-
Get involved.
We want your input!
Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.
After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.
After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/
Thanks in advance and have fun!
RadioDiscussions Administrators
WRXP: IS EMMIS ALLOWING IT TO FAIL???
- Thread starter WRXPinsider
- Start date
Mike said:
You seem to think that CBS would've kept K-Rock going and that they had no other choice but to keep that format on 92.3, and you also seem to think that 101.9's only choice was Rock once 92.3 went Top 40. Even if 101.9 flipped to Top 40, CBS could've done a number of things with 92.3, including Country, Spanish-language or an FM simulcast of WINS, WCBS-AM or WFAN.
RockTheGlobe said:
If 92.3 NOW-FM doesn't survive, a simulcast with WFAN could happen. CBS has a sports simulcast in Detroit and a news simulcast in SF. Both are market leaders.
It has been nearly three years since WRXP flipped to rock. Even with the demise of K-Rock, it isn't finding a market. It's usually the lowest-rated full signal FM. The listeners they're looking for are getting their rock music elsewhere. I'm surprised Emmis has stuck with the format this long. WRXP doesn't fit with Hot 97 and 98.7 KISS-FM.
radioguy39nj said:I'm surprised Emmis has stuck with the format this long. WRXP doesn't fit with Hot 97 and 98.7 KISS-FM.
The 101.9 signal used to be a fit when Emmis was Smooth Jazz CD 101.9.
Lee Anderson said:
1. Continually losing money, year after year.
2. Allowing two voice-tracked novices (one of whom is the OM and best buds with the VP/GM) to handle the PM weekday shift. Can you imagine that happening at any other station in the NYC market, let alone any top 20 market???
3. Being the lowest rated full signal station in the market since its inception.
4. Trying to convince the staff that the potential for consistent top 10 ratings 25-54 is just around the corner, when the data says anything but.
5. Continually losing money, year after year.
6. Having zero presence in the marketplace. The station is invisible.
7. Letting their top-billing, most listened-to personality go (Nik Carter) and substituting a no-name in his place.
8. Deluding themselves that they're a mass appeal station, when in reality they're serving a niche demo with a confused, non-mass appeal, over-consulted format.
9. Continually losing money, year after year.
10. Keeping a non-morning-friendly, overly granular rock n' roll personality at the helm of the morning show (Pinfield) and pairing him with a non-New York, self-absorbed personality in the market (Fram).
How's that for a start???
BJ Steigner said:radioguy39nj said:I'm surprised Emmis has stuck with the format this long. WRXP doesn't fit with Hot 97 and 98.7 KISS-FM.
The 101.9 signal used to be a fit when Emmis was Smooth Jazz CD 101.9.
Very true! CD 101.9 needed younger demos, but what was Emmis thinking when they installed a rock format, which didn't compliment their other NY stations?
There's nothing wrong with a rock format, if it's a PROPERLY done rock format!! This notion that rock won't work in NY is crap to me. BAD rock won't work in NY. Going from AC/DC to Nine Inch Nails to Tom Petty to Candlebox to the Beastie Boys just doesn't work. It looks bad on paper, and it sounds even worse.
PICK a direction to go in. Are you Rock? Alt? Or AAA? I still think a well programmed AAA could get nice 25-54 demos in both men and women.
RXP is not programmed correctly. Hot sauce, Rice Krispies and chocolate cake are all neat foods. But they sure taste like crap when mixed together.
PICK a direction to go in. Are you Rock? Alt? Or AAA? I still think a well programmed AAA could get nice 25-54 demos in both men and women.
RXP is not programmed correctly. Hot sauce, Rice Krispies and chocolate cake are all neat foods. But they sure taste like crap when mixed together.
WNTIRadio said:
I thought that's what mash ups were all about. Go from familiar to obscure.
We in radio think in nicely manicured format boxes, and the public doesn't work that way. I was at a wedding and the DJ kept the dance floor filled by changing it up, going from Motown to Missy Elliot, KC & the Sunshine Band to MC Hammer. He even threw some country in there. That's what programming is all about. Finding that mix of stuff that works. But don't get too stuck in a format hole, because you get predictable and boring.
The problem with Alternative rock is the lack of enough superstars that everyone agrees on that can fill a 24/7 format. So you mix it up. They're looking for that right mix of bankable big names to balance the new artists.
WNTIRadio said:
I kind of understand why Emmis and Leslie Fram are programming RXP the way they are, and our reaction to it may have something to do with the fact that we've been conditioned to think of radio as being programmed into specific formats, not spread across a few different genres like RXP is.
What they're probably thinking of is the fact that listeners today are consuming large quantities of different kinds of music from very different media sources, and the station is programmed to take advantage of it from a Rock perspective. Just because someone likes The Beastie Boys doesn't mean that they won't want to hear a good Rolling Stones song or Candlebox or AC/DC. Personally, I like all of those artists, and they're all in my iTunes and come up on shuffle -- and I'm sure I'm not the only one whose iTunes contains tracks by all of those artists. I happen to like the diversity of music that RXP is playing, since they're all good songs of some kind of Rock flavoring that someone with a more diverse musical background appreciates and can't be fully supported by the standard Top 40-style playlists of most stations... and yes, I am in the male 25-54 demo that RXP is targeting.
I was in an ice cream shop a few weeks ago and heard some 10-year-old kid singing Foghat's "Slow Ride" and was mystified as to how someone of that age knows that track. Then a friend told me it's the first song you have to learn on "Guitar Hero III," which is probably where he got an appreciation for it. Since this kid is learning from a video game that contains a playlist as musically and chronologically diverse as Foghat, AFI, Weezer, Iron Maiden, The Rolling Stones, Scorpions, The Beastie Boys, The Killers, Cream, The Sex Pistols, Queens of the Stone Age, Muse, ZZ Top and the Dead Kennedys (just to name a few), wouldn't it make sense to build a radio station that caters to someone who is hearing that kind of variety of Rock? Since we do want our favorite stations to play the songs we know, after all...
