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WOGL Should Change Call Letters

Steve Green NEPA said:
One has to wonder what Howard Stern's numbers would have fared under the PPM methodology. IIrc, the fellow left OTA radio before the PPM's started.
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I was on the earliest PPM evaluation committees, starting in 2002, including those for both the Philadelphia and the Houston tests and I began to see the differences in TSL very early on.

I noticed, first, that TSL for all stations was reduced considerably. this was due to the minute by minute precision of the PPM. People write full hours or half hours in diaries for the most part; in PPM "6 to 9 AM" in a diary will be several separate instances with a total of maybe 5 quarter hours... or less. So between rounding and interruptions, the PPM showed much lower per-person TSL.

Then I noted that some formats had listeners who did not write them down in the diary. It was not the most memorable station, not the favorite one. In the PPM they showed up.

But polarizing shows and niche formats suffered. Smooth Jazz had no listeners beyond a small core, so in PPM it suffered as it had no "secondary listeners". So with shorter than diary level listening, and no secondary listeners, the format "tanked". Big time.

Similarly, in many markets the Spanish language stations fell quite dramatically as they did not have phantom cume since they only could be used by a fraction of the population of each market and they were significantly impacted by the fact that Hispanics tend to, culturally, round to hours more than half hours and quarter hours and minutes. So an "hour" in the diary might only be a single quarter hour in PPM.

Moving to morning shows and we have a double whammy: shorter real time spent listening along with no phantom or secondary cume. Shows that were as polarized as Stern in the test markets fell by half or better.

My calculations, based on those observations, were that in NYC and LA, Stern would have had trouble being in the top 10. No phantom cume, and much less TSL.
 
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Steve Green NEPA said:
Our semi-local WODE Allentown has stayed as 'WODE' through thick and thin ; through Oldies and Hippies. They have been Classic Rock for quite the time now. Maybe ten years.

I forget what they call themselves ,,,, the Scorpion? The Goose ? The Hawk ?

Whatever name they use as a slogan, it's working. In fact, WODE showed up in the latest *New York City* book.
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99.9 The Hawk
 
Steve Green NEPA said:
Whatever name they use as a slogan, it's working. In fact, WODE showed up in the latest *New York City* book.
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I think that's more about Nielsen's recent switch to showing all subscribers in markets. So since Cumulus subscribes, and people commute from the Lehigh Valley to NYC, WODE shows with some listenership. They've always been there, but just havebn't been included in the public numbers.
 
AM/FMRAINMAN said:
everyone recognizes WOGL as oldies 98. Obviously it’s not working what they are doing.
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Hmm lets see, people are still calling the station a brand that hasn't been used in over 25 years? Not to beat a dead horse but the classic hits-era WOGL has achieved heritage status in the market. Any alterations to the brand make zero sense, and is not something any company would do. Most people associate WOGL for what they play now (as they have for the last 16ish years?) as someone would with CBS-FM in New York today. The oldies eras/brandings of these stations remain with an extremely small minority of people.

If Entercom (or even CBS for that matter) *really* thought the calls/branding gave off some negative connotation, they would've changed it a long time ago.
 
I'm not sure that changing the call letters matter IMO...but like all radio stations they need to update their lists more often and put in more variety. MOST radio stations fall victim to this. But yea 80s/early90's is where the party at.
 
I wants my Don't Stop Believing three times per day, and that's the way I likes it.

OK, maybe not that extreme, but there's a fine line to straddle between "more variety" and "tune-out" for too much of the audience.
 
AbrahamJSimpson said:
OK, maybe not that extreme, but there's a fine line to straddle between "more variety" and "tune-out" for too much of the audience.
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I agree... what I ment was variety within their niche. They get caught up in the same 35 songs
 
JH_Radio said:
What is short spacing?
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Having less distance between stations on the same frequency (or adjacent frequencies) than modern FCC rules require. Some Philly stations are short-spaced to New York, such as B101 and WCBS-FM. The current rules were put in place in the early 60s.

Also, I think you may have asked this question in the wrong thread? I don't see any other discussion of this topic here?
 
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