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WEMP-FM Time to give up?

briancraig said:
I agree you would have to play Pitbull, Flo Rida etc. to get ratings but my friends who are into dance music don't like those artists and would consider them too pop.

If KTU added more pure dance without excluding anything they play now, would the coalition be satisfied.
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Please understand, it's not about the coalition or even me being satisfied. It's about dance music fans as a whole being satisfied. :)

Granted, I see it from both sides whereas the casual fan likes hearing these and other artists that are being played on CHR and a station like a 'KTU. Yet from a core fan side what's being played is considered a "joke" and not truly what dance music represents. That's the crossroads. I'm not saying a 'KTU because they're billing well with their brand of rhythmic A/C and won't change anytime in the near future, but if a dance station came along and had aspects of what a core fan would listen to, there would be no issue. Even if Rihanna, Flo Rida, etc was being played, just as long as they know some on the core aspect is coming up that would be fine.

Pulse 87 did play rhythmic R&B in their format (Sean Kingston). But people knew that dance was coming back and they stuck with hearing artists such as him.

I still think there is something to be said, for now, about FM radio although things are transitioning towards spoken word formats while music (especially to audiences under 30) will be heard on the emerging technologies (smartphones, streaming car stereos, etc.). I do realize that IF a dance/EDM station happened on the FM dial in New York, it would also be the very last time a station would have such a format there. Once that goes, it's gone for good.
 
WNTIRadio said:
I disagree with Pulse being top 5 if it were north of 92MHz. It may have pulled a 2.2-2.3, but not a 6 share. Just like country, it has its fans and to everyone else it really doesn't exist.

Pulse had good numbers for its signal and dial position because the P1's went out of their way to listen, the same way people complained when the 106.3 translator came on in NYC. A small but loyal group of P1's doesn't translate into a top 5 station, mass appeal does. Dance, in the form that Tony wants isn't MASS appeal, the same way CBS-FM, Lite, Z-100, WKTU and Q-104.3 are. Period. A dance station isn't going to come close to any of those stations. It will be a high TSL, low cume format. Saying that Pulse would have been top 5 is the same as saying the Yankees are going to beat the Red Sox 89-2 because you root for the team.
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Granted, Pulse would have NEVER beaten a Lite FM or 'CBS or even garner a 6 share. But it wouldn't have been as low as a 2.2 either. At best a 3.5 and that's still pretty good to make top 5. :) Sure, you had loyal fans such as myself that left the dial parked at 87.7 and there were a lot more of us than people realized.

Now this is where we come to philosophical terms here. Mass appeal spells "safe". A lot of these radio stations want to be "safe" and I can understand why....bad economy, go with what is "proven", etc. But I also believe that as long as something is exposed and people like it, there can be that mass appeal for something that is "edgy" and "different" than what is being presented on the radio dial. That's why the younger audience, for the most part, has been turned off by radio in that sense because they want to hear something different and not the same old, same old. And that's where radio has fallen off in that sense...IMHO.

Take a look at other posts on this thread that I've written. I totally understand about playing the pop aspects of dance. Not everyone is a P1. I got that. But I strongly believe that such a station can cater to both the core and casual listener at the same time. For the casual listener they have that potential to "open up" to hearing more edgy sounds that CHR may not necessarily play. And for the core fan, they can hear that edge and if they have to deal with the mainstream electro pop for a moment at least they know something is coming that will cater to their tastes.

And on another note, the METS will beat the Yankees 89 - 2! ;) (disclaimer: this is me joking around, lol)
 
Tony Santiago said:
Now this is where we come to philosophical terms here. Mass appeal spells "safe". A lot of these radio stations want to be "safe" and I can understand why....bad economy, go with what is "proven", etc.
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And the NYC market is especially "safe" compared to other markets. You're not going to hear much new music being debuted on a NYC station. It usually gets played and "tested" on stations in other markets first. Years ago I was down in Atlanta and heard a lot of music I had never heard before. It was at least 3-4 months before they started playing some of those songs in NYC. So that's just one more drawback to the NYC market.
 
ansky212 said:
And the NYC market is especially "safe" compared to other markets. You're not going to hear much new music being debuted on a NYC station. It usually gets played and "tested" on stations in other markets first. Years ago I was down in Atlanta and heard a lot of music I had never heard before. It was at least 3-4 months before they started playing some of those songs in NYC. So that's just one more drawback to the NYC market.
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Unfortunately, you are SO right. :(
 
NYC radio is so conservative with new music, that its only commercial rock station, Q-104 doesn't play any music that is more recent than 20 years old. :p
 
New York clearly needs something else even before another music format is tried--it needs a real news/talk station, of the kind which WABC used to be when it was live, local and wide-ranging in its point of view--and had twice the AQH and three to five times the cume it has now.

