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WHY FORMAT FLIP IN GAINEVILLE FLORIDA??

J

joshzz

I just read the following and was miffed as to why any owner would flip a format that's got great ratings and is really hot. :eek:

Ratings be damned, rocker to go country.
Despite top five revenue and ratings, heritage Gainesville rocker sees brighter future doing country. In one of the more puzzling format flips, one of central Florida’s most successful rock stations is going country.
 
Of course it is Jeff. You must be a graduate of THE University of Florida. Long live Rock 104, Go Gators!!! ;D
 
Interesting. Considering 103.7 is going against 2 Legacy Country Stations with Top Ratings. What make UF think that they can go against WOGK. Very Stupid.
 
gamefreak said:
Interesting. Considering 103.7 is going against 2 Legacy Country Stations with Top Ratings. What make UF think that they can go against WOGK. Very Stupid.
Click to expand...

The jury is still out on this one as it is too early to predict how well a country music format will fair on WRUF-FM. At the very least it will take three to four rating periods before the real story is told on how well received the new country outlet is to the general public and the intended target demographics. As with most things, we shall "wait and see".
 
I think the format flip has to do with both ratings and geography. WOGK gets these giant double digit ratings with Country but it's licensed to Ocala, 35 miles south of Gainesville. WTRS gets decent ratings as the market's #2 country station, but that's licensed to Dunnellon, even farther from Gainesville.

I think whoever is consulting the University of Florida about it's radio stations said "Why shouldn't your FM station be earning double digits? You've got the best FM signal in Gainesville. Why should Country fans around here have to listen to an Ocala-based station with lots of Ocala-based advertisers?"

It's getting tougher for a rock station to really capture a very large audience because tastes in Rock have fragmented. Years ago, if you just played The Stones, The Eagles, Fleetwood Mac and Bruce Springsteen, you'd automatically have almost all young men and a good amount of young women tuning in. Today there's less agreement. Should you lean Alternative, should you be more hard-edged? Should you play some Classic Rock, should you only play artists from the 90s and today?

Rock is still a viable format but just not the average market's #1 format. I'm sure another station in Gainesville-Ocala will flip to Rock to serve WRUF's displaced listeners, but with a lesser signal.


Gregg
[email protected]
 
Gregg said:
I think the format flip has to do with both ratings and geography. WOGK gets these giant double digit ratings with Country but it's licensed to Ocala, 35 miles south of Gainesville.

I think whoever is consulting the University of Florida about it's radio stations said "Why shouldn't your FM station be earning double digits? You've got the best FM signal in Gainesville?
Click to expand...

The reason WOGK garners double digit ratings is because WOGK has the absolute best signal in the market, covering not only Gainesville and Ocala with a primary 70dbu signal, but also 16+ additional counties. WOGK is also the established heritage country outlet for the market. This is one reason long time Gainesville country outlet WYGC "GC 101" changed format to smooth jazz years ago. WRUF-FM does not have the signal to effectively compete with the same format against WOGK, nor can it compete against WTRS in Ocala.

On the other hand should WRUF-FM present the country format in Gainesville better than WOGK and manage to take away the majority of the Gainesville country listening numbers from WOGK, then perhaps WRUF-FM will do fine in Gainesville; However it is highly doubtful WRUF-FM, with its smaller signal by comparison, will ever garner double digit numbers considering how the market is comprised.
 
radiobum said:
SINCE WKZY NEVER GETS ANY RATINGS MAYBE THEY SHOULD SWITCH TO ROCK OR ADULT ALTERNATIVE OR 'CLASSIC ALTERNATIVE'.
Click to expand...

If you flipped WKZY to rock, what would you do with co-owned WHHZ, which is currently programming active rock? Do you believe active rock will fair better on WKZY and perhaps move the hot adult contemporary programming from WZKY to WHHZ? In other words this would be a frequency flip.
 
one rock...the other alternative or classic alternative? if they can't get ratings with hot AC on KZY can't see how it would work on 100.5. i know classic alternative is a new format but i would think gainesville would be a good place for it. no one is smart enough to do adult alternative apparently.

Cox has both the alternative and active rock (kinda) in Jacksonville so....
 
jmtillary tells us that WOGK has the best signal in the market, covering Ocala to Gainesville quite effectively. That may be true but I notice WOGK also makes the Tampa ratings. At the bottom, yes, but it's clear WOGK is still concentrated to the south of the Gainesville-Ocala market if folks in the Tampa market can tune it in.

WRUF-FM is the only commercial station based in the Gainesville area to run 100 kw. (In fact, the only other FM station putting out 100 kw in Gainesville is the University of Florida's non-comercial NPR affiliate, 89.1 WUFT-FM.) The radio listeners in this market have demonstrated that they're crazy about Country music. So why fight the trend, even though it seems a bit odd for a radio station owned by a University to play Country music.

As Willie Sutton once said when reporters asked him why he robbed banks, "That's where the money is." So if you're the most powerful commercial FM station in Gainesville and all the country stations in the market cater to Ocala listeners and advertisers, you go Country.

Interestingly, the latest ratings (I guess WRUF-FM flipped in the middle) show WOGK still with double digits at #1 but WRUF-FM is #5, the second place Country station with a slight uptick in listeners. And WTRS is #6, now the third place country station. Surely some underperforming station will flip to Rock to serve WRUF-FM's displaced listeners before long.

Gregg
[email protected]
 
On a road trip last year, my wife and I picked up WOGK from NE of Gainesville all the way to Kissimmee, where an LPFM station finally overlapped the signal.

I'm kind of interested in how the WRUF thing plays out. My hunch is that their best bet is to market the station locally to "super-serve" Gainesville.
 
