Worst and possible longest station flip in History?

[secondchoice]

Carriage must be setting a record for the longest programming stunt or longest flip. It started around June the First on their two translators 98.1 93.7 plus WPGY 1580 Ellijay - Jasper. They hint of "big" sports coming but with the exception of the all three of NASCAR series races which they had before the flip, they are playing just 3 songs "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" some Muddy Waters(?) song about boxing (complete with record scratchy sound) and "Camp Town Races".

If you have followed my posts you know I personally feel programming stunts are a waste of electricity. I believe you start building your "new" audience as soon as possible so I might not be the most object poster on this subject. I realize some folks in the past believe the object of a flip is to get people excited to listen to bad radio then spring the new format. I believe social media is cheaper and faster.

Personal feelings aside has anyone ever programmed a 4 plus week stunt on an commercial OTA station(s)?

Moderators, I wasn't sure whether to put this on the Georgia, or Atlanta ( Pickens is an Atlanta PPM county) but I put it on GeneralRaduo topic area snce this could be a "record". Please move it if needed.

 

[lanceventa]

Personal feelings aside has anyone ever programmed a 4 plus week stunt on an commercial OTA station(s)?

As the self-described Format Change Archivist, there's a point where something isn't a stunt anymore. I started using terms like micro-formats or placeholders for formats such as everything that has been on 98.7 New York since last September when its not a stunt but simply filler programming.

And there's been plenty of examples of these over the years. 1520 WJMP Kent OH played Take Me Out To The Ballgame for two months during the 1994 baseball strike. Hell, I inadvertently caused one in 2009 when Saga's 106.9 WJZX Milwaukee was going to flip to CHR but thanks to my domain report the day before was beaten to the punch and "Now" name by Clear Channel. Instead they kept their stunt going for a few weeks until going Classic Country instead.

And wasn't WPGY supposed to become "The Sports Pig" on July 1?

 

[Oldbones]

15 or so years ago I was peripherally involved in a stunt format that was just supposed to be a placeholder until a sale was finalized. The process ended up taking much longer than anticipated and the stunt format ended up being in place for over a year. It was an "all Vitamin String Quartet, all the time" format. It actually developed an audience, and from what I heard the new owners got quite a few complaints once they put their "real" format on it.

 

[davideduardo]

In 1979, stations had to notify all other stations in their area about call letter change requests. I requested a change from WSRA, the calls of my Beautiful Music FM, to WZNT. Anyone knew that WSRA at 93.7 was going to be Z-93!

So we "tested" the format for over a month from midnight to 5 AM, playing the "wrong cuts" from every hit album. We showed the nearest competitors that we knew nothing about what we were going to do, because, of course, we had been doing a Beautiful Music format and were, thus, stupid. They quit checking after a few nights, and ignored our launch.

When we did launch on New Years' weekend with over 1000 GRPs on TV and a 100% bus campaign, the right music was played and 21 days later we got our first #1 book. It took the other stations about 3 months to even partially respond or react.

So there was a stunt run from Thanksgiving weekend to December 29!

In this case, the stunt was to confuse the competition, and it worked enormously. In the first month, we doubled the billing of our best Beautiful Music month... and it was January, the market's worst month as nearly all business there was from agencies.

 

[b-turner]

One I heard about up in Boson or Philadelphia was a station being sold. The staff bailed out and the station owner, awaiting FCC approval of the new owner, had he GM do something. She ran the National Weather Service. It actually showed up in the ratings and it seems the format was in place for some time. Back then a transfer could take 6 months, some longer, some not that long.

 

[CTListener]

In 1979, stations had to notify all other stations in their area about call letter change requests. I requested a change from WSRA, the calls of my Beautiful Music FM, to WZNT. Anyone knew that WSRA at 93.7 was going to be Z-93!

So we "tested" the format for over a month from midnight to 5 AM, playing the "wrong cuts" from every hit album. We showed the nearest competitors that we knew nothing about what we were going to do, because, of course, we had been doing a Beautiful Music format and were, thus, stupid. They quit checking after a few nights, and ignored our launch.

When we did launch on New Years' weekend with over 1000 GRPs on TV and a 100% bus campaign, the right music was played and 21 days later we got our first #1 book. It took the other stations about 3 months to even partially respond or react.

So there was a stunt run from Thanksgiving weekend to December 29!

In this case, the stunt was to confuse the competition, and it worked enormously. In the first month, we doubled the billing of our best Beautiful Music month... and it was January, the market's worst month as nearly all business there was from agencies.

I looked up those call letters and I see that all this took place in Puerto Rico, so forgive me for asking this if the "oh wow" factor doesn't exist outside the English-speaking mainland. My question: Did you get any angry reaction from listeners who liked the "wrong cuts" and disliked the consensus songs your station was playing after the hoax flip?

