http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/06/AR2006010600337.html
Written by Marc Fisher, this is a good look at some of the reasons Z104 flipped, although I don't agree with all the conclusions he comes to.
From the article:
The original Z-104 quickly jumped to No. 2 in the market, pumping out the '90s bubble-gum sound of groups such as Hanson ("MMMBop"), Spice Girls ("Say You'll Be There") and Blackstreet ("Don't Leave Me"). But in a micro-niched world, advertisers want to buy a specific demographic group. A station that appeals across ethnic boundaries doesn't seem to have much staying power, at least not in Washington. New York's WKTU, which first carried disco to a broad audience in the '70s, is one of the few stations left in the country that consistently maintains a strong, ethnically mixed audience. In the D.C. market, however, almost every station in town has an audience that is at least 80 percent members of one major ethnic group.
It wasn't Z104's ethnic mix that caused them to fail as a CHR. It was the fact that they were handicapped by Bonneville, and not allowed to move into hip-hop when that was the sound that started dominating CHR. Consequently, Hot 99.5 came in with a much better signal and stole Z's audience. Hot 99.5 suceeds now with very much the same "ethnically mixed" audience that Z used to have.
The station's demise, however, had less to do with its music niche than with radio's overall plight in an era of fast-changing technology. For the moment, at least, the public's fascination with choosing its own music makes radio seem old-fashioned and hierarchical.
The station was struggling from the very beginning of the modern music format. While iPods may be hurting radio in general, Z104 failed because its music niche was too small for DC. Note that Z104's ratings were about the same at the end as they were when the Hot AC format debuted on the frequency, long before iPods took off.
Now if we want to look at reasons HFS failed, the iPod argument holds a little more sway. They're also part of the reason that Bonneville opted for talk over flipping to another contemporary music format.
The rest of the article is pretty good, except for this final part:
By this time next year, the price of digital radios may drop to a level that makes the units popular, giving every station on the dial the chance to put two or three streams of programming on one frequency.
We're years away from people even knowing what HD Radio is, much less the radios becoming "popular".
There's another article from Thursday that I missed as well:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/04/AR2006010400849.html
It notes that Z104 did slightly outbill WGMS for 2004, but that WGMS had considerably lower overhead. (When I said that WGMS outbilled Z104 earlier, I was referring to the 2003 numbers, as I didn't have access to 2004.)
Written by Marc Fisher, this is a good look at some of the reasons Z104 flipped, although I don't agree with all the conclusions he comes to.
From the article:
The original Z-104 quickly jumped to No. 2 in the market, pumping out the '90s bubble-gum sound of groups such as Hanson ("MMMBop"), Spice Girls ("Say You'll Be There") and Blackstreet ("Don't Leave Me"). But in a micro-niched world, advertisers want to buy a specific demographic group. A station that appeals across ethnic boundaries doesn't seem to have much staying power, at least not in Washington. New York's WKTU, which first carried disco to a broad audience in the '70s, is one of the few stations left in the country that consistently maintains a strong, ethnically mixed audience. In the D.C. market, however, almost every station in town has an audience that is at least 80 percent members of one major ethnic group.
It wasn't Z104's ethnic mix that caused them to fail as a CHR. It was the fact that they were handicapped by Bonneville, and not allowed to move into hip-hop when that was the sound that started dominating CHR. Consequently, Hot 99.5 came in with a much better signal and stole Z's audience. Hot 99.5 suceeds now with very much the same "ethnically mixed" audience that Z used to have.
The station's demise, however, had less to do with its music niche than with radio's overall plight in an era of fast-changing technology. For the moment, at least, the public's fascination with choosing its own music makes radio seem old-fashioned and hierarchical.
The station was struggling from the very beginning of the modern music format. While iPods may be hurting radio in general, Z104 failed because its music niche was too small for DC. Note that Z104's ratings were about the same at the end as they were when the Hot AC format debuted on the frequency, long before iPods took off.
Now if we want to look at reasons HFS failed, the iPod argument holds a little more sway. They're also part of the reason that Bonneville opted for talk over flipping to another contemporary music format.
The rest of the article is pretty good, except for this final part:
By this time next year, the price of digital radios may drop to a level that makes the units popular, giving every station on the dial the chance to put two or three streams of programming on one frequency.
We're years away from people even knowing what HD Radio is, much less the radios becoming "popular".
There's another article from Thursday that I missed as well:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/04/AR2006010400849.html
It notes that Z104 did slightly outbill WGMS for 2004, but that WGMS had considerably lower overhead. (When I said that WGMS outbilled Z104 earlier, I was referring to the 2003 numbers, as I didn't have access to 2004.)