least 7 full-time openings in this town last week. Everyone had my demo. Nobody called. With my experience, I would've thought someone would ask me to work for them. Bitter? Yes. I love radio. I must, to have put up with the crap that comes with it for 26 years. Hurt? Yes, because the people that make the decisions know me, and know what I'm capable of. The only thing I can come up with is, they are jealous of something, or God is pushing me in a different direction, probably because radio is causing its own demise.

Radio is the mother that eats it's own young.

If I remember correctly, Jefferies programmed WLS during the years they were fading fast. I'll have to check with that.

As far as the job search, good luck. There are some good people that are not in radio but should be, you're right radio does eats its own young.

 

[firepoint525]

When Star 97 was "only" doing Friday night '80s, they could get away with only playing that small handful of '80s songs. After all, those were the ones they were going to get all the requests for anyway. : Then they went to doing '80s all weekend, and then all week, but never expanded their playlist, except trying to pass off everything released between 1975 and 1993 (everything that they played, anyway!) as "80s"! And this is where they failed us! I remember asking why they never played Julian Lennon! He wasn't the biggest star of the '80s, but he was probably one of the biggest that they weren't playing! (And trying to expand "Friday night '80s" to an all-week program was too much of a good thing! :)

V-102.5's mistake (among others) was trying to bring back Bob and Sheri when they first became "Venus." Maybe programming to only 50% of your potential audience is a mistake, but bringing back a talk show that failed on its previous station is simply NOT doing your homework! So I wasn't too surprised when they didn't keep B&S very long! :

Rather brazen of 102.5 to go back to being "the Party." That's virtually an admission that their last change was both a failure and a mistake! When Rock 103 in Memphis went back to being rock, they didn't initially call themselves "Rock 103." And when 104.5 here in Nashville returned to the same format they had as "Arrow," they didn't call themselves "Arrow." They called themselves "Core." (When they had that silly station-naming contest, I was tempted to suggest that they go back to calling themselves "Arrow," since that was what they were anyway! : I never did that, but I'm sure someone did! :)

 

[Tibbs4]

In Scott Chase's defense, he was not a bad programmer. His hands were tied by Jan Jeffries, who would do things like label Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" in a country catagory, so it never came up in rotation. Jan would intentionally do stuff like that, take the station from a 2.5 to a 2.0, fire the PD, make some changes (like a format change), then the ratings would go back up to a 2.3, and Jan would look like a hero. This happened several times while I was at Cumulus. Jan never gave the programmer freedom to program; he wanted to do it himself, always adding that he once worked for WLS.

Jan was demoted as OM & PD of Star 97 when Cumulus bought Stratford, his consulting company. When that happened, we had no PD, so I took control over my show, and I was #2 Women 18-34 and #2 Women 25-54. Jan had no idea what happened, but took credit for all of it. Jan hired Scott Chase, told him what to do, the ratings fell, Scott got fired, then I got fired because by that time, I was making too much money.

Not to toot my own horn, but I work hard and I get good ratings at every station I've worked for. I get along with people, and try not to burn bridges. There were at least 7 full-time openings in this town last week. Everyone had my demo. Nobody called. With my experience, I would've thought someone would ask me to work for them. Bitter? Yes. I love radio. I must, to have put up with the crap that comes with it for 26 years. Hurt? Yes, because the people that make the decisions know me, and know what I'm capable of. The only thing I can come up with is, they are jealous of something, or God is pushing me in a different direction, probably because radio is causing its own demise.

Radio is the mother that eats it's own young.

Beatlenut --- I hope my previous post was clear that I was on Scott Chases' side. Your stay at Star was way to brief and I hope you do land on your
feet and get a chance to make a difference. Sadly, not being a corporate tool is out of vogue these days and like the majority of AM radio, FM will
slowly whittle itself away to a fraction of the relevance it once had. Listen to our FM dial, you get commercials on 60%, talk on 30% and way overplayed
music on the last 10%...where's the energy? It's like all artists using only primary colors to paint...

 

[beatlenut]

Tibbs2 - I saw the word "villan" and Scott Chase together, and I felt you thought it was Scott who did poorly. And then I tried to state some facts without sounding pretentious.

Like most programmers (I've been one once), I felt I could program Star 97 and keep it in the top 5. I still feel I could program any station except talk and make it sucessful. But no one wants to hear what I have to say. And it's probably because I'm not a corperate suck-up. Never have been. Never been a suit and tie guy.

I have nothing bad to say about the stations or people I've worked for. But I promise you, in less than a year, we'll all be back here on this very board with the same gripes because the stations will have realized their recent moves didn't work.