Why doesn't city have a Jazz or Neo-Soul station? (new to Columbus)

[jazz4ron]

Greetings, I moved back from the West Coast after 23 years and it appears radio is worse than when I left in the 80's....Columbus has a "smooth jazz" station that plays the same tired cuts over and over...who ever works there knows nothing about the music...there are thousands of artist's out there and they only play the same 10 or so...there is not a station that plays Neo-Soul on a regular basis...there is 98.9 (i think) and they suffer the same illness as (103.5) same songs everyday by the same artists almost at the same time every day...thank God for internet radio....I read that radio's #'s are down..I read that CD sales are down....WAKE UP..play a wider variety or at least hire someone who knows the music and burn those those "surveys"...haha

My 2 cents...

Take it ease,
Ron

 

[dawg4life]

Welcome to Columbus. The crappy radio capital of the world.

Although your genre of music isn't exactly my cup of tea, this pretty much sums it up for just about every format in this city except for country of course. There would be an uproar of rednecks complaining if we didn't have 4 country stations to serve them.

I've been on these boards for years, been banned a few times and I've stated my displeasure on many occasions. So it's like this...

The more you complain, it doesn't stay the same, it actually gets worse. So get used to it my friend or subscribe to Sirus, XM or buy an ipod.

 

[jazz4ron]

hahahaha.....way ahead of you my friend...the interent stations give me lots of enjoyment...not to mention my creative mp3 player.

have a good one!

 

[CatFM]

Local stations owned by companies like Clear Channel, Saga, and Radio One (just like all of their stations in other markets) don't seem to be capable of hiring competent programmers, so they outsource it to consultants...who are consultants because they also are not competent programmers. The last time I knew of a local station that had a REAL Program Director who did his job WITHOUT any consultants was when 98.9 hired Rob Ellis and he took the station from a 1.8 share to a 7.1. Of course, the station was then sold, and the new owner (who should invest in McDonald's franchises rather than radio stations) immediately put Rob on the sidelines and hired a consultant. As anyone who has been in the business could accurately predict, the numbers just went down from there.

Anyone who is either so lazy or incompetent, or both, to figure out how to successfully compete in their area of business, and has to hire a consultant a result, should get out and find another business. Unfortunately, for years the radio industry has been attracting a lot of investors (not to be confused with REAL broadcasters who actually know and care about the business) looking to turn a quick profit in the most efficient manor, which always involves sacrificing quality. Being investors without a clue about broadcasting, the easy out is to hire a consultant.

By the way, I mentioned this point in an earlier posting. One station I worked for in Columbus was going down in the ratings, so they got rid of their consultant and hired a different consultant. Guess what?!!? The numbers kept going down under the second consultant, so what did the station do? They dumped the second consultant and got the first one back. It just boggles the mind...

 

[pbf1]

Local stations owned by companies like Clear Channel, Saga, and Radio One (just like all of their stations in other markets) don't seem to be capable of hiring competent programmers, so they outsource it to consultants...who are consultants because they also are not competent programmers. The last time I knew of a local station that had a REAL Program Director who did his job WITHOUT any consultants was when 98.9 hired Rob Ellis and he took the station from a 1.8 share to a 7.1. Of course, the station was then sold, and the new owner (who should invest in McDonald's franchises rather than radio stations) immediately put Rob on the sidelines and hired a consultant.

Of course, by that time, WCOL was putting a full-power signal on that would render 98.9 less-than-relevant. I doubt Rob would have stayed either way.

Oh, and no, the companies don't hire consultants. Not most, anyway. They don't want to let others in on what's working.

