And I brought that up already.
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Yet *ANOTHER* terrible move by the Eagle
- Thread starter Rudy Fitzneris
- Start date
97.1 may be a direct competitor, but let also consider that local iHeart management wants some of the sports gambling money. As we can see that is a big segment of the market now. Let's use common sense now. If iHeart was happy with The Eagle then they wouldn't be blowing it up. So management decided something else needed to be done. Some folks dislike it, and some love it. What we have to understand is this.....will they make more money with sports/guy talk than with rock and roll. Management crunched the numbers and they are and they are going for it.
Russ Martin ironically went into a tirade on that subject before his death. I think I heard this from him in 2019 when he was asked why he didn’t play music on his show. This is a paraphrase because I did not record it so I am recalling only from memory.
“Every now and then I get asked - ‘Hey, Russ, you’re a fun guy and all, but why don’t you play music like everyone else on afternoon drive?’ And I say the same thing every time.”
“The music sucks. All of it. Nirvana killed it.”
“After Nirvana destroyed everything with one song all of a sudden nihilistic lyrics, noisy guitars, heroin addiction, and raspy-voiced men got popular. But it’s not good music. It’s just noise. Angry, confused noise about drugs, women, or life in general, which they all could fix if they were man enough to do it. There’s no meaning behind grunge, it’s just empty whining with emptier music. And it’s kept going downhill from there, to post-grunge and nu-metal to indie and now we have teenage girls whispering into microphones over trap beats and everyone pretends that’s good music.”
“That’s why I have it drawn into my contract that I don’t have to play music. The music sucks. It got worse, it has continued getting worse, and it will keep getting worse. And I will not play it. And since I get the best ratings on the station, I don’t think anyone else likes it either. End of story.”
“So no, I won’t play music. And you have other radio dials if you feel like listening to a teenage girl whisper into a microphone over a trap beat. Have fun!”
EDIT: I don’t think Russ liked Billie Eilish very much.
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Research is an attempt at doing essentially that. As David points out, the problem is that even the best researched products don't always do as well as the data would tend to indicate they should.
I'm very much aware that sports outbills its ratings share significantly. I haven't done a perceptual of any kind on DFW and its radio today. So, I don't know if the rock format would really find itself back in the top-10 with a few of the tweaks Rudy suggests or not. One would think, however, that iHeart wouldn't be going to all the trouble of toasting the station and reformatting it with an expensive local lineup if it thought that was possible.
I do agree with Rudy that this seems like a huge risk that isn't likely to bear out a reward. While most of the markets he showed had more than two sports stations, only two in each market had large local lineups. The others are run as cheaply as possible and don't amount to more than a hill of beans in the ratings. I'm sure most of those sports stations are at least break-even, but, if they could get enough money to do live and local, I'd think they'd already be doing that. That tells me most advertisers aren't willing to pay a premium price to buy three deep in the sports format. Then again, Dallas has always been a popular test market. "If it won't sell in Dallas, it won't sell." That's why we were drinking Crystal Pepsi 30 years ago and well before the rest of the nation. (Of course, Crystal Pepsi didn't last very long once it was rolled out nationwide despite its working in Dallas.) If 97.1 The Freak does work, we'll likely start seeing an additional sports station pop up in more large markets. Whether it will take off everywhere or become another Crystal Pepsi is something we probably won't know for a few years.
I think it is possible, but I think considering how badly KVIL beat KEGL's ass with half-measures I have to think that even if KEGL tried a reboot of the rock formula that KVIL would simply respond with something else that would continue to leave KEGL in the hole they're in. John Allers used to work for iHeart, iHeart's Dallas cluster likely knows who he is and how he operates, and I suspect they don't want to keep fighting a losing battle. So they're going to gamble on something fresh, new, exciting, and generally bills well. And if it doesn't work, well, back to the drawing board in 2 or 3 years.
The audience does not speak in one voice. That's the problem. That's why you don't see active rock at all in a lot of major markets.
If there was a CORE there to build around, then there would be a radio station. But the only core is playing 20-30 year old songs, and that's already being done.
Jelly Roll isn't a band. He's a person. A very big person. And he gave up on alternative and now is directing his music to country radio. You will now hear Jelly Roll on KSCS along with a lot of other former rock musicians who have left for greener pastures. The problem isn't radio. It's the music business. The artists know this and are reinventing themselves for that reason. Jelly Roll is now signed to a Nashville record label. He's still the same guy, making the same music, but he's getting more attention.
