WOW Music

[CAVEMANager]

I spent last Thursday afternoon and evening in the Phoenix area and tuned in John Sebastian's acclaimed WOW Factor on 95.1. You may recall that in the late 1970s it was Sebastian who engineered KHJ's switch from rock to country. Today his mission is to reach boomers with music that they grew up with. My impression was that Wow ended when stations stopped playing vinyl discs but maybe not. A little history is that 95.1 was started by Ted Tucker and he sold the station for over $18 million some years back. Be that as it may here is a list of 39 songs that WOW played along with the year each song charted:

I Want to Know What Love Is Foreigner 1984 Hanky Panky Tommy James 1966

Reeling in the Years Steely Dan 1973 Worst That Could Happen: Brooklyn Bridge 1968

Mellow Yellow Donovan 1966 Go Your Own Way Fleetwood Mac 1977

Natural Woman Aretha Franklin 1967 867-5309 Jenny Tommy Tutone 1982

Come Together Beatles 1970 Blown It all Sky High Jigsaw 1975

Baby I'm Yours Barbara Lewis 1965 I Can't Go for that Hall & Oats 1981

I Got You James Brown 1965 Lotta Love Nicolette Larson 1978

All Day and All of the Night Kinks 1964 Nine to Five Polly Darton 1980

Beautiful Morning: Rascals 1968 Take Me Home Tonight: Eddie Money 1986

Judy in Disguise John Fred 1967 The End of Innocence Don Henley 1989

Gloria Them 1965 Last Dance Donna Summer 1978

Stayin' Alive BeeGees 1977 Listen to What the Man Said: Paul McCartney 1975

Get Ready Rare Earth 1970 My Girl: Temptations 1965

Say You Love Me: Fleetwood Mac 1976 Rock’n Me Steve Miller 1976

Fool on the Hill Beatles 1967 When Will I be Loved Linda Ronstadt 1975

No Time Guess Who 1969 Rocket Man Elton John 1972

On the Road Again Willie Nelson 1980 Hold Me, Thrill Me Mel Carter 1965

Take it easy Eagles 1972 Crystal Blue Persuasion Tommy James 1969

I Need You America 1972 Dream On Aerosmith 1973

Help Me Rhonda Beach Boys 1965

The oldest song on the list is from 1964 and the newest is from 1989. The station is pretty much a lifeless jukebox with nobody on the air.

 

[Prescott Joe]

In Prescott, the signal is completely clear in some areas and non-existent in others.
Nonetheless, it is on one of my car's presets. Why, you ask?? Because even though
they play songs I really don't like, they also play quite a few that I do. When KAHM,
KKLD, KYBC, KZKE and KTMG are playing something I don't like or in commercial,
I try 95.1 They may be casting a wide net musically but I'm happy to be caught
in that net.....

 

[tbolt909]

A "Lifeless Jukebox" is a fair description. The playlist is made up of Oldies, Classic Hits, Classic Rock or whatever tired industry moniker you want to use. There is nothing cutting edge or unique about WOW. All of the hype was just bluster --"Full of Sound & Fury Signifying Nothing". This stuff has been done to death. Sebastian is the only one calling WOW "acclaimed".

All Boomers are not the same. Many that were part of the Woodstock generation have much more eclectic musical tastes. This format should called DULL...

 

[DrAkbar]

The Kinks followed by Dolly Parton. Jeez, is it any wonder why we call it the Bow-WOW factor?!

 

[Deus Ex Machiato]

A
All Boomers are not the same. Many that were part of the Woodstock generation have much more eclectic musical tastes. This format should called DULL...

I'm just under the 55+ target demo, but when I was growing up in a small mid western town and listening to rock radio, it was unthinkable to hear a (to use the example below) Dolly Parton record after The Kinks. There was much less cross-pollination between genres. If you were a rock guy, you listened to rock, not Top 40. I remember in high school this one girl raving about this artist named Prince. The rest of us were like "okay...what's a Prince?" If you're listening to Van Halen, you're probably not also going out and buying the new Bee Gees record. Something similar happened when I got to college in the early-mid 80s. Had a roommate that was really into alternative - back when it was actually alternative.

The college rock station (our campus had an AM Top 40 where I started, but that's another story) played AOR from morning until late night. Then, after 11pm, the alternative show started. All the Aerosmith and Pink Floyd went away, and you heard Depeche Mode and The Cure and various punk bands, but the two streams never crossed. I was one of those people who learned to enjoy everything...playing Chaka Khan and Bryan Adams records at the AM station, listening to my rock albums, and tuning into the alternative show at night, but I was an outlier. Most people fit into certain groups and didn't often share music across genres.

WOW Factor seems to assume that if you are of a certain age, you liked Dolly and The Kinks equally back then, and so it's a great choice now. That's true of those of us who worked in this crazy business because you might land a job in a variety of different formats, but for the general public? Hmm...

