WNFI "I-100" - Aircheck - December, 1991

[MN Maniac]

The mighty "I-100" with that big signal and huge coverage footprint!

http://elliskansas.info/drew/?page_id=962

 

[Kmagrill]

I-100's heyday was in the mid-1980s when Ron Samuels and Carl Tutera owned it. The legal ID was: WNFI, Palatka, Daytona Beach, Gainesville, Orlando, Jacksonville. The station pulled significant numbers in every rated market of North Florida. The station was so popular in Ocala-Gainesville that it competed with WYKS and WKTK. Don Wolfe, the Ocala area salesman was billing $50,000/mo from Ocala alone. The station sold to Norm Drubner in 1986 and began a slow decline that lasted for years, through a succession of owners, primarily because the station made money in a very non-intuitive way. Most radio stations try to build high AQH listeners by limiting spot loads, etc. WNFI said forget the AQH. Go for Cumes. This can be an incredibly effective strategy if it is marketed right. It works amazingly well for both the station and for the advertiser. Everybody makes money. Oh, and by the way, since we don't care about ratings anyway, play as many spots per hour as we want. During spring break 1986, I saw 38 minutes of spots cleared for a lot of hours. What a money maker it was! Truly, it was an eye opening experience for me.

 

[ThatGuyOnTheRadio]

that is a fascinating story... I'm sorry I wasn't around to witness it.

I'd be curious to know how much they billed annually if one guy was bringing in 50K a month just from Ocala!

 

[Kmagrill]

that is a fascinating story... I'm sorry I wasn't around to witness it.

I'd be curious to know how much they billed annually if one guy was bringing in 50K a month just from Ocala!

Ron and Carl sold the station to Norm Drubner for $8.5 million in cash. The rule of thumb was approximately 2.5x gross, so between $250k to $300k per month, or around $3.5million per year.

 

[romer979fm]

I only heard I-100 a few times (headed to South Florida)...and it was painful to listen to"
tune...long stopset...tune...another stopset...maybe two tunes...even longer stopset...repeat.

I wanted to puncture my eardrums...but you could hear it forever.

 

[CHRles]

Interesting timing as there's a new I-100 in Florida
http://i100hits.com/

 

[Kmagrill]

I only heard I-100 a few times (headed to South Florida)...and it was painful to listen to"
tune...long stopset...tune...another stopset...maybe two tunes...even longer stopset...repeat.

I wanted to puncture my eardrums...but you could hear it forever.

In a nutshell, the theory is that CHR and Hot AC listeners are button pushers anyway. So, most of them tune out many times per day, but they also tune back in again as soon as a song that they don't like comes up on their alternate station. So, no effort is made to retain listeners at all.

So, you ask: How could this work for advertisers? Well, it doesn't for many of the smaller advertisers. However, it works amazingly well for the biggest advertisers. Here's how: Lots of people cume into the station throughout the day. Some stay for only a fraction of an hour while others tune back and forth all day. If you can afford to buy enough advertising to be in almost every spot block, you have a very efficient buy because you expose your product or service to enormous masses of people. In fact, many more people are exposed to the message than would be on a higher AQH station. This is similar to the TV principle of dominating an area by buying a certain number of "gross ratings points" (GRPs). Historicaly, it has been acknowledged in TV that you can literally sell anything if you buy 300 GRPs. Although not used much in radio, this principle works equally well by buying big cume numbers.

The biggest advertisers were bars and cars. Both need to draw big numbers of people every day and I-100 was a near-perfect vehicle to do that. The process worked well because the advertisers were incredibly loyal. Over the years, several had tried other stations but quickly came back when they noticed their daily business drop.

