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Wake Up KDKA!

While they have bigger problems (talent), I disagree on the KDKA call letters meaning Grandpa's radio station. Their the same calls on TV. Cross promotion with John Cigna and other personalities used to be fantastic....award winning!

They carried the Pirates, and competed at one point with sports talk. The demo didn't skew 50+ across the board.

I'm tired of this cop out that EVERYTHING on AM radio is targeted and listened to by only senior citizens. That's crap! The mistakes being made by companies are being made by poor executives, program directors, sales managers etc etc. It all, and always has come from the top down. Failure and success!

The switch to Newsradio 1020 didn't bother me, it was the implimentation of how they did it. Proving again that the TOP of the food chain have no clue what they are doing.

In some ways radio is like football. There's an offense and playing defense. KDKA is failing at both. If I was the GM, I'd be searching for a hot shot 30 year old PD to breath new life into it, while maintaining its heritage. Creative, fresh, new ideas, even stolen ideas.

Do any of you remember what Ed Salamon did with WEEP and then WHN in New York? Different time I understand, but he was a hot shot young guy at the time. Perfect example of what I'm talking about.
 
i agree about the transition, but i'm sure it would be explained away with..." we wanted to do it slowly, as to not confuse the listener"...sorry, slogans mean crap...people know what they're hearing...by the way...what should kdka do?...politics, lifestyle, sex, and sports...thats it really...take your pick...
 
lash said:
While they have bigger problems (talent), I disagree on the KDKA call letters meaning Grandpa's radio station. Their the same calls on TV. Cross promotion with John Cigna and other personalities used to be fantastic....award winning!

They carried the Pirates, and competed at one point with sports talk. The demo didn't skew 50+ across the board.

I'm tired of this cop out that EVERYTHING on AM radio is targeted and listened to by only senior citizens. That's crap! The mistakes being made by companies are being made by poor executives, program directors, sales managers etc etc. It all, and always has come from the top down. Failure and success!

The switch to Newsradio 1020 didn't bother me, it was the implimentation of how they did it. Proving again that the TOP of the food chain have no clue what they are doing.

In some ways radio is like football. There's an offense and playing defense. KDKA is failing at both. If I was the GM, I'd be searching for a hot shot 30 year old PD to breath new life into it, while maintaining its heritage. Creative, fresh, new ideas, even stolen ideas.

Do any of you remember what Ed Salamon did with WEEP and then WHN in New York? Different time I understand, but he was a hot shot young guy at the time. Perfect example of what I'm talking about.
Click to expand...

Come on, how many people refer to TV stations by their call letters? Besides, the experience of watching TV is completely different than that of listening to the radio and the two products are completely different, too.

KDKA means grandpa's radio station. It doesn't matter what the perception used to be, that's what it is right now.

The fact is younger listeners don't pay any attention to the AM band. Unlike listeners of a certain age, they didn't grow up with KQV, 13Q and WTAE as "their" music stations. More likely they grew up with 96KX (and its various permutations), B94 and WDVE.

If you're going to try to lure them back to AM with something innovative, you'd better be prepared to spend a fortune promoting it. CBS will sell KDKA before it pumps any money into it. EVERY move they've made has been designed to cut costs, from closing the newsroom on weekends and evenings to forcing out news veterans to dumping most local, non-brokered programming on weekends.
 
Do any of you remember what Ed Salamon did with WEEP and then WHN in New York? Different time I understand, but he was a hot shot young guy at the time.

Outstanding example, Chris! He then went on to be one of the hotshot guys at Westwood One.

Anyone who believes AM radio is targeted and listened to only by seniors obviously doesn't listen to sports radio. One of the first full-time all-sports formats began in Detroit back in 1995. W4 Country took their AM simulcast sister and tried a new idea with it. More than that, they stayed with it even though it took almost three books for the ratings to show up. I'm 37, and most of my peers were listening to it...men AND women! For seniors? I don't think so!
 
Sports radio is the exception because it draws the niche audience of young males. So that's one AM signal in a market.

What are you going to do with the rest of them that will draw listeners under 50?
 
"Sports radio is the exception because it draws the niche audience of young males."

Put anything on AM radio that young males like, and then young males will listen to it. The task is using some imagination in coming up with programming that young males will enjoy listening to. Since the sound quality of AM makes music pretty much out of the question*, it would have to be a spoken word format where sound quality doesn't matter all that much. That leaves the person who is the boss of an AM radio station with two options. Find an existing format that appeals to young males (option 1) or use some creativity and imagination and come up with something new (option 2). And we all know option 2 ain't gonna happen any time soon.

* And before anyone points out the success of WJAS, I realize that fans of older music don't mind listening to old music on AM, since their memories of the oldies included hearing it in low-fi monaural anyway.
 