 

[CTListener]

One I heard about up in Boson or Philadelphia was a station being sold. The staff bailed out and the station owner, awaiting FCC approval of the new owner, had he GM do something. She ran the National Weather Service. It actually showed up in the ratings and it seems the format was in place for some time. Back then a transfer could take 6 months, some longer, some not that long.

NWS audio was on 93.7 in Hartford, CT, for several months when WLVH went belly-up.

 

[K.M. Richards]

I once stunted for 93 hours running an hour-long repeating loop of Weird Al Yankovic parodies, if that counts.

 

[PTBoardOp93]

Personal feelings aside has anyone ever programmed a 4 plus week stunt on an commercial OTA station(s)?

One of the longest stunts I recall was on WBOW-FM/Terre Haute, Ind. They flipped from AC in the spring of 2009, utilizing local jocks, to ... AC, but using a satellite format. In the interim, they did a wheel of formats stunt for 9 days (Friday to Monday, across TWO weekends).

I don't hate "wheel of formats" but I never understood doing it for 9 days.

 

[lanceventa]

I don't hate "wheel of formats" but I never understood doing it for 9 days.

Most stunts are too short. A station doing it for a couple hours does nothing. The purpose of a good stunt is to generate buzz for the launch and to do that you need to get attention. And a lot of time it takes luck. In 2014, Univision's 105.7 in the Bay Area went viral on social media after a sportswriter happened to catch their loop of Nelly's "Hot In Herre". Last fall, Townsquare's 101.7 Tuscaloosa got people falling for the "hacker" bit.

How #Nelly1057 Became A Viral Sensation

It was just supposed to be like any other format change stunt that takes place dozens of times each year

radioinsight.com

Alabama radio station goes viral for playing Russian Taylor Swift covers on loop

Many posters expressed concerns about Russian interference with American radio, while others were worried about the safety of station workers.

www.al.com

 

[michael hagerty]

Not sure about worst, but longest?

"STEVE". Six months.

Story and audio here.

KBZR (103.9 FM) - Coolidge/Phoenix, AZ - Summer 1996 (S.T.E.V.E. stunt) - FM Airchecks

For six months in 1996, KBZR (103.9 FM)/Coolidge, AZ offered one of the most creative stunts in radio history. In between an automated Rhythmic Oldies format was a series of clever interstitials (voiced by station owner Jerry Clifton) indicating that the station was “moving in from the desert”...

fmairchecks.com

And I was in the studio for KTVK when the actual format hit:

 

[davideduardo]

I looked up those call letters and I see that all this took place in Puerto Rico, so forgive me for asking this if the "oh wow" factor doesn't exist outside the English-speaking mainland. My question: Did you get any angry reaction from listeners who liked the "wrong cuts" and disliked the consensus songs your station was playing after the hoax flip?

We did not get calls about the wrong music stunt.

We got horrible reaction from old listeners when we flipped. We turned off the Beautiful Music and shut off the transmitter on the Friday ahead of New Year's Day, a Monday. I had planned on coming back on at 6 AM, but by 7:40 PM when I was listening to one of the jocks doing a dry run, I decided that I could not hold my patience for another ten hours, so I hit the transmitter ¨plates on" and we were back as Zeta 93, with an all salsa format. Except that salsa was written "Zalza" with a Z.



The Percy Faith listeners went ape s--it. The most common call was "your new listeners make less in a month than I make in a day" and that nobody would listen to that crap anyway. We had to have staff come in all day Saturday and a few on Sunday to answer the calls. We did that because the station owner was the Island's largest supermarket chain and we wanted to defuse as much negativity as possible.

Whole story at David Gleason launches Z-93 WZNT All Salsa in Puerto Rico 1978

And ratings at https://davidgleason.com/Archive PR Z93/San_Juan_Mediastat 1979_all.pdf

 

[davideduardo]

Most stunts are too short. A station doing it for a couple hours does nothing. The purpose of a good stunt is to generate buzz for the launch and to do that you need to get attention. And a lot of time it takes luck. In 2014, Univision's 105.7 in the Bay Area went viral on social media after a sportswriter happened to catch their loop of Nelly's "Hot In Herre".

And that one was a copy of what I did when I took AM 1190, WBMJ, from a dead CHR format to salsa gold in 1971. I mentioned it as a way to get some curiosity and, maybe, some press. And one of the staff members picked the song.

We took a sort of nonsensical song that went "The guabá is under the bed; it bites you and is gone" (a guabá is an insect) but it was sung by icon Celia Cruz. We played it for 3 full days. Between plays we ran "ads" for strange stuff for sale such as million dollar islands in the USVI and used tanks from a military base... and idea I first heard when Gordon McLendon launched KABL in SF around 1960 and in 1962 when he launched WYNR "Winner" on 1390 in Chicago.