If you're going to have a station that plays music from a bygone era, it's not enough to just simply mine the charts at random. You have to recreate the station your listeners loved back in the day. That's why classic rock worked as a format. Someone (I think it was Fred Jacobs) figured out that if you made a station that sounded like the ones the older rock audience listened to, it would be successful. If you really wanted to create a station that made the boomers go "wow," it might sound a lot more like a classic AM Top 40, with jingles and sounders and balls to the wall processing and loud jocks. Produce imaging with drops from movies and TV shows of the era. Have a "big voice guy" do sweepers and promos.

I may have missed it, but I don't recall any station back then sounding anything like WOW.

 

[tbolt909]

The Kinks followed by Dolly Parton. Jeez, is it any wonder why we call it the Bow-WOW factor?!

A well programmed AAA format can span the years intelligently. For example -- The Byrds --Tom Petty --R.E.M.
The Decemberists, etc..
The Beatles -- ELO -- Coldplay...
I could list many more examples of similar sounding artists that can flow together.

It's possible to create a station that can appeal to specific Boomers who like Album Rock. The WOW Factor has no direction. Simply playing random hits from different eras and thinking that ALL Boomers will like it is absurd. This format has no passion and no ratings...

 

[asugeorge1]

A well programmed AAA format can span the years intelligently. For example -- The Byrds --Tom Petty --R.E.M.
The Decemberists, etc..
The Beatles -- ELO -- Coldplay...
I could list many more examples of similar sounding artists that can flow together.

It's possible to create a station that can appeal to specific Boomers who like Album Rock. The WOW Factor has no direction. Simply playing random hits from different eras and thinking that ALL Boomers will like it is absurd. This format has no passion and no ratings...

I will say that at the very least, it appears that Sebastian has gotten rid of the 1990’s and 2000’s country songs that made no sense being on a station targeting baby boomers. Still, it’s weird to hear Bobby Vinton and Dolly Parton on the same station.

 

[davideduardo]

It's possible to create a station that can appeal to specific Boomers who like Album Rock. The WOW Factor has no direction. Simply playing random hits from different eras and thinking that ALL Boomers will like it is absurd. This format has no passion and no ratings...

Why would anyone want to appeal to boomers? There is practically no radio revenue available for those demos.

 

[tbolt909]

Why would anyone want to appeal to boomers? There is practically no radio revenue available for those demos.

Why not just unplug and turn off the lights? There are many Alternative formats out there aimed at younger demos. Many of those stations generate little revenue.

The WOW factor claims to target Boomers on purpose. One assumes that ownership is aware of that...

 

[davideduardo]

Why not just unplug and turn off the lights? There are many Alternative formats out there aimed at younger demos. Many of those stations generate little revenue.

The WOW factor claims to target Boomers on purpose. One assumes that ownership is aware of that...

They likely think that there are enough local direct accounts to sustain the station with an "exclusive" format.

However, "exclusive" can mean "the only one who is dumb enough to do it..."

This format may be like introducing crabgrass flavored ice cream at Baskin Robbins.

 

[b-turner]

Looking at the song list in the first post, I would say this is not that bad. I grew up listening to top 40, eventually moving to 'album rock' as it was called. If you were listening to top 40 back in the era, say, 1967 to 1970 you got a little of everything. A Boy Named Sue by Johnny Cash, Sinatra, Herb Alpert, Beatles, Hendrix, Cream, Monkees, Archies, 1910 Fruitgum Company, Diana Ross & Supremes, Temptations, 4 Tops, and many many more shared the playlist. The transitions were generally eased because most stations had a break between each song, typically a commercial or two with jock patter.

While the span of music is big, it might be more of a familiar and known factor versus slipping in comfortably in some age group choice of decades and specific music type. I couldn't stand disco when it topped the charts. Today The Bee Gees or K.C. are just fine with me. My point is our musical tastes evolve of the years and pretty much allow for known and familiar songs out of that more youthful narrow window of musical likes to be allowed today. I think the firming up of the format as demonstrated by the first post is a move in the right direction. Still, as has been said, the lifelessness doesn't offer much to hang on to.

 

[TheBigA]

While the span of music is big, it might be more of a familiar and known factor versus slipping in comfortably in some age group choice of decades and specific music type.

I think the success of this station has confirmed what some of us have been saying for a while. It's not about the depth of the playlist. That will only appeal to a small percentage of listeners. We call them "music lovers." You can't program to them because their passion and loyalty is to the music. You can't build a radio station around a song list, no matter how deep or wide.

 

[b-turner]

Agreed 100%. I've programmed by consensus in small markets and the sort of markets where the business buying ads didn't care much for the format and the masses were so much younger than business owners. It was like riding a barbed wire fence trying to keep the masses listening and the business owners buying.

You get nowhere with the gigantic playlist complete with deep cuts. Stick with the big hits, known and loved songs. Depending on your market, in theory, each time you play something like a 7 in 10 song, you lost 30% of your audience.