What are you going to do with the rest of them that will draw listeners under 50?

Obviously you haven't heard of Radio Disney, targeted to kids.
 
kenhawk1160 said:
What are you going to do with the rest of them that will draw listeners under 50?

Obviously you haven't heard of Radio Disney, targeted to kids.
Click to expand...

Wow, I'm not impressed.

Radio Disney is a loss leader that serves to market the rest of the Disney empire's output.
 
Wow, I'm not impressed. Radio Disney is a loss leader that serves to market the rest of the Disney empire's output.

If Sima Birach is making money doing this, I AM impressed. Considering that that station had been operating at a loss for so many years, it looks like it may have finally found a niche. Radio Disney can be a real moneymaker if someone with half a brain in their head knows how to sell it. It's not that difficult when you think about it.
 
Are you talking about running a viable radio station or just turning a profit with your license?

If all you want revenue with no concern for how unlistenable the station is, I can do that. Sell blocks of time to every quack who has a cure for something and run automation. It's absolute crap, but it makes money. Not really that hard. You don't even need half a brain with that formula.
 
Are you talking about running a viable radio station or just turning a profit with your license? If all you want revenue with no concern for how unlistenable the station is, I can do that. Sell blocks of time to every quack who has a cure for something and run automation. It's absolute crap, but it makes money. Not really that hard. You don't even need half a brain with that formula.

I don't see a difference between either one. You can't be viable without turning a profit. What you find unlistenable may be what another listener finds palatable. WEDO and WKHB both run block programming, and are very profitable. WWCS in Canonsburg serves a very exclusive niche with programming targeted to kids, which no one else is doing because they don't know how to sell it. I don't care for time-brokered radio myself, but there's others who do. It's all a matter of taste. No, you don't need half a brain with that formula, but hopefully you have the smart half that knows the difference between making money and insisting doing radio "your way" without concern for the bottom line and going dark within a matter of months, if that.
 
By "viable" radio station, I mean one that people would actually listen to.

I said before you can round up every bogus preacher and herbal cure scammer to buy blocks of programming at $100 a pop. It's absolute crap, but the checks clear.
 
By "viable" radio station, I mean one that people would actually listen to. I said before you can round up every bogus preacher and herbal cure scammer to buy blocks of programming at $100 a pop. It's absolute crap, but the checks clear.

How do you know that those stations I just mentioned don't have listeners? Because they don't show up in Arbitron? My stations don't show up in Arbitron, and they're all very successful. If there were no listeners, then there'd be no money coming in. I've listened to these programs, and listeners do respond to them. Whether or not they're the typical 25-54 female target demo is immaterial. There's listeners outside of that spectrum, and that's a demand that needs suppied. Simple economics.
 
It's garbage and you know it. If it pays the bills, fine, but don't try to pretend that it's real radio that actually draws more than a handful of gullible listeners.
 
It's garbage and you know it. If it pays the bills, fine, but don't try to pretend that it's real radio that actually draws more than a handful of gullible listeners.

What, pray tell, is your definition of 'real radio'?
 
Radio that people actually listen to because it entertains or otherwise interests them.

Uh huh. My point exactly. What doesn't interest you doesn't interest anyone? Is that the consensus here? I don't like everything that's on the radio either...that's why there's a dial for you to tune into a station that you do like. Obviously these stations you don't like must be doing something right if they're still around.
 
Yeah, they sell blocks of time to schlock-meisters. That's what they're doing "right."

And nobody listens to it.

It's profitable garbage.
 
Yeah, they sell blocks of time to schlock-meisters. That's what they're doing "right." And nobody listens to it.
It's profitable garbage.

There you go again with your "nobody". What you really mean is "nobody that matters", right? Call it what you want, it's serving a niche, albeit small, but it works. If block programming is that much of a failure, because "nobody listens to it", why are there so many of them on the dial? More than that, why are they all profitable? You need listeners to have profitability, Boss.
 
This fellow I know bought a failed AM station, and hired John Barger to get it going. Barger had a vision for a news talk station, but realising it would be an expensive format to get going, he sold the fringe time- after 10 at night, weekends and such. Some of the stuff that got on the air was unlistenable, or seemed to be, to me. But it worked for the clients, and it provided the revenues for Barger to get his news and talk niche carved out. That was the mid-70's. That creative use of airtime allowed WOAI-AM to make it through the lean years. After a few more years, the station became the top biller in the market, and spun off so much cash, the owners were able to build a very profitable chain. Low debt, high equity and tight financial controls allowed that company, "Clear Channel'. to become the largest radio group in the country. And it all started with brokered time for unlistenable programming.
 
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