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Teenage girl whispering into a microphone over a trap beat? Did Russ really say that? For me that describes everything from Brittney Spears to Taylor Swift. I think that AI writes the music and lyrics for all that stuff after they feed in their market research. Another reason I am not really a fan of current music. But then, thanks to technology, I don't have to be. Unlike the old days, I have more than an AM radio in my car.
I think he was referencing Billie Eilish, who was rising in popularity at the time with “you should see me in a crown”. I can’t think of who else he could have been referencing considering how specifically he phrased his words, assuming I’m remembering it right.
I'm starting to wonder just how much Billie's music divided the alternative audience. Because a lot of radio stations saw her as the next big thing, and it turned out some in the radio audience didn't agree.
Is this a fair statement, though? Even if this show had played music, is this the type it would have featured? It seems like he's explaining why his show is music-free by citing examples of songs that would never have been played in the first place. I realize, of course, that it would have been unwise for him to diss one of the station's core artists...
From what I understand, she shattered it pretty strongly. I think in terms of songs “Without You” by The Kid LAROI did more damage to the audience and to the format than anything Billie did, but in terms of volume and presence Billie ripped the audience apart far more than anyone else in the 2010’s. A lot of love it or hate it, and it increasingly became “hate it” as she continued to stay a presence on the format.
If she wants to stay on Alt she will have to alter her sound because I don’t think Alt will be receptive to her next era otherwise. She did show indications of this with her second album (especially with the title track “Happier Than Ever”), but she’ll have to go all the way now.
Biting the hand that feeds him is part of Russ Martin's appeal. He regularly trashed other shows on his station. He made a habit of it. I doubt if he would have worried about dissing Billie Eilish or anybody else that his station played. He made a bit out of bashing his Program Director on the air, and he could get away with it where others couldn't. Maybe it's a guy thing or a power thing. Quite a few Russ Martin fans wish they could tweak their bosses nose as often as Russ did. They admired him for it.
My PD in my first commercial radio gig taught me to take personal opinion/feelings out of any programming choice.
I think her brother (and producer) Finneas is in touch with the music world, and knows she has to evolve a bit if she wants to continue her career. Taylor Swift had the same problem after her second album. People got tired of her boyfriend-bashing songs. Same thing for Billie. But what be better is if a new group of artists stepped in to the vacuum.
Another thought - if 97.1 also emphasizes “man talk”, could they put a dent in Cumulus at another end - WBAP? I’m sure that audience is older, but it wouldn’t shock me if they pulled a few listeners away.
IMO, sports is the future of spoken word programming on radio. Typical news/talk is generally on a decline, with exceptions, and attract an increasingly undesirable demo. I could see the hot talk/sports talk hybrid taking off more as the classic news/talk stations continue their slow decline. These news talk stations aren’t getting new listeners. Maybe a few, but not many, and putting them on FM has really just temporarily stopped the bleeding. It hasn’t brought in new or younger ears.
IMO, sports is the future of spoken word programming on radio. Typical news/talk is generally on a decline, with exceptions, and attract an increasingly undesirable demo. I could see the hot talk/sports talk hybrid taking off more as the classic news/talk stations continue their slow decline. These news talk stations aren’t getting new listeners. Maybe a few, but not many, and putting them on FM has really just temporarily stopped the bleeding. It hasn’t brought in new or younger ears.
Oh wow, okay...I was way off! Thanks for letting me know! As you've probably guessed, I'm not from Dallas.
Russ was one of a kind in the Dallas market, and not always in a good way. He slipped into drive time on the Eagle when Howard Stern pulled his show from all the markets. He was lucky to inherit the Howard Stern audience in Dallas. He did a good job of putting together a show that kept those listeners and brought in even more. The opportunity was handed to him and he did really well. The original tree house was not the one that he led when he died, that actually went on a short time without him. The three original guys he built the tree house with, who were all his age, left the show before it's last run on The Eagle. Two of those he didn't get along with in the end and stopped speaking to. They were replaced by his call screener and two other younger guys who worked around the station. A while ago, one of those two got arrested on a charge of possessing child porn and got pulled out of the treehouse and deleted from the Iheartradio Universe.
When Russ was at KLLI, a hot talk station that was built around him after his first run at The Eagle, he practically went to war against a couple of other shows at the station hosted by people he didn't like. With the ratings he had he could get away with it, but it was a pain to the station management who finally flipped the station to.......wait for it..........a sports talk format that no longer needed Russ, who wasn't much of a sports fan.
He died last year during his second run at The Eagle. His show kept going until last week without him.
What a long, strange trip it's been.
Wasn’t just her, it’s all the songs that were deemed alternative in 2020 that divided the audience. personally it didn’t bug me. what did bug me was the outright rejection of new artists without even giving them a chance.
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