And to extend your analogy, yeah -- hot sauce, chocolate cake and Rice Krispies are all great foods, but they don't go together because they're not in the same family. Chocolate and Rice Krispies go together just fine, just like different aspects of the Rock music family can fit together well, but it's not like RXP is trying to jam Beyonce or Toby Keith into the same playlist as The Beastie Boys, AC/DC or Linkin Park.
There can be variety. I'm not saying they should limit it to 400 songs played over and over. BUT, there is the wrong kind of variety. Go deep with well known artists, and focus on the "quality" rock. G n R isn't quality rock, I'm sorry, but that belongs on DHA with all the other hair bands and Linkin Park/Nickelback. I think a station that plays a compatible variety would work. Listen to 107.1 the Peak, WXRV in Boston, WERS in Boston (from 6a-7p M-F), WXPN or WXRT or KFOG. That's what I'm talking about, variety without the burnt out arena rock.
WNTIRadio said:
Ahh... now your true colors are shining through. You don't want RXP to pick *a* format, you want RXP to pick *YOUR* format. Sorry, pal, but you completely missed the point of my post. All of those stations you mentioned are Triple A, which by design has a wide playlist -- although shallow, since, despite playing a lot of different music, all of the tracks and artists those stations play fit the format sonically.
RXP is attempting to institute a blended Rock format that combines a bunch of standard radio formats, including Alternative, Active Rock, Classic Rock and Triple A. Like it or don't, but don't say it's "the wrong kind of variety" because the kind of variety you describe is simply a variety of songs, not an actual variety of sound.
As far as your definition of "quality" goes, Guns 'n' Roses still have the best-selling debut album of all-time with "Appetite for Destruction," and the band was nominated three different times for the Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy Award. Something tells me your personal definition of what constitutes quality rock doesn't exactly reflect the tastes of most real rock music connoisseurs. I may be sick and tired of hearing "Welcome to the Jungle" after 20+ years, but I'll still readily admit to anyone and everyone that it's a damned good rock song.
WNTIRadio said:
Most of those stations are doing worse in the ratings than WRXP. Why would they want to emulate a station that gets even lower ratings? Or emulate a low rated non-commercial college station? I understand a desire for artistic integrity, but they don't have a university around to help pay the bills.
J
JimmyJames
Guest
Yet for some reason XRV, XPN, XRT, and KFOG have all stuck around with good revenues or contribution levels.
So while they may not "rate" highly - which, with Triple A has as much to do with who IS listening as anything else, and their known reticence to survey participation, makes sense, the advertisers and promotional partners of these stations know they get results.
I'd wager a lot of people in commercial radio would enjoy the level of stability and audience passion, and consistent earnings these stations have shown even if it didn't mean they always showed well in the ratings pagent.
Nobody at these stations is losing any sleep over the book.
As for RXP - sometimes it's not what they're playing, it's the context it's put in. Smoothing out some of the transitions would go a long way.
So while they may not "rate" highly - which, with Triple A has as much to do with who IS listening as anything else, and their known reticence to survey participation, makes sense, the advertisers and promotional partners of these stations know they get results.
I'd wager a lot of people in commercial radio would enjoy the level of stability and audience passion, and consistent earnings these stations have shown even if it didn't mean they always showed well in the ratings pagent.
Nobody at these stations is losing any sleep over the book.
As for RXP - sometimes it's not what they're playing, it's the context it's put in. Smoothing out some of the transitions would go a long way.
TheBigA said:
No, it's not to say that at all, and I'm sure there are plenty of people who like both bands. But formatically, they are definitely on different ends of the radio-programming spectrum, and while I can justify putting Linkin Park on the same station as AC/DC because they're both in the Rock family, Toby Keith and Linkin Park probably wouldn't go together on the same station.
RockTheGlobe said:
For now. I believe a time will come when formats like country and rock will give way to mashes that cover all genres that appeal to certain demos. If the audience knows a broad variety of music, why should they have to tune around to get the song combination they want?
TheBigA said:
Perhaps... [stroking chin] Perhaps...
That was an example. Earlier in the thread I suggested they pick *one*. Rock, AAA or alt. and stick to it, I really could care less which one it is as long as it has some focus to it and loses the train wreck segues. But if you listen you'll notice they're putting some AAA things in with the **** rock, and they just don't fit no matter how hard you try to hammer that square peg in the round hole. If you're gonna play AC/DC & Van Halen, you should probably skip out on the One Eskimo and Edward Sharpe. If you're going to play the AAA currents, then surround them with songs that "fit" musically. There's plenty of songs from the past 35 years to choose from that are well enough known and fit the format, no matter if it's a Van Halen Rock station or a KFOG AAA.
Okay, G n R sold lots of records. So did Bobby Goldsboro, the Carpenters, Helen Reddy and Maureen McGovern. Lots of records doesn't mean everything, though it is a factor. Not everything should be played on RXP, and that's the job of a good programmer to sort that out.
WNTIRadio said:
Geez, how many times do I have to tell you you're missing the point? Yes, I noticed they're putting Triple A and Alternative currents in with the Classic Rock and Active Rock. How many different ways can I explain to you that RXP is trying to build a cross-format Rock station that encompasses all of those formats? Take off your radio programming hat and listen to the station as an overall rock music fan. As one myself, I appreciate the diversity of RXP and the fact that I don't have to go through three or four different presets to hear Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Van Halen, The Killers, Echo & The Bunnymen and Stone Temple Pilots. I like all of those bands, why is it so against your rules for me to hear them all on the same station?
- Status