 

[jmtillery]

I-100's heyday was in the mid-1980s when Ron Samuels and Carl Tutera owned it. The legal ID was: WNFI, Palatka, Daytona Beach, Gainesville, Orlando, Jacksonville. The station pulled significant numbers in every rated market of North Florida. The station was so popular in Ocala-Gainesville that it competed with WYKS and WKTK. Don Wolfe, the Ocala area salesman was billing $50,000/mo from Ocala alone. The station sold to Norm Drubner in 1986 and began a slow decline that lasted for years, through a succession of owners, primarily because the station made money in a very non-intuitive way. Most radio stations try to build high AQH listeners by limiting spot loads, etc. WNFI said forget the AQH. Go for Cumes. This can be an incredibly effective strategy if it is marketed right. It works amazingly well for both the station and for the advertiser. Everybody makes money. Oh, and by the way, since we don't care about ratings anyway, play as many spots per hour as we want. During spring break 1986, I saw 38 minutes of spots cleared for a lot of hours. What a money maker it was! Truly, it was an eye opening experience for me.

There is absolutely no doubt that WNFY/WNFI (Y100/I100) was a cash cow while owned by Ronette Communications and managed by Ron Samuels and Carl Como-Tutera. I believe that may have been largely due to the fact that Y 100 was all there was at the time with such a wide signal footprint and programming anything other than easy listening or beautiful music.

I remember when the new Y 100 debuted in 1982. It's 100kw signal blasted into Ocala. Everyone listened to it as Y 100 was the first Top 40 FM in the market pre- dating WKTK (still religious WRYO. WKTK debuted in April 1986), WMMZ (still block formatted WFUZ. WMMZ "Z 93" debuted in September 1986) and a few other contemporary FMs. All we had in Ocala back then was local WWKE (Key Radio 1370) and WTMC (The Music Connection 1290). Not even Rock 104 had gone on the air at that time as WRUF-FM was still beautiful music. WRUF did flip to AOR shortly after Y 100 began operations.

I also remember there were a ton of Ocala advertisers on WNFY although I didn't realize that Don Wolfe was the Ocala account executive. Wasn't he the program director and eventual GSM at WIYD-AM Palatka pre-dating Y 100? If Donald Wolfe was personally billing $50k each month, I know he was raking in the big bucks even at a standard 15% commission schedule.

Mark Tillery
J. M. Tillery & Associates, P. A.
Online: www.jmtillery.com
Blog: http://jmtillery.blogspot.com
Email: [email protected]

 

[MN Maniac]

Was KISS 105 up and running as a CHR by 1982? I realize their 3kW on 105.5 didn't get into Ocala very well. Just curious how long they've been there.

I remember seeing Jeri Banta's ads in R&R when I was a baby DJ in the early 80s, looking for my next gig.

 

[Kmagrill]

There is absolutely no doubt that WNFY/WNFI (Y100/I100) was a cash cow while owned by Ronette Communications and managed by Ron Samuels and Carl Como-Tutera. I believe that may have been largely due to the fact that Y 100 was all there was at the time with such a wide signal footprint and programming anything other than easy listening or beautiful music.

I remember when the new Y 100 debuted in 1982. It's 100kw signal blasted into Ocala. Everyone listened to it as Y 100 was the first Top 40 FM in the market pre- dating WKTK (still religious WRYO. WKTK debuted in April 1986), WMMZ (still block formatted WFUZ. WMMZ "Z 93" debuted in September 1986) and a few other contemporary FMs. All we had in Ocala back then was local WWKE (Key Radio 1370) and WTMC (The Music Connection 1290). Not even Rock 104 had gone on the air at that time as WRUF-FM was still beautiful music. WRUF did flip to AOR shortly after Y 100 began operations.

I also remember there were a ton of Ocala advertisers on WNFY although I didn't realize that Don Wolfe was the Ocala account executive. Wasn't he the program director and eventual GSM at WIYD-AM Palatka pre-dating Y 100? If Donald Wolfe was personally billing $50k each month, I know he was raking in the big bucks even at a standard 15% commission schedule.

