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WTCB

C

carolinaradio

I read very little about this station on here, and thought I'd make a thread for it.
This has got to be one of the strangest AC stations I've ever seen. It looks like a strange Hot-AC'ish/80s hybrid (hardly the traditional AC).
I see Blink 182, Inxs, DMB, Charles & Eddie, Van Halen, The Cars alongside some rare/strange cuts from well-known artists....then a lot of new songs (some most AC's aren't playing) and then traditional songs AC's play from the 70s-present....but exactly what is their strategy? I can't really describe it. I've never experienced a station that considers themselves to be "AC" to sound quite like this.

PS: Now they're playing "Fins" by Jimmy Buffett....wow.
 
It's called "playing whatever tests in the market plus the same crap we've been playing for 30 years." From the Best Variety, Columbia's Concert Station, 70's, 80's, 90's and Today, Home of the Gamecocks, but not really anymore, Columbia's Hometown Radio Station WTCB-FM ORANGEBURG from studios in Cayce.

It's worked for them, more or less, for decades, so I can't poo-poo it.
 
You must be looking at Mediabase rather than listening to WTCB. They run syndicated 80s and 90s shows late on Saturday nights in to Sunday's wee hours. That's the only way you would hear Blink 182 or DMB. I listen several times a week and it seems like an upbeat AC. Not sleepy, but pretty mainstream. They run WAY too many commercials. The only Van Halen song I ever remember hearing is Jump. They probably play two currents or recurrents an hour, so I don't think they are too current. What new songs are you talking about that others are not playing? I have a friend in sales in that building and they say they are still doing great with women. In fact, all they are crowing about are the big men numbers their sports station is pulling in.
 
Like Bugz said, you can't look at a weekly Mediabase summary. The 6+ hours of syndicated programming will throw the monitored Top 100 off a bit sometimes depending on how many spins the syndicated shows give stuff.

However, the Top 10 songs are Hot AC currents (generally), 10-20 are a mix of top testing gold and mainstream AC chart songs. The rest of a mix of top testing gold and some recurrents. You will find that the library does have a dose of Christian Contemporary crossovers and Country crossovers. The library center is still somewhere in the soft AC of the early 1970's, plus Disco, plus early to mid 1980's.

If you really want to get a sense of the station, watch the real-time monitoring.

Bugz, I am surprised that even WTCB is running a heck of a lot of those syndicated ads that replaced Google Adsense for Radio.
 
I'm not positive what you mean, but if you mean all those spots for different blemish cremes and miracle drugs, then I agree with you. They can't make any money off of those that would be worthy of the tuneouts created. Do Clear Channel and the other guys in the market run those? Or is it because Citadel is in bankruptcy and running anything and everything? Either way, it sounds like a 60 second version of those cheap infomercials news/talk stations run on the weekends. That's the kind of stuff that I think keeps them from being a really good radio station.
 
It's the spots for get rick quick/debt relief/wrinkle cream, etc. Almost everyone is running them in the market. Clear Channel less than others. Besides WTCB, Inner City is a big offender. The Inner City stop sets are always 6+ minutes. The infomercial-type spots fill every stopset avail that is not taken by a local spot.
 
Owl City - Fireflies
David Cook - Come Back To Me
Norah Jones - Chasing Pirates
John Mayer - Heartbreak Warfare
Train - Hey Soul Sister
Jonny Diaz - More Beautiful You
Rob Thomas - Someday
Bon Jovi - We Weren't Born To Follow
Mat Kearney - Closer to Love
O.A.R. - Shattered (Turn The Car Around)
Parachute - She is Love

These are some of their top played songs. Some may/may have been on the AC chart, but most AC's aren't playing the above right now. They seem to go much deeper in the 80s (more than any decade) than a traditional AC station. I'm all for variety, but it wouldn't hurt for them to clean things up and get a little more focused. Their 70s and 90s songs look mostly on par for AC.
 
WTCB is a very interesting station. It is one of the out-of-market stations I listen to most in the Charleston area, because it often comes in well down here at night and sometimes during the day.