Gregg - We may all soon learn that the recent WRUF-FM flip from rock to country is the greatest thing to ever happen since the invention of the wheel. We may even learn that WRUF-FM soon dominates the market rendering WOGK to nothing more than a shdow of its former self. However, again, we need to keep in mind that WOGK's ratings are comprised of listeners from Ocala AND Gainesville, not just Ocala and Marion County.

WRUF-FM is at a disadvantage in that, while it may, and the key word is "may", become the number one station in Gainesville, it is highly doubtful WRUF-FM will make any significant impact in garnering any meaningful numbers from Ocala due to signal issues in Marion County. Hence, while WOGK will continue to attract listeners from both cities, WRUF-FM will still cover only Gainesville and North Florida. This, theoretically, cuts the potential available WRUF-FM numbers to about half of those that WOGK has. If the new cume and AQH is half of another station, it alters the landscape consideribly even though the station with half the cume and AQH is number two overall in the market.

WRUF-FM may realize a significant gain in Gainesville and North Florida; However, as previously stated for reasons already given, it is highly doubtful WRUF-FM will garner double digit numbers in the market as a whole. WRUF-FM may, however, become the number one, double digit ratings winner in a county-by-county survey for Alachua County, but this is not enough to overtake WOGK as the market leader.

This will also significantly impact the rates WRUF-FM can expect to garner from existing and prospective advertisers which significantly dictates how much "money" the station will bill regardless of how much "money" is in the market designated for a country listening audience.

Regarding WTRS, this station is where it is in the ratings for the same reason as WRUF-FM - WTRS does not cover the entire MSA and TSA.

From a personal perspective, I hope WRUF-FM makes it. However, facts are facts.
 
I will further add that while WRUF-FM is currently fifth place overall with a 4.7 in the persons 12 + category, WOGK is pulling a 14.5 in the same category, a 9.8 (almost double digit) difference, so there is a very wide margin between the two stations. Additionally, these 12 + numbers are a good indication of what the actual target demo numbers reflect. Also keep in mind the format change took place in the middle of a ratings period with Gator football being the biggest ratings contributor durng the Fall book.

As it stands now, overall cume and AQH within the target demo is considerably down following the format change.
 
Let me add one more thought, not to arguementative.

Sales people are notorious for not selling time on a radio station too far from the home office. There are only 8 hours in the day and it's just easier to make sales calls within a 20 mile radius of the station's offices. I can remember when NYC had two top-rated Easy Listening stations, WRFM and WPAT-FM. WPAT's transmitter was on the Chrysler Building, WRFM's on the Empire State Building. But WRFM's offices were in Manhattan and WPAT's were in North Jersey. Their ratings were similar, their signals were similar. Not counting national or regional accounts, nearly all of WRFM's advertisers were NYC-based, about half of WPAT's advertisers were New Jersey-based. I'm sure this story is repeated in most markets that are divided between two large cities where two or more stations compete in the same format.

Perhaps WOGK has a satellite sales office in Gainesville, perhaps WRUF has a satellite sales office in Ocala. But I'd bet you a steak dinner once WRUF has been country for a little while that 70% of WOGK's advertisers will be Ocala-based and 80% of WRUF's advertisers will be Gainesville-based. Some Gainesville advertisers who already are using WOGK will likely stay there due to relationships they've already built. But others may go with the sales person who sees them more often, the one from WRUF (provided WRUF's numbers are close to WOGK's).



Gregg
[email protected]
 
Dix Communications does, indeed, maintain a sales office in Gainesville for WOGK and WNDT-FM. WRUF-FM, on the other hand, does not have a sales office presence in Ocala unless UF recently opened one that I am not aware. And I agree that the overwhelming majority of WRUF-FM's advertisers will, indeed, be Gainesville and Alachua County based because WRUF-FM is essentially a Gainesville and North Florida radio station.
 
With both WOGK and WTRS extremely well-established for decades with Ocala advertisers as "the local Country stations," it will be extraordinarily difficult for WRUF-FM to sell any spots, at all, in Ocala, Florida.

It seems to me that last year UF hired a sales manager who had been with one of the Ocala-based TV stations, so that might help. Then again, selling TV and selling radio are a bit different (okay, a lot different), so her Ocala roots may not be helping all that much.

Actually, they've got a bunch of TV people calling the shots there. And that may be part of their overall problem. It may just never have occurred to them that the (roughly) 20-year/30-year headstart for WOGK & WTRS in Ocala might make selling there a bit tough.
 
WOGK has a fair amount of Alachua County (and Levy too) businesses right now. I've heard businesses in Gainesville, Newberry, Chiefland and Alachua.

As for WRUF, even when they were Rock104 they had nearly all Alachua County businesses.

I'm hearing WRUF on in more and more businesses. With Gator sports, this may turn out to be OK. But as successful as Rock104 was with men in the key demographic? We will see.
 
ThatGuyOnTheRadio said:
WOGK has a fair amount of Alachua County (and Levy too) businesses right now. I've heard businesses in Gainesville, Newberry, Chiefland and Alachua.

As for WRUF, even when they were Rock104 they had nearly all Alachua County businesses.

I'm hearing WRUF on in more and more businesses. With Gator sports, this may turn out to be OK. But as successful as Rock104 was with men in the key demographic? We will see.
Click to expand...

Gotta assume that the revenue from UF sports is the same as always, so that's a wash, but what does the rest of their spot-load sound like? Alachua clients? Marion? National? Anything? I know, it's still first quarter, as it is everywhere, so it may be hard to tell if they're making any in-roads. Any observations from the street about their pitch, rates, et cetera?

You are right, of course. It may turn out okay. If they've set low expectations and a long timeline, anything is possible...
 
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