WEMP is tanking!

[badjef]

In conjunction with Big A's post above, I recall reading recently that management will not promote the station till they feel it is working smoothly and sounds the way they want it to. They readily acknowledge that at this point FM News 101.9 is still a work in progress.
WEMP may be trying to emulate the early morning TV shows, such as Today, and Good Morning America. They mix some news with lots of weather, lifestyle features, fluff, giddy tourists waving goofy signs, and entertainment. As they have been doing this for decades, there must be an audience for that sort of fare that attracts advertisers.

Everything is a "work in progress", but over and above that, news/talk format "wars", with well established stations, such as the conditions in NYC, you will not see a "worse to first in 74 days". Of that you can be sure. You are talking about changing the habits of people who are not yearning for something different. WEMP is attempting to attract an audience that does not yet exist. It will take them time in a market where fortunes are won and lost by 10:30 in the morning.

Remember, people listening to WINS are like Pavlov's dog inasmuch as the management still thinks their listeners need a teletype in the background to ensure them they are listening to a news station.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[DToTheJ]

...I didn't even know WRXP existed until KRock went off the air...

And based on recent PPM activity, it appears that folks are now discovering Q104.3 now that WRXP is off the air...

Drelio, the OM in NYC for the three stations (including RXP) was given a billboard budget as a last gasp attempt to generate ratings for RXP... I've never tuned in a station because they advertised on a billboard. Have you?

Point taken, Insider. We all know how well that brilliant "the rock is back" billboard campaign worked for the second incarnation of K-Rock. :

 

[Jersey Maiden]

I've never tuned in a station because they advertised on a billboard. Have you?

Actually, a few days after KRock went under, I saw an RXP ad with a picture of Matt Pinfield at Applebee's. Yes, it was a tableside paper at Applebee's. And it did get me to check RXP out. But I see what you mean. Billboards only work if your target audience is seeking a new station of a specific format. I doubt that seeing a Hot 97 billboard would make my parents want to listen to hip hop. Just as seeing a CD 101.9 ad never motivated me to check out smooth jazz. People who lived a long time in one area have long ago already decided what they like to listen to and billboards are highly unlikely to change their minds. Now maybe if I moved out of the New York area, billboards can help me decide how to change my presets.

They blame the demise of the station on a lack of advertising, which in reality, wouldn't have boosted ratings due to the crappiness of the on-air product.

That "crap" is still better than the majority of what's on Z100. And a 2.5 AQH% (3.0 for Middlesex-Somerset-Union), while hardly blockbuster numbers, are no where near abysmal. Unlike, say, WEMP's 0.5 if that's any comfort (that station will probably go down in history as the lamest attempt to market to women). I'm quite sure that Emmis would have kept it going if they weren't in debt. Oh well, none of that really matters now. And it might have been more about the demographics than the actual numbers for Emmis.

That said, as much as I miss RXP, they did overplay a lot of stuff (Foster the People and Icubus's Adolescents to name a few). And I can't understand why the only thing they played from Adele was "Rolling in the Deep" which can be heard millions of times a day on MANY stations. They could have learned a thing or two from Philly's WRFF, which expanded the Adele catalog to "Set Fire to the Rain" (a much better song than Rolling in the Deep). And it surprised me that WRRF is owned by Clear Channel, which is often the poster boy for the decline of quality in radio. Then again, Philly (with less than 1/4 of New York's population) has 2 non-classic rock stations. I'll always wonder if RXP's playlist would have been broader if they had to compete with Krock for more than a year.

And based on recent PPM activity, it appears that folks are now discovering Q104.3 now that WRXP is off the air...

And to a lesser extent, rimshot stations like WDHA.