 

[Bill Harmonic]

Ron...I can speak for the jazz. At WJZA, there's no one local anymore who's calling the shots. At one time it was a pretty good station with great local air talent. They had a large and diverse library and they played lots of new music but that died four years ago when Saga took over. Now the station is on the bird from BA and everyone knows where that's at. They're just waiting for it to drop to a certain level (ratings and money) then they can change it and do something they understand and care about. But there is a great show to listen to on Sunday night with Fritz the Night Owl from 9pm-mid. At one time Columbus did have a decent jazz station with WBBY at 103.9 (I had the opportunity to program it for a year) but they had their license taken away by the FCC and have not been on the air for just over 18 years. There is also some good jazz on WCBE. Jazz in this city is an acquired taste and there's not enough audience to support it fulltime. The only folks who would have even an outside shot is one of the NPR sticks. You could program a great sounding station but it would go out of business quickly because those who would listen are a very small vocal minority. Want good jazz? Get on the bird or on the internet. Not happening over the airwaves of this city!

 

[JohnboyCrenshaw]

CatFM:

You forgot to mention RadiOhio's longtime use of consultant Guy Zapolean.

I would also be interested in knowing who currently consults WCOL. Can you help?

Thanks,
JbC

 

[MichaelMcCoy]

Yes. I believe his name is Michael McCoy. CC uses him due to his proximity to the current program director's office. Ha!

BTW, if you ever take time to read more than the Columbus board, you would be lead to believe that every city is the capital of crappy radio. I'm more inclined to believe that every city has it's group if disenchanted and disgruntled part-time and/or underemployed radio peeps who have nothing better to do than to constantly badmouth the current state of radio in their respective cities. Pretty good radio here in C-bus from top to bottom with some pretty good people calling the shots. Learn to appreciate it, bitches.

 

[pbf1]

BTW, if you ever take time to read more than the Columbus board, you would be lead to believe that every city is the capital of crappy radio.

And there you have it. A most true statement.

 

[Bill Harmonic]

Let's see if I get this right Michael. There's a bunch of disenchanted and disgruntled peeps across the country who have nothing else to do but give their opinions on the current "state" of radio and the way most of them see it is that the "state" needs fixing. Correct? Since you see it otherwise, your sage advice is learn to appreciate what you have (bitches...gee, thanks Britney). That's some thought process! I do agree with you on the fact that there is some good radio being done in just about every city (including this one) There are some very talented people and some very talented consultants but that's not the norm anymore. Yes, there are also those on this board who have their rear ends where the sun doesn't shine. But I don't have to accept the current state of radio just because that's all there is! I believe that a lot of other people also believe that way. Radio continues to lose listeners to other sources. That's a given because the rules have changed. "Content" and "choice" is now the game. Entertain and engage your listeners and they will give you their interest. Respect their intelligence and they will give you their attention. That is not being done. The news is not good for the most part but I don't blame those who want more. I do have issue with those who lower the bar and then say accept it because it's the new "state". That I don't have to do! I will not become complacent and satisfied with the status quo because that's the enemy of growth. I believe Columbus radio could be better and I will not learn to appreciate or listen to the current "state". It really comes down to a couple of basic questions for any listener these days. Why should I tune in? What's in it for me? Can't make those two relevant then listeners will just go to something else. They will listen but just not to you. Let's ask a few of "Gen Y" how much they appreciate the state of radio today.

 

[CatFM]

CatFM:

You forgot to mention RadiOhio's longtime use of consultant Guy Zapolean.

I would also be interested in knowing who currently consults WCOL. Can you help?

Thanks,
JbC

Actually, I didn't mention any by name, but in the Oldies days they used E. Alvin Davis and Critical Mess...er, Mass. As for CC, I don't listen to any of their stations, so I haven't paid any attention to what they are doing.

Yes, there are complaints in just about every other market about how bad the stations sound, and with good reason. Most of them do sound bad...and not surprisingly, a lot of them are owned by the same companies. It's cookie cutter radio now. "Kiss" in one market sounds just like "Kiss" in the next market down the road, and the next one beyond that. In some cases, not only are the owners, formatics, and playlists the same, sometimes even the air talent is the same thanks to voice tracking. If you're happy with that, fine. A lot of us who have been around long enough to remember when radio was better haven't been able to come up with a valid reason why it shouldn't be again, but the answer is that it can't be thanks to the Communications Act of 1996. I agree with Bill H. that we shouldn't have to just accept what we have because we have it. The unfortunate thing is that radio is in the process of a slow self-inflicted death. I still listen some, but not as much as I used to. As B.B. King sang, "The Thrill Is Gone."