 

[ted chittenden]

The longest format flip I ever heard was also the one that made me the most angry, though it wasn't the format flip itself or its replacement that made me angry; it was the timing.

In 1992, KZZP was airing "American Top 40," with Shadoe Stevens. He finished playing the #6 song and then the station went into a commercial break. Then, a live version of a Marvin Gaye song, then two more commercials and then a clock started. That clock went on for (I think) two weeks and then KVRY-FM was launched.

Cutting out "American Top 40" before the show actually ended ruined it for me. I listened to that show regularly and I never could understand why one would just stop in the middle of a show like that to start your format countdown, especially a popular countdown show that was 15 minutes from its zenith. Needless to say, KVRY turned out to be a ratings dud.

My favorite format flip happened on what is now KDRI in Tucson. The station had been KFLT, part of the "Family Life," radio network, but the religious broadcaster had gotten its own FM frequency in Tucson (104.1) and decided to sell the AM. The group that bought the AM included one Bobby Rich who had been in the broadcasting industry for a very long time. To launch KDRI "The Drive,", Bobby did a stunt of all novelty songs, such as the Coasters' "Yakety Yak," and David Seville's "The Witch Doctor." Because the 830 frequency put in a pretty good signal to where I was in Phoenix (and because we wound up having to rent hotel space while our residence was bombed out for mosquitos), I got a front seat to listening to that format for that weekend and it was a very fun listen!

 

[seattlesarchiebunker]

What I remember from Format Change Archive, wasn’t there a station in the very early 90’s in Houston that “stunted” with alternative rock for over a month? This is before grunge took off, so the idea of modern rock as a format was not particularly common.

It was clearly a stunt, morning show hosts were in on it, they had imaging and all.

Makes you wonder what the rationale behind that decision was…unless they wanted to 100% blow out the previous audience

 

[KilowattKat]

For 10 months after Radio Aahs ceased operations and put all 10 of their stations up for sale (January to October of 1998) they had a placeholder of a mix of paid programming and playing entire albums during the day. At night it was Beat Radio, a club dance music program. The stations were finally sold to Catholic Family Radio, including KIDR 740 in Phoenix, the one I had listened to.

 

[CTListener]

What I remember from Format Change Archive, wasn’t there a station in the very early 90’s in Houston that “stunted” with alternative rock for over a month? This is before grunge took off, so the idea of modern rock as a format was not particularly common.

It was clearly a stunt, morning show hosts were in on it, they had imaging and all.

Makes you wonder what the rationale behind that decision was…unless they wanted to 100% blow out the previous audience

What was the station playing before the stunt, and what did the new format turn out to be?

 

[radiofan2023]

For 10 months after Radio Aahs ceased operations and put all 10 of their stations up for sale (January to October of 1998) they had a placeholder of a mix of paid programming and playing entire albums during the day. At night it was Beat Radio, a club dance music program. The stations were finally sold to Catholic Family Radio, including KIDR 740 in Phoenix, the one I had listened to.

Beat Radio was great! "Alan Freed" is still around but he's a consultant:

Beat Radio Minneapolis: Dance & Club Music

dance music radio and dance/club info for Minneapolis

beatworld.com

 

[vchimpanzee]

One of the longest stunts I recall was on WBOW-FM/Terre Haute, Ind. They flipped from AC in the spring of 2009, utilizing local jocks, to ... AC, but using a satellite format. In the interim, they did a wheel of formats stunt for 9 days (Friday to Monday, across TWO weekends).

I don't hate "wheel of formats" but I never understood doing it for 9 days.

WAQQ Charlotte did this. Back in 1991 the station did a different SMN satellite format each day, including Stardust and Real Country, and one day was a simulcast of the conservative talk station (not Rush's affiliate). One format was done twice due to popular demand, whatever the meant. The listeners were supposed to vote and a new format was to be revealed at the end. One day was all comedy, as I recall, with "Who's on First" and other recordings.

Then a man doing an impression of Ted Koppel came on and said the listeners chose "none of the above". The previous format was oldies, and no one was doing CHR at the time in the market, so the new format, called Double Q, was an alternative leaning version of CHR.

CHR had been one of the choices.

 

[ted chittenden]

For 10 months after Radio Aahs ceased operations and put all 10 of their stations up for sale (January to October of 1998) they had a placeholder of a mix of paid programming and playing entire albums during the day. At night it was Beat Radio, a club dance music program. The stations were finally sold to Catholic Family Radio, including KIDR 740 in Phoenix, the one I had listened to.

And I thought that Radio Aahs had the better kids' format. Unfortunately, Radio Disney had the ABC money behind them so that was that!