Their music selection is eclectic, and they are much more interesting to listen to than Y102.5 down here. The other unique thing is their almost all-local programming. Because they are the official EAS station for the area, they keep someone there 24 hours a day. Except for those Saturday nights after 10 or 11pm, and early Sunday mornings, they are all-local, which is unique in itself.

No wonder they haven't been competed against in Columbia for so long (since the Lite 96.7 days), while WCOS was vulnerable for a while with New 92 and 94.3.
 
Charlestondx:

WLTY has been ahead of WTCB for a number of trends and books over the past couple years. Most folks here think of WLTY and WTCB as interchangeable, despite programming differences that a radio fan would think are obvious.
 
IMO, WTCB at times is almost sort of like a tame Steve FM that is less aggressive and has a more traditional presentation and personalities. They certainly aren't the average AC station (not that what they are doing is bad) and can be an interesting listen. I guess what they are doing is working for them. It's also different they never go all-Christmas and don't carry Delilah or John Tesh.

I like WXLY. They do a great job putting the emphasis on the older music, a lot of which was played when they were oldies/classic hits but playing all of the AC currents as well and giving them their fair share. Better than the Greenville AC's.
 
Not true. Just checked mbase 24-7 and there was no stopset last night longer than five minutes. There is no way any station around Columbia would play a nine-minute set, much less eleven.
 
Au contraire. According to Mediaguide, the 7:50 break last evening started at approximately 7:52, 4:30 minutes after Mat Keanrey's "Closer to Love" started at 7:48. That is a 4:30 song. The next song played at 8:02p. That is 10 minutes of presell, Spots, Live Weather and Sponsorship, ID and 80's at 8. This comports with what I observed on my watch while I was in the car. That is a 9-10 minute break. In fact, the break felt longer because they inserted an interstitial ID in the center of the spots.
 
Counterpoint. Mediabase has the Kearney song starting at 7:49. The stopset started at 7:53 and the first song of the 80s show starting at 7:58. Five minutes. You ask anybody over there. There is an unbreakable limit on sets. It may have seemed like nine minutes, but it was not.
 
Not sure I really need to know or care about Citadel policies. But isn't it enough to say Whopper, that if a 5-minute break felt longer than 5 minutes, it's too long to begin with? Of course, 6 minute stopsets are the norm for Inner City. One weekend DM was running 7 minutes, one-two songs, then 7 minutes.

I assume if you aren't Citadel, you're at Clear Channel, 'cause that doesn't leave anyone else in town with Mediabase access...

I'll also note that if the 7:58 song did not show up in MediaGuide monitoring (which is owned by the rights organizations), why in the hell would anyone be playing it?
 
Well in fairness DudeFan, stopsets may seem like 9 or 11 minutes to the listener but in actuality we as professionals know they are not. No one in this city or anywhere else for that matter would dare run sets that long. You know that.

In the same vein, listeners don't know the difference between "underwriting" and commercials. Listeners just realize that you're stopping their music. Call it "underwriting" if you want...but you're still stopping. We know what you mean by it, but they don't.

Which leads me to another honest question...not trying to flame here, but where do you want to take XRY? At one moment you're running imaging that takes shots at ARQ, and the next minute you're running imaging that takes shots at TCB. You feature music from both stations. Seems like you're trying to squeeze yourself into an airplane hangar. (There's a lot of room between ARQ and TCB)
 
Didn't mean to get your panties in a wad. I agree that six minutes is too long for a stopset. But you are the one that said WTCB was running 9-11 minute stopsets (plural) after 7pm, and said you were listening at the time. I know enough about the station to know that couldn't be true and wanted to correct it. By the way, you don't have to work for Citadel or Clear Channel to have Mediabase. I access it through a consultant's license. But I do not consult Columbia radio. If I did, I would tell all of them to stop running so many commercials.
 
No worries. My apologies for sounding pissy. Didn't mean to.

After listening to a couple more sets, they are running LOTS of 30s mixed with 60's. That explains why they are seem so long. Hate to say it, but even as many spots as WLTY runs, the breaks don't seem that long.
 
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