Surfer said:...and that's the million dollar question! What format would work here. Oh, and by "working" I mean making money, entertaining listeners and making advertisers happy. If it doesn't have ALL THREE ELEMENTS, don't bother answering because, chances are, we've all heard it before and we DO know how it will affect Q100.
As for me, I would say we need a station that is willing to take a risk and do something no other station will do in this market...create a station that appeals to as many folks as possible. Now I understand you can't please everybody but, not so many years ago, stations would take the best of whatever was hot and play it as their format. That was the beginnings of popular music (Elvis, Herb Alpert, The Beatles, Frankie Laine, Ray Stevens, etc.)
Music was collected from all formats and commercial time was limited. Listeners were considered to be gold and to be treated as such. Advertisers were also. Unfortunately, we all have the need for greed and so good business gave way to making more money. So, maybe we can return to a format that mixes some of the best of pop, rap, R & B, Jazz, Classical, Oldies or whatever. If done with the listener in mind, maybe...
Plum said:All right, I've had this great idea on what to do with WNNX 99.7, so here goes: Atlanta needs an oldies station. Can we all agree on that? Well why doesn't Cumulus turn the 99.7 frequency to oldies. No, not the tired old motown/ beach boys, byrds tired good time great oldies format. How bout one that spans b/t 1968 to 1983. Make it about 60 percent 70s (like pop 70s which includes a little rock, some soul and a little crossover country, like the top 40 used to be); 30 percent early 80s and the rest late 60s (say, age of aquarius, 5th dimension). have a 70s at 7 in the am and pm drives. have LIVE local djs at all times, bring back the request line, and actually take requests! they'd have mid 30s to mid 50s demographics sewn up in an era where very shortly most people will be over 40! and have an expansive playlist much like the old lake 102 did. What do you think? it's got to get more buzz than what 99x is bringin' in these days.
atlradiofan2 said:format is not the answer. Throw away formulation and provide local content. Radio isn't competing with other stations for listeners, they are competing with ipods with 10,000 song libraries and videos they are competing with 200 station satellite receivers with every possible niche covered. If the solution continues to be tweaking formats, rotating DJs, and 'blowing up' formats to hold onto a small share radio will lose.
In my humble opinion radio should look to deliver what I can't get on an ipod or a national satellite feed. Make me want to turn off my own mix of favorite songs with no commercials to get content I can't get anywhere else.
lipripper said:I would say we need a station that is willing to take a risk and do something no other station will do in this market.
What do you people think? You treat radio like a game, not a business. Granted, there's two factions working here..the bean counters and the creatives. Both must work together.
Let me ask YOU this question..would you let someone use your money to "play around" and "take risks" and NOT show a profit?
Come on. Let's use our brains and realize how things have changed.
gravelgertie said:A station that has more than a handful of tunes on their playlist. I know - I know, research tells management
that too many songs are a tune out but has any operation ever had an expanded playlist? On an oldies station for istance, go back an grab songs that barely cracked the Top 40 list instead of playing only those that made the top 10 over and over and over again. Honestly, weren't those tunes run-into-the-ground first
time around? Country music radio does it too --- George Jones DID have more than two or three hits so
why not play them instead of wearing out the same old songs day in and day out!
KevinFodor said:On Oldies...
Yes, it's been done...and failed. Many times.