 

[heresjohnny]

I'm more inclined to believe that every city has it's group if disenchanted and disgruntled part-time and/or underemployed radio peeps who have nothing better to do than to constantly badmouth the current state of radio in their respective cities

actually radio has been running away from innovation for some time. it has become a medium of boring sameness.

Pretty good radio here in C-bus from top to bottom with some pretty good people calling the shots

sadly, fewer and fewer good people as conglomerates offer poverty level wages. radio is not alone in this though. it can be said of all media.

Learn to appreciate it, bitches

clearly another thing that hasn't changed in the years since i walked away from radio, no lack of arrogant self absorbed mid-level schlubs. go ahead and gloat. look down your nose at those unemployed/underemployed badmouthing peeps. you'll forget my post after reading it, but will remember it when your day comes ;D

 

[KFodor]

CatFM:

You forgot to mention RadiOhio's longtime use of consultant Guy Zapolean.

I would also be interested in knowing who currently consults WCOL. Can you help?

Thanks,
JbC

Actually, I didn't mention any by name, but in the Oldies days they used E. Alvin Davis and Critical Mess...er, Mass. As for CC, I don't listen to any of their stations, so I haven't paid any attention to what they are doing.

Yes, there are complaints in just about every other market about how bad the stations sound, and with good reason. Most of them do sound bad...and not surprisingly, a lot of them are owned by the same companies. It's cookie cutter radio now. "Kiss" in one market sounds just like "Kiss" in the next market down the road, and the next one beyond that. In some cases, not only are the owners, formatics, and playlists the same, sometimes even the air talent is the same thanks to voice tracking. If you're happy with that, fine. A lot of us who have been around long enough to remember when radio was better haven't been able to come up with a valid reason why it shouldn't be again, but the answer is that it can't be thanks to the Communications Act of 1996. I agree with Bill H. that we shouldn't have to just accept what we have because we have it. The unfortunate thing is that radio is in the process of a slow self-inflicted death. I still listen some, but not as much as I used to. As B.B. King sang, "The Thrill Is Gone."

Cat:

WCOL-FM, as an oldies station had 2 consultants.

The first, Pete Salant only lasted a couple of months. The GM dismissed him in what I would only describe as a "philosophical disagreement" between the two gentleman. The station operated without a consultant until the BNS flip. Then, we hired Critical Mass Media as our consultant.

I can't speak for anything other than their work with us, but we were very happy with the work they did. Beating a far-better financed competitor 13 out of 13 books...you can't ask for better than that.

I can say I learned a great deal from them about winning a head-to-head radio battle, too. I had previous "problems" with consultants, and when I mentioned that in a meeting with the consultant and described the problems his answer was: "Then I need to apologize to you for all consultants. What you experienced is not what we're supposed to do."

And every relationship I've had with a consultant since then has been good. I've said this in other posts. There are consultants...and then there are consultants.

 

[CatFM]

Hey Jason! Yep, I was there under Pete, so it was more than a couple of months. It surprises me that you would give much credit to a consultant for beating BNS. While there could be something to that, the fact remains that even with the money behind BNS, COL had a far superior sounding product to offer in every other respect, and I doubt that you would disagree with that. As I remember, we were playing between 1200-1400 songs in the early days of Oldies at COL, and it was a breath of fresh air. Later on at BNS, the consultants did what they always did when the numbers dropped...tightened the playlist until it was down to 600 songs. People were constantly calling with complaints about hearing the same songs over and over. I mentioned it to the PD, but of course, he was merely a bystander since the consultant really programmed the station. His only real function was to schedule the weekend air shifts. Other than that, he was just purely ornamental. I don't think he went to the bathroom without clearing it with the consultant first, but that is the way I have seen it at several stations where I have worked, and you undoubtedly have as well.