The thing I was trying to say poorly about span of music is a song may be known and familiar to many today even if the song was not a part of their heritage years of music.

 

[davideduardo]

I think the success of this station has confirmed what some of us have been saying for a while. It's not about the depth of the playlist. That will only appeal to a small percentage of listeners. We call them "music lovers." You can't program to them because their passion and loyalty is to the music. You can't build a radio station around a song list, no matter how deep or wide.

This all goes back to something I've mentioned before and which I learned from doing thousands of one-on-one interviews:

Most listeners will use the term variety or an equivalent word or term. They see it as positive, generally above everything else.

But when you do open-ended interviews and ask "...so what makes 'variety' to you?" the listeners respond, "lots of songs I really like".

Then if you test music with the same people, you find that the "really like" number is very small... less than 100 songs that have across-the-format-and-demo-appeal in 18-24's, and not much more than a few hundred in traditional AC listener groups.

So, "variety" really does not mean "quantity. It means "quality" on a personal basis. That means a station has to find songs that are favorites among nearly every potential and possible listener, and which have very few, if any, negatives.

That thins the heard a lot.

 

[TheBigA]

So, "variety" really does not mean "quantity. It means "quality" on a personal basis.

Which leads me to this study presented last week at Country Radio Seminar:

https://radioink.com/2020/02/20/country-radio-plays-less-variety-than-streamers/

So the headline is "Country Radio plays less variety than streamers." That's a very misleading headline because it compares apples and oranges. Radio programmers should not be attempting to compete with streamers. If you want to compare variety, compare country with other genres. On that level, country radio has more variety than other formats. But you won't find Sturgill Simpson or the Avett Brothers on country radio. Not because country radio doesn't play variety. Just that it doesn't play those specific artists.

Translating this to Wow, by playing Dolly Parton next to the Kinks, they might be presenting more variety, but not necessarily in a good way.

 

[davideduardo]

Which leads me to this study presented last week at Country Radio Seminar:

https://radioink.com/2020/02/20/country-radio-plays-less-variety-than-streamers/

So the headline is "Country Radio plays less variety than streamers." That's a very misleading headline because it compares apples and oranges. Radio programmers should not be attempting to compete with streamers. If you want to compare variety, compare country with other genres. On that level, country radio has more variety than other formats. But you won't find Sturgill Simpson or the Avett Brothers on country radio. Not because country radio doesn't play variety. Just that it doesn't play those specific artists.

Translating this to Wow, by playing Dolly Parton next to the Kinks, they might be presenting more variety, but not necessarily in a good way.

It's rather distressing to see people who call themselves "researchers" who do not understand the meaning of the words listeners use. Expanding the playlist generally reduces the perception of "variety".

The keyword, of course, is "perception".

 

[tbolt909]

I think the success of this station has confirmed what some of us have been saying for a while. It's not about the depth of the playlist. That will only appeal to a small percentage of listeners. We call them "music lovers." You can't program to them because their passion and loyalty is to the music. You can't build a radio station around a song list, no matter how deep or wide.

You can build a station around a playlist. It depends on what the strategy is. The JACK format was designed as a "jukebox" approach with no personalities.

AAA is music intensive with knowledgeable and relatable personalities. If done properly, the audience and advertisers will be passionate about the station, not just the music.

The WOW Factor is neither fish nor fowl. It's just hits from many different eras and genres. It's not likely to attract passionate listeners or decent ratings. The game plan has to be more than just "Music boomers should like"...

 

[TheBigA]

The JACK format was designed as a "jukebox" approach with no personalities.

Not exactly true. The imaging is the personality. It's run that way. It's more than just liner cards. And it puts a lot of emphasis on the music scheduling. It's not done haphazardly as it is being done here.

 

[davideduardo]

You can build a station around a playlist. It depends on what the strategy is. The JACK format was designed as a "jukebox" approach with no personalities.

BigA stated the correct interpretation of the format. Jack stations in the top markets are individually consulted and have their imaging constantly updated.

The imaging can be as specific as the LA ones that say things like "the traffic up to Las Vegas is so bad today. But that gives you more time to listen to Jack. So look at that side!"

The format is positioned as the alternative to talk-to-the-post-while-saying-nothing jocks and a narrow playlist. It works in competitive markets.

AAA is music intensive with knowledgeable and relatable personalities. If done properly, the audience and advertisers will be passionate about the station, not just the music.

The issue with AAA is that it is getting long in the tooth and it has always been among the whitest of formats. KINK in Portland is now down to 14th in 25-54. And even in Portland it is declining in revenue in real dollars, down about 20% since 2012.

 

[gr8oldies]

People think any station or stream that plays random, disjointed songs is "Jack", and nothing could be further from the truth.

Not exactly true. The imaging is the personality. It's run that way. It's more than just liner cards. And it puts a lot of emphasis on the music scheduling. It's not done haphazardly as it is being done here.