WCBS-FM might flip to the simulcast WCBS-AM all-news 880

[Garrett]

The problem (in my view) is not about the loss of Oldies, its about the loss of WCBS FM. They could have just dropped Oldies altogether, kept the WCBS FM name, and played Hot AC currents, or Mainstream CHR. And why not? If Oldies pull demos too old, why not play new music.

I think it's more about putting Jack FM on a sacred frequency, kind of like tearing down an historical monument to put in a Starbucks. I understand why they had to flip, but the replacement was waaay in the wrong direction. The music they are playing now, is not that much newer than what CBS FM played, imo. But getting rid of the dj's, and taking away the name, baaaad idea.

And this has nothing to do with JACK FM either, which would have been a nice format FOR WNEW.

 

[radiolover78]

Do you really think just keeping the name and jocks would have kept the same listeners?

Something major would have to happen anyway.

If CBS FM still had the same jocks and name, I think there would be a "listener shift" or they would lose listeners.

Something had to happen and it did.

 

[damian542]

I don't know how much they tried to rework the format before the flip... but one of the worst things a station can do is grow old with it's audience.... a station should have a point of focus (P25-54) or whatever and play what those people want to hear... as people reach the upper end of the scale and are not interested in the "newer" stuff you play, they go somewhere else... just as new people come to you that are at the lower end of the demo that are tired of the noise on the younger people's stations... your station should always program to the demo and let the old music fall off.... that's probably what went wrong with CBS-FM... it's hard with oldies... and even worse for nostalgic formats...

 

[radiolover78]

Great points.

Stick hard with your target demo and slowly scrape away music from the upper end of the demo. Continuous advertising may be necessary to bring in new listeners too.

 

[Brooklyndon]

I think jack is a good station. Year after year all the jocks on these boards were whining about how radio needs less segmentation and more unpredicatability. jack came along and gave it. And yes, when channel surfing in my car, I will tune into Jack, if for no other reason than they may be playing a song I like, regardless of the mood I'm in. If I'm in a rock mood, I check out jack, if I'm in soft music mood, I check out Jack, if I'm in a hair metal mood, I check out jack, and if I'm in a disco mood I check out jack. In all cases, I give the station a try. And, I'm sure, their TSL is abysmal, but, with the advent of pay-per-click, segmented audiences are becoming useless for brand building anyway, so, a station that gets a lot of people to channel surf to their station, on the off chance that they might be playing something they like, is more likely to have a greater overall channel surfing audience, trained in some pavlovian way to expect god songs from Jack. It beguiles me why everyone is surprised a station that is basicaly designed to hold a listener for 10 minutes or less has crap ratings. A broad sized audience is the logic behind these station, TSL is an afterthought.

Jack = Disposable radio for your trip to Wal Mart .. now buy Tide laundry detergent.

 

[smashedcd]

Aren't there FCC regulations against 100% AM/FM simulcasting?

never heard that one. and here in new orleans we have wwl 870am/105.3 fm..100% simolcast

 

[Jul]

never heard that one. and here in new orleans we have wwl 870am/105.3 fm..100% simolcast

KSL is another one. AM 1160 and FM 102.7

 

[4dude]

I believe the current WCBS Program Director, Brian Thomas, has an background in the Oldies format, so he could easily transition from Jack to Oldies, if Joel sees fit.

Totally stupid to simul the AM......They had a perfectly good OLDIES FORMAT for years!!!!! (Which they are still running on one of thier subs LUCKILY)

Why waste thier station putting news on it??

I remember Brian Thomas from WTIC in hartford.....He is pretty good!!

Lets hope they just put the original format back on the main carrier!!

 

[radiolover78]

Things weren't so hot at CBS-FM the last 5 years or so.

They're not going to put oldies back on the station. If they do, I'd be shocked.

 

[Starscream]

Things weren't so hot at CBS-FM the last 5 years or so.

They're not going to put oldies back on the station. If they do, I'd be shocked.

Please don't incite a riot. We JUST got jayedwards calmed down.