As for the consultant's idea of playing the same stuff over and over, does anyone really want to hear that much repetition? Is there any research to support listeners wanting to hear the same song on an Oldies station 6 hours after it was last played? There were times when I had to add music at BNS because the spot load was either real light or non-existent on the weekends and not enough was scheduled on the music log. Looking ahead in the log to find something, I quite often saw many of the same songs scheduled in the 3 PM hour that I was playing in the 9 AM hour. For an Oldies station covering a couple of decades of music, that is just plain stupid. I've heard the argument over and over that a person listening at 9 AM wouldn't be listening at 3 PM, yet stations like to promote that you can listen to them all day at work or wherever. I must have missed the logic in that.

For what it's worth, COL was a whole lot more fun to work at than BNS. The morale at BNS was the absolute pits and it seemed like everyone was just putting in their time until the inevitable format change. Even after COL went Country and BNS was the only Oldies station in the market, it was just drifting. Maybe things have changed under the new management, but in those days the Wolfes spent their money at TV, not radio. It's odd that in this market, WBNS and WTVN both operated completely separate radio and television stations with different managers across town. Of course, WTVN's radio side held their own pretty well through the years. I don't know how much of a "family" feeling there was between their employees, but the situation I saw at BNS was more like the radio people were distant relatives in the group. The TV people pretty well snubbed them at every opportunity. That's sad. Maybe it would have been different if radio and TV had been under the same roof with the same management.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

For what it's worth, COL was a whole lot more fun to work at than BNS.  The morale at BNS was the absolute pits and it seemed like everyone was just putting in their time until the inevitable format change.  Even after COL went Country and BNS was the only Oldies station in the market, it was just drifting. 

Another example of where locally-owned isn't always better than corporate.  The locals are generally worse in Columbus (and that's meant to be taken more as criticism of the locals than an opinion on the corporates).  But then there are plenty of other markets where some mom-and-pops put the corporates to shame. 

I know people have to take a stance to make this kind of discussion work, but it seems like many folks are missing the middle ground.  The fact is that:
There are good mom-and-pop stations and bad ones.
There are good corporate stations and bad ones.
There are good consultants and bad ones.
Cookie-cutter is hardly a new concept...look at all the stations doing "Q" Top 40 in the mid-70's (very successfully, including WNCI).
There are people who complain on Market A's board, who might not complain so often if they were in Market B (I'm an example).  And vice-versa.  (Though yes, there is also that group that will never be satisfied.)
You can have successful stations with short lists, and you can have successful stations with long lists.  I recall when millionaire-in-the-making Bob Pittman was tagged to program then-AOR WKQX Chicago, and he said (paraphrasing), "I can make it work with a long list, or I can make it work with a short list.")

In short, there's too much over-generalizing going on here.

 

[CatFM]

Mike Joseph had a good run with "Hot Hits" on some of the CBS FM stations in the 80s with an extremely tight playlist, but it didn't have staying power. A friend I worked with earlier ended up on their Boston station and I visited in 82 or 83 when they were running it. I asked him when I was in the control room where all of the music was. There was a rotating cart rack with spots, and a small rack on the wall. The entire music library of "Hot Hits" amounted to 200 carts on the wall behind the console. But mind you, that was a current hits format, not an Oldies format.

