With the end of Christmas comes a ton of format shifts, most now due to the inability of the station to progress in a PPM world in the markets now evoking this technology. If ratings are the reason these stations are switching, are they really using ratings as a real reason to sell or just keeping up with the Joneses.
Cleveland, the NAC/Smooth Jazz flips to Adult Alternative and apologizes for it on their web site by explaining the PPM audience loss for their former format. In Tulsa, Clear Channel flips an oldies station to one of the formats they have been installing in pre-PPM markets to test, Gen-X and they tout the fact they are #1 18-34 and #1 25-54 with this.
Why can’t we come up with some real variations of Country to offer a fickle PPM and pre-PPM audience?
- Country Gold (35-64 Persons) 50/50 Men/Women
- Country Mainstream (25-54 Persons) 60/40 Women/Men
- Country Hits (18-34 Women)
- Country/Rock Cross-over (25-54 Men)
Why are these new offerings performing well? – There is nothing like that on the radio and they become instant cume magnets. Gen X in Louisville offer music with no format genre or boundaries.
Could we come up with a Country format that plays Hank Williams Jr., Tim McGraw, Barbara Mandrell, Rascal Flatts, George Jones and Taylor Swift? We could call it Tailgate or Gen-neck. They offer variety and something different than the mundane clutter masquerading as product. This is the time of the year format changes and most of the Christmas flips have found new formats. NNB switched failing AC KKSR to Oldies as Fun 95.7 today. Entercom flips The Track in Indy back to MY 107.9. It’s safe to say most of these flips will be to offerings that are really nothing more than more vanilla or a hole, a mile-wide in the market that can be creatively enhanced.
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