 

[Faraway]

Getting back to the origonal point of this thread -

The KSL and KTAR examples don't necessarily apply here because the simulcasts are going on stations that are essentuially sticks with minimal billing. 880 is a revenue monster. CBS-FM may not bill anywhere near what it did a few years back but I'm betting it's still not shabby. A simulcast would erase millions of dollars in potential billing. I don't think the simulcast is likely. Moving the news format to FM would be great but what would you do on the AM signal that could come close to the revenues Jack has now. For CBS to do something like that, they'd need to at least break even on the deal...my guess is that no way no how would they ever be able to come up with a format for 880 that would equal the billing of Jack. Hey, I grew up on WLS, WCFL and Dx'd WABC, I loved that kind of radio...but these days, oldies on FM is a tough sell, let along on AM.

 

[radiolover78]

Please don't incite a riot. We JUST got jayedwards calmed down.

He can't handle reality?

 

[smashedcd]

Getting back to the origonal point of this thread -

The KSL and KTAR examples don't necessarily apply here because the simulcasts are going on stations that are essentuially sticks with minimal billing. 880 is a revenue monster. CBS-FM may not bill anywhere near what it did a few years back but I'm betting it's still not shabby. A simulcast would erase millions of dollars in potential billing. I don't think the simulcast is likely. Moving the news format to FM would be great but what would you do on the AM signal that could come close to the revenues Jack has now. For CBS to do something like that, they'd need to at least break even on the deal...my guess is that no way no how would they ever be able to come up with a format for 880 that would equal the billing of Jack. Hey, I grew up on WLS, WCFL and Dx'd WABC, I loved that kind of radio...but these days, oldies on FM is a tough sell, let along on AM.

i thought since all these stations were going to iboc. and am would sound like fm. then music would be ok again on am radio. at least thats wht ive been told by all the industry people that are in love with iboc. you mean they are wrong. am want sound as good as fm...

 

[davideduardo]

The KSL and KTAR examples don't necessarily apply here because the simulcasts are going on stations that are essentuially sticks with minimal billing. 880 is a revenue monster. CBS-FM may not bill anywhere near what it did a few years back but I'm betting it's still not shabby. A simulcast would erase millions of dollars in potential billing. I don't think the simulcast is likely. Moving the news format to FM would be great but what would you do on the AM signal that could come close to the revenues Jack has now. For CBS to do something like that, they'd need to at least break even on the deal...my guess is that no way no how would they ever be able to come up with a format for 880 that would equal the billing of Jack. Hey, I grew up on WLS, WCFL and Dx'd WABC, I loved that kind of radio...but these days, oldies on FM is a tough sell, let along on AM.

Power in Phoenix, which Bonneville bought, was a top biller in the market. Bonneville does not like hip-hop stations as they are probably not a tight fit with thier LDS ownership, so they sold the format for nearly $10 million to another operator. However, Bonneville seems to feel that news / talk can be made more viable to under-45 listeners by putting it on FM.

On the other hand, I am totally in agreement with your viewpoint on WCBS AM. A huge biller, which would be left with nohting to do if it moved to FM. All CBS would do is lose money, and a huge amount, by doing this. WCBS AM is the third highest biller in the market, and among the top 10 billers in the entire USA.

 

[davideduardo]

i thought since all these stations were going to iboc. and am would sound like fm. then music would be ok again on am radio. at least thats wht ive been told by all the industry people that are in love with iboc. you mean they are wrong. am want sound as good as fm...

HD will make AM "FM like" for those with HD radios. It does not change much the quality of analog AM (although the reduction in bandwidth seems to sound better on today's crappy analog AM radios.)

 

[pqgeorge]

>>HD will make AM "FM like" for those with HD radios. It does not change much the quality of analog AM (although the reduction in bandwidth seems to sound better on today's crappy analog AM radios.)<<

You ARE kidding, aren't you? With all due respect.....the IBOC AM analog signal sounds like crap. It sounds no better than a voice grade phone line (4 maybe 5 khz at best). The IBOC digital signal sounds like a 64K/mp3PRO audio stream on the web. Sure, it's in Stereo. But it really lacks any luster. I won't even get started about the hash on the center channel, as well as the co-channels.

