What’s wrong with KROQ 106.7 FM, and what can be done to fix it
KROQ cannot be KROQ when it has to play everywhere.
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What’s wrong with KROQ 106.7 FM, and what can be done to fix it
- Thread starter Sean Cocca
- Start date
www.dailynews.com
That article is full of so many factual inaccuracies and biases, it's hard to even begin.
It's hard to be a trend-setting station when your DJs are in their 50s, and mainly play 30 year old songs. That's what KROQ was two years ago. So now they're aging down a bit, and it's harder to get great ratings when you mainly play new music by unfamiliar artists. It takes time to build an audience for that. The concept of alternative radio was not to get big ratings. That's at the core of what the format is about.
But the stupid line is where it says "Audacy no longer has local personalities." While that may be true in a lot of other cities, it's not true in LA, and it's not what the problem is at KROQ.
It's hard to be a trend-setting station when your DJs are in their 50s, and mainly play 30 year old songs. That's what KROQ was two years ago. So now they're aging down a bit, and it's harder to get great ratings when you mainly play new music by unfamiliar artists. It takes time to build an audience for that. The concept of alternative radio was not to get big ratings. That's at the core of what the format is about.
But the stupid line is where it says "Audacy no longer has local personalities." While that may be true in a lot of other cities, it's not true in LA, and it's not what the problem is at KROQ.
Every paragraph had a full and total Stupid Quotient score.
And I am fascinated the the original post, citing the horrible and untrue article, now has a bunch of Likes.
I barfed at the "KROQ killed KMET". Two separate formats, different listeners. The KMET battle was between AOR stations, and KROQ back in those years was still developing a core with a different kind of rock that had splintered away from "regular" album rock and started to create a separate universe.
A friend was the PD of the Spanish oldies AM in the same building with the FM in Burbank in the "early years". Besides the interesting aroma and non-stop party with record ducks in the studio, they even had strobe lights and stuff them played with "in there". It was called "alternative" because it was not mainstream like the AOR stations.
Some good points for sure. But on the whole it's difficult to argue with the underlying point that KROQ simply no longer has a finger on the pulse of this city - and therein lies the rub.
Probably more to do with appearance of WaterPark Band in their new fishbowl studio
That's because the pulse of the city speaks a different language.
Therein lies the rub. When people talk about changes in radio, they usually are talking about changes in demographics.
Please -
Spoken Languages, City of Los Angeles, California
Almanac facts, information and trivia about Los Angeles County, its people, cities and communities.
www.laalmanac.com
I'm talking about changing demographics. The city has changed in the last 30 years.
I agree with what he says, but unfortunately Kevin became part of the problem.
So Kevin calls it "connection", I call it "pulse". We are splitting hairs. It's the same thing. SMH.
That is only for the city of LA. The market is the whole county plus Orange County. An in most of the sales demos, we are approaching 50% Hispanics. And the ability to speak English does not mean that, all of a sudden, one's taste in music has changed. I speak English rather well, but for music I am 90% Spanish language... salsa, vallenato, cumbia, reggaetón and more.Please -
Spoken Languages, City of Los Angeles, California
Almanac facts, information and trivia about Los Angeles County, its people, cities and communities.
As I have said before, Hispanic immigrants come from nations where there are many rock stations. But those who emigrate are not the listeners so when they get to the US, they are not potential rock station users.
And among the rock stations in Latin America, alternative rock is barely played or what is played is crossover material. The idea of getting members of the various immigrant groups to follow any alternative station is more of a dream than a concept.
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The problem is in the changing demographics in the market where interest in alternative rock continues to lessen as time goes by.
nevermind
This is a funny line, David.
I wonder if when the writer says "KROQ was Los Angeles", if what he really means is "KROQ was me". Obviously, KROQ has had better ratings in the past, but this missive doesn't sound all that different than when Saul Levine pines for his classical radio station again.
Yes!!!
I looked at the annual average share for KROQ going back to the start...
https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Duncan-American-Radio/Duncan-1975-1992/Los Angeles.pdf
The best year averaged a 4.4 and that was 1994. That is less than one out of every 20 people listening to the radio at any given time was listening to KROQ. They cumed just under 14% of the population. That meant that less than one out of every 7 people ever listened to it in the average week.
How can a station "be Los Angeles" if the overwhelming percentage of the population never listened? Well, KIIS had five or six years when over 20% of the population listened weekly. Was Kiss-FM Los Angeles?
I could say that KLVE, which had many years from 1995 onward that beat KROQ's best ones by significant percentages, "was really Los Angeles". After all, the numbers don't lie, do they? Heck, KLVE is in Spanish, and the name of the city is Spanish, so I guess KLVE can claim that LA is theirs. I'll bring it up in the next meeting.
What should really be said is "a bunch of people who loved System of a Down really liked KROQ... years ago". That is closer to the truth.
Maybe to you. To me, LA has many different pulses and I've been lucky to enjoy a lot of them. Whether its the entertainment pulse with the movie & TV communities or the various music communities, of which there are several. At one time, it was at the Whiskey. At another time it might have been the Palomino. You wouldn't find any KROQ folks there. It's not just one thing. That's the great thing about a big city. It has many different pulses and many ways to enjoy them all.
But I agree that in its time, KROQ had a connection to its listener base. It did it in several ways. Rodney was one of those ways. The Weenie Roast was another. What we're talking about is outreach and embedding in the community. In the way that KMET did as well in its early days. In the way that a lot of radio stations still do. But at some point, perhaps 10 or more years ago, when Kevin Weatherly was still there, when the station was still owned by CBS, the DJs got old and lazy. A lot of that connection started to fray. It didn't get better. This is not a recent thing. It was take a long time to rebuild.
KMET did alright in the beginning, But I believe it was their lack of focus that pulled them down really quickly and later led to their downfall on February 14, 1987. First rival KLOS leaps ahead in the ratings, Management drops the “free form” leeway approach/tries to clean up the playlist. Then the numbers start dropping over the next few years. By the end the cancer was simply too deep, it had to be cut out.
I wonder if KROQ will be the next to fall 🤔
I wonder if KROQ will be the next to fall 🤔
Demographics are a big portion of KROQ's decline, but we also can't forget that, for quite some time now, 98.7 has outdone KROQ at doing its own thing. As David mentions, KROQ's highest audience share averaged a 4.4 in 1994. Between 98.7 and KROQ, there's still roughly that much of a share for the format, but 98.7 gets the bulk of it today.
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