Please don't view any of my comments about WBNS as being negative toward local ownership. I am strongly in favor of local ownership rather than absentee corporate. The Wolfes have done a superior job with WBNS-TV from day one and have managed to keep it the top performing station in the market against competition from the Crosley Family, the Taft Family, and others, even including NBC. They have always been on the cutting edge of technology, most recently with digital. Their commitment to radio hasn't always been as strong, but they have remained competitive against some aggressively run corporations with deep pockets. The domination they have enjoyed for years with television hasn't been shared much by radio. WBNS-FM was #1 12+ for many years with elevator music, but it wasn't a cash cow. It was still going strong in the book when they bailed out, but the revenue was reported to have increased when they changed to Oldies. I never thought the Oldies format was a good move since WCOL was already there. It's a niche format and WCOL had the legacy. They also had about a 7 share, while WSNY and WNCI were far higher. Would you rather compete with a station with a mainstream 12 share or split a 7 share? Even Country would have been a better move. The story I heard within the walls was that the Wolfes would not allow Country on FM, period. That is why they went to Oldies, but they later considered Country after the numbers tanked. Supposedly, they already had the Gold Discs in the studio and had the playlist loaded in Selector when a last minute deal was struck with WCOL that resulted in BNS staying with Oldies and WCOL changing to Country. At the very least, it would appear that the Wolfes missed an opportunity twice. But for better or worse, they have been a strong supporter in the community, as opposed to some of the local absentee corporate owners who are only here for the money.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

Please don't view any of my comments about WBNS as being negative toward local ownership.  I am strongly in favor of local ownership rather than absentee corporate.  The Wolfes have done a superior job with WBNS-TV from day one and have managed to keep it the top performing station in the market against competition from the Crosley Family, the Taft Family, and others, even including NBC.

But for better or worse, they have been a strong supporter in the community, as opposed to some of the local absentee corporate owners who are only here for the money.

Great point.

They've also made some great improvements to the formerly-stodgy Dispatch in the last fifteen years or so.  The investigative series are a great example.  But they are still plagued by embarrasingly poor writing, copyediting, and fact-checking in many stories

Also, I do give RadiOhio credit for being the company that FINALLY brought Hot AC to Columbus.  The prior attempts at "Hot AC"  from NCI, as well as Mary Mahaffey's 98.9, were understandably brief and doomed from the start, as both were actually softish mainstream AC's laughably claiming to be Hot AC.

I never thought the Oldies format was a good move since WCOL was already there.  It's a niche format and WCOL had the legacy.

Columbus went through a long period (still existing to a lesser extent, with 93.3 being the worst offender in recent years) where it seemed a rule that you needed to copy a format that was already available (even on a big signal), instead of introducing something NEW and proven that was missing here, like Hot AC.  So BNS-FM was, for worse or worse, carrying on the tradition.  (While Columbus has plenty of Country now, the market was just oozing with it in the late 90's, while ther formats were ignored.  And some, like AAA, still are.)  I remember that the night before the flip from their "smooth jazzified" version of Easy Listening to Oldies, BNS was playing stuff like Running on Empty (the original).  So I was surprised and dismayed to find straight-ahead Oldies coming out of their spreakers the next day.  BTW, does anyone remember who the first morning man for BNS' Oldies format was?  I think it's someone who had already been on other stations in town.

 

[Radioboy989]

I think it was either Chucko or JC McCoy.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

I think it was either Chucko or JC McCoy.

Don't think so.  The voice/style wasn't anything like either of those two guys. And come to think of it, maybe it was someone new to Columbus radio, after all.

 

[Nu_Roo_2]

OK, I caved and looked at the Dispatch archive and found a small 10-22-91 article on the flip to oldies. (Net search as a shortcut is great, but it also takes some of the fun out of a discussion like this.)

The article says, "New on-air staff members include Bob Simpson, formerly of WSNY (94.7 FM); Mitzi Miles; Katrina Curtiss; K.C. Carson; Kelly McKay; Chuck Taylor; and Sue Anderson."

So it must have been Bob Simpson, right? I know it wasn't a female or Carson or Chucko. Funny, I don't remember anything about Bob Simpson now, but I must have been familiar with him at the time.

Another possibility was that they had a guest host for the kickoff. Maybe Jack Willey, the Dispatch's "man about town" at the time???