 

[davideduardo]

>>HD will make AM "FM like" for those with HD radios. It does not change much the quality of analog AM (although the reduction in bandwidth seems to sound better on today's crappy analog AM radios.)<<

You ARE kidding, aren't you? With all due respect.....the IBOC AM analog signal sounds like crap. It sounds no better than a voice grade phone line (4 maybe 5 khz at best). The IBOC digital signal sounds like a 64K/mp3PRO audio stream on the web. Sure, it's in Stereo. But it really lacks any luster. I won't even get started about the hash on the center channel, as well as the co-channels.

On most of today's AM radios, the cheap design actually sounds better with the 7 kHz cut off now being used by many for HD (not everyone is cutting to 5 kHz) and, whichever the choice, the stations sound better, not worse in most cases.

The AM HD digital signal under firmware 2.2.5 sounds quite robust. Wnen engineers learn to avoid cascading codecs ahead of the HD encoding, these stations will sound terrific on HD mode... I know ours do.

AM is dying. Isn't it worth it to try something new? For example, in LA, the sum total of all AM loistening among persons 12 to 34 is less than the individual listening to each of the first 6 FM stations in that age group. In total, in 12-49, AM has only about 10 shares in LA against 90 for FM. In many markets, it is even worse (because LA brings meany to AM due to having ethnic formats not available on FM like Farsi, Korean, vietnamese, Chinese dialects, Tagalog, etc.). AM can not survive without some kind of change, and HD is what we have.

 

[BobRoss]

Back to the format topic... I agree with the poster who said do oldies, but a "newer" kind of oldies. But I'm not so sure I'd call it "oldies" per se. Why?

1) The "oldies" purists WILL complain if their doo-wop stuff from the 40's and 50's is missing from an "oldies" station.

2) The younger demos you want to attract probably have a mental stigma about the "oldies" brand. "Old" is not "cool" to the 30-somethings and even the 40-somethings who are hipper for their age than their parents were.

Another thing to consider, a good "newer oldies" format needs to have a broader range of music. Back in the 40's and 50's, there was just top 40. There was little or no segmentation of formats. If a song was #1 in the 40's, 50's and 60's, it was #1, period. A station TODAY dealing with "oldies" as recent as the 70's and 80's will need to be almost jack-like in including the top hits from a variety of formats: AC, CHR, rock, etc. That's probably the most difficult part -- you want to appeal to as many people as possible, but you can't stretch yourself too thin.

I would think a "newer oldies" could be done, it's just a matter of doing the research to find what kinds of songs would do the best... and how to market the station. I call it "newer oldies" but that definitely wouldn't be the station's name.

 

[RadioMan203]

Just in case nobody remembers, WNBC use to have news on FM - Yes, WNWS-FM was the precursor to what later became WYNY (which was a station and format I really miss). There are some other stations that have all-news on FM. If I'm not mistaken, Washington DC's WTOP also does news on their FM channel as well as being a legacy AM news station.

With the poorly performing CBS properties, why not put CBS-AM on CBS-FM, and WINS-AM on the floundering WNEW-FM? They could always put oldies back on the AM's instead if they wanted to break the simulcating.


Bill
CapitalRadio.us

 

[neo11]

What a monumental waste of two full-power FM signals. AM is perfectly fine for news and talk, and between the two stations' coverage patterns, the entire metro area is covered and usually overlapped except where one station has a null.

And what would they do with the two AM's? Two oldies stations? Why would they compete against themselves like that and fracture that audience more than it needs to? But if they only put on one oldies station, what would the other AM air? And don't you think that, when it all comes down to it, billing will decrease? Music on AM, even oldies, isn't going to be a money-maker in a market like NYC, plain and simple. CBS Radio will make more money having the three lowest-ranked full-power FM's in NYC, than it would with putting news on FM (which would actually *decrease* the coverage area as stations like WCBS can be heard hundreds of miles away), and putting on two (sadly) dying formats on the AM. This is a business, after all. One can argue (and quite successfully) that what CBS Radio has done with its FM's is dumb, but this move would be even worse.