Chiming in... out of curiosity, I tuned in to 101.9 this past Friday for most of the drive from Queens down to the Jersey Shore... I guess between 10:00 AM and noon. My (long-winded) observations (incidentally, I am W25-34, decent HHI, so perhaps ad sales should consider this a focus group of one):
- First thing first... the pandering to my ladybrain was off the charts! At some point, as they bungled some headline related to the stock market roller coaster, they actually transitioned to the next story by saying "Oh well, who cares about the economy when we have news that J-Lo and Marc Anthony may be getting back together!" Oy. Also, the female announcer seemed to have to meet a quota for how many times she dropped "chocolate," "shoes," and/or "shopping" into conversation. But probably the most egregious example was during a pre-recorded "career advice" segment, in which a (male) contributor dispensed advice to women considering dating a co-worker, punctuated by the line "You know you want to, gurl!"
- Agree with what everyone on the issues re: station identification. What was interesting to me was that it wasn't just the live newscasters that were bungling the 101.9 New(s)/FM 101.9 IDs. The pre-recorded segments were totally inconsistent... some were obviously holdovers from the "New" ID used during stunting, but they were seriously all over the place.
- I was also very much bothered by the fact that the anchors never identified themselves once during the two hours I listened. Now, I suppose anchors on traditional News stations don't necessarily identify themselves, but they also serve more of a "Voice of God" role, objectively reporting on the news as it is. The role of the anchors at 101.9 is more that of an arbiter of what actually constitutes news--as such, they need to be able to forge a more emotional relationship with their audience. Which certainly begins with name recognition.
- Worth noting, stories repeated themselves practically verbatim each hour. Pre-recorded segments were occasionally aired more than once an hour.
- As for the traffic reports, they cover a lot of ground in the 2-minute format, which is great. That said, I was stuck for about 45 minutes in serious construction-related traffic heading towards the Outerbridge Crossing in Staten Island, which never warranted a mentioned (had it, I could have easily taken the Goethals. Traffic averted). Considering the back-up was in fact due to construction, and probably occurs pretty regularly during weekdays, no reason it shouldn't have been on their radar. They did, however, bring up backups at Kosciuszko Bridge pretty much every ten minutes... not only was the backup not that significant (five minutes, at most), but saying that there is a backup at the Kosciuszko is sort of like saying the sky is blue. It just goes without saying. Getting a bit nit-pickier, the traffic presentation could use to be a bit more polished; even though it's 2x as long as the standard traffic break, the slooowwww reading probably cuts into that considerably.
- And last (since this is getting very long-winded), probably my single biggest gripe (apropos of nothing)... in one of the pre-recorded "family friendly" segments (they had several; another issue I had with them is that they came off very advertorial-sounding, but that's part of another conversation I guess), they were promoting the Jim Henson exhibit at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria (which is fantastic, BTW). The reporter referred to the Muppets as something along the lines of "those lovable creatures that have been delighting children of all ages since the 1980's." Now, maybe this is nit-picky, but that's just plain WRONG, as most of Jim Henson's most recognizable work (Sesame Street; The Muppet Show; the original movies) pre-dated the 1980's.
So, that's my take. YMMV.