Clearly the current GOP-speak format which WABC, WOR (except for David Paterson) and WNYM are all airing isn't working for any of them. Look at the latest PPM reports for April and May. Two of them are at 90-year lows in audience share in the market and roughly 70 year lows in cume...while the third has never really been more than a blip on the Arbitron radar since it stopped playing the hits back in the 70s. The market has spoken and when it comes to talk radio it's speaking with one word--NO!

WEMP has a chance to re-invent itself as a station like WABC used to be in its heyday under John Mainelli's program management, KABC used to be until the mid-90s, KGO used to be under Mickey Luckoff when the Mouse owned it--or KFI in Los Angeles is now. And they could cash in with the kind of revenues those stations used to gather (or in KFI's case, still does). Will they have the stones to do it?
 
I still don't see a dance station over a 2.5. The market just isn't there for a 3.5-3.8. The casual listeners will stick with KTU.
 
Bob1370 said:
The market has spoken and when it comes to talk radio it's speaking with one word--NO!

WEMP has a chance to re-invent itself as a station like WABC used to be in its heyday under John Mainelli's program management, KABC used to be until the mid-90s, KGO used to be under Mickey Luckoff when the Mouse owned it--or KFI in Los Angeles is now. And they could cash in with the kind of revenues those stations used to gather (or in KFI's case, still does). Will they have the stones to do it?
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Add to those KIRO-FM Seattle, KTAR-FM Phoenix, WLW Cincinnati, WGN Chicago. All are local or mostly local. It is disgraceful that Market #1 has talk radio choices that are more like Miami or Las Vegas.

How low do WEMP's ratings have to sink before Randy Michaels pulls the trigger and flips 101.9 to News/Talk? ???
 
radioguy39nj said:
Bob1370 said:
The market has spoken and when it comes to talk radio it's speaking with one word--NO!

WEMP has a chance to re-invent itself as a station like WABC used to be in its heyday under John Mainelli's program management, KABC used to be until the mid-90s, KGO used to be under Mickey Luckoff when the Mouse owned it--or KFI in Los Angeles is now. And they could cash in with the kind of revenues those stations used to gather (or in KFI's case, still does). Will they have the stones to do it?
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Add to those KIRO-FM Seattle, KTAR-FM Phoenix, WLW Cincinnati, WGN Chicago. All are local or mostly local. It is disgraceful that Market #1 has talk radio choices that are more like Miami or Las Vegas.

How low do WEMP's ratings have to sink before Randy Michaels pulls the trigger and flips 101.9 to News/Talk? ???
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NJ 101.5 is already beating FM News 101.9 in New York, and its transmitter is 50 miles away in Trenton!
 
How low do WEMP's ratings have to sink before Randy Michaels pulls the trigger and flips 101.9 to News/Talk? Huh
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There is always the possibility that Michaels has a deal lined up with Premier, like he has in Philly, and the plan now is to wait until the Rush and Hannity contracts with Cumulus and WABC run out, and then return Beck to NYC radio too.

If that is the plan, it just makes sense to coast with the current format until the big syndicated programs become available. And in Philly they are still doing news in morning drive, and that also still might make sense for WEMP long-term.

He could let the syndicated talk carry the station until the demos get way too old and the format fades to dark, and by that time the AM all newsers will have lost even more cume, and he can morph his FM back to all news using the morning show as a base.
 
TimeIsTight said:
There is always the possibility that Michaels has a deal lined up with Premier, like he has in Philly, and the plan now is to wait until the Rush and Hannity contracts with Cumulus and WABC run out, and then return Beck to NYC radio too.
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How much longer do Rush & Sean have with WABC? IINM, those contracts were just renewed in early 2011.

Rush and Sean have been with WABC seemingly forever. What does WABC do if they lose them? Go live and local? NOT!!!! :mad:
 
Rush and Sean have been with WABC seemingly forever. What does WABC do if they lose them? Go live and local? NOT!!!! Angry
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It's no secret that WABC's owner Cumulus would like to replace Rush with Huckabee, so it could keep all the revenue generated during those hours everyday.

I can't confirm it, but I have heard that the WABC/Premier syndication deal for Rush to run on WABC runs out sometime next year.

Hannity is a different story, since Cumulus co-syndicates the show with Premier. The Clear Channel unit handles ad sales and distribution to all non-Cumulus stations. So, in a sense Cumulus is running its own show with Hannity already, and would likely want to keep it.
 
No matter what WEMP does, it will still be the third rate radio news source. 1010 WINS, WCBS 880 and WNYC/NPR blow it out of the water.
 
NorwoodBoundD said:
No matter what WEMP does, it will still be the third rate radio news source. 1010 WINS, WCBS 880 and WNYC/NPR blow it out of the water.
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NJ 101.5 blows it out of the water, with a signal from Trenton NJ 50 miles away.
 
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