Mark Tillery
J. M. Tillery & Associates, P. A.
Online: www.jmtillery.com
Blog: http://jmtillery.blogspot.com
Email: [email protected]

Ron and Carl bought the station when it was doing a country format in Palatka as WIYD-FM. It took about 18 months to make the move to Ormond Beach and there were several folks that moved from Palatka to Daytona, but I don't know if Wolfe was one of them. I do know that he was one of the core team along with John Scott, Tom Panucci, Terry Hesters & Bob Stevens. Bob told amazing stories about the WIYD days in Palatka including when an engineer fell through the roof landing smack atop the mixer. There were some other rather interesting stories involving local cow-girls, but they're not fit to print. Don Wolfe was the only sales rep working Ocala and did all of the billing there himself as far as I know. I do know that the top salesmen at I-100 were all pulling down over $100,000 per year. I think Don was in that league. He later became the GM at Daytona Group's KRIX in Brownsville, TX. His easy going personality was a good fit for the market, but Brownsville was a tough market and the station was eventually sold and Don returned to Florida where I lost track of him. He was a great guy to work with, though. He really cared about the people that he worked with and most of them were very loyal as a result. Don was truly one of the good guys in radio. I hope that he is doing well, wherever he is.

WYKS was on the air in 1982 and doing very well in Gainesville. Ocala got signals from Orlando like BJ105, but I-100 had a better signal in Marion County, so Don's job wasn't too hard. What was more interesting was that I-100 nipped at the heals of Jacksonville fixtures like Y103 in the Jax books. Pretty impressive considering Y103 sounded pretty good and I-100 didn't really cover Jacksonville very well.

 

[jmtillery]

I remember the WWPF-AM 1260 / WIYD-FM 99.9 days although I didn't listen to either station very much. When Ron and Carl acquired WIYD-FM and made the move to Daytona, it was the most innovative concept of anything else on the air at the time. I remember in the begining WNFY broadcast from a small studio in Palatka while blowing away everything else from the 1,000 foot stick near Bunnell.

With the exception of Jacksonville and Orlando, Gainesville and Ocala had mostly AM Top 40 or contemporary formatted stations. There was nothing on FM other than easy listening or beautiful music. I remember when WYKS came on the scene just before Y 100 made its debut. I believe it was late 1981 when the former AOR formatted WGVL was sold to Sunshine Wirless and made the flip to CHR.

Was Norm Drubner the main principle involved with the Daytona Group, or did Ron and Carl still have a hand in the new broadcast company?

Mark Tillery
J. M. Tillery & Associates, P. A.
Online: www.jmtillery.com
Blog: http://jmtillery.blogspot.com
Email: [email protected]

 

[Kmagrill]

I remember the WWPF-AM 1260 / WIYD-FM 99.9 days although I didn't listen to either station very much. When Ron and Carl acquired WIYD-FM and made the move to Daytona, it was the most innovative concept of anything else on the air at the time. I remember in the begining WNFY broadcast from a small studio in Palatka while blowing away everything else from the 1,000 foot stick near Bunnell.

With the exception of Jacksonville and Orlando, Gainesville and Ocala had mostly AM Top 40 or contemporary formatted stations. There was nothing on FM other than easy listening or beautiful music. I remember when WYKS came on the scene just before Y 100 made its debut. I believe it was late 1981 when the former AOR formatted WGVL was sold to Sunshine Wirless and made the flip to CHR.

Was Norm Drubner the main principle involved with the Daytona Group, or did Ron and Carl still have a hand in the new broadcast company?

Ron and Carl were Norm's partners in Daytona Group and it was managed from a small office in Ormond Beach with the accounting being done in Waterbury, CT. In 1987, Carl discovered that Ron was stealing money from Norm. As it happened, I was in the hotel room next door and heard the entire argument between Ron and Carl. Carl was furious that Ron would stoop so low and that was the end of Ron's participation in the group. Norm bought Ron's interest and the group continued for several more years. As far as I know, Carl never spoke to Ron again after that day.




Mark Tillery
J. M. Tillery & Associates, P. A.
Online: www.jmtillery.com
Blog: http://jmtillery.blogspot.com
Email: [email protected]

 

[Buzz Jackson]

That brief air check was cool to hear. I was there doing 7-mid from mid 1991-1992 as "Chuck Jackson" and was let go when the station transitioned from I-100 to The New 99.9. I landed at "Young Country" B94.5 in Orlando, kicking off my career in country radio, so, while at the time it really sucked to be unemployed, it turned out to be one of the best things that ever happened to me.

Buzz in Tucson
http://www.buzzjackson.com