Wednesday, April 13, 2011

Legendary KCBQ and anthem songs, would it work in Country?

I was thinking about this over the weekend, I worked at KCBQ from 75-76 and the station was legendary for it's talent, presentation, audio and show biz. Much like KFRC which I again had the pleasure to work at. KCBQ became a topic of conversation over a few adult beverages and cigars with Clear Channel Hartford OM Mike Wheeler when he was our RVP in St. Louis. I knew Mike was the real deal when he said KCBQ under Jerry Clifton as Bartel Group PD played "anthem songs".

Our playlist in 1975 was made up of 25-50 killer songs, i.e. Layla, Freebird, Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, Dyer'maker, One Of These Nights and more. WOW who knew we were a Classic Rock station? Those were the oldies and we played recurrents and maybe 20 currents. The currents were KC & Sunshine Band, Captain and Tenille and of course Elton John. The station was a monster. Presented very cool, sweet promos, no jingles and a connection to San Diego. 

Then it hit me...What if we presented a Country Music Radio station the same way?

We had relief categories too, songs that were older and played during the day only. You could so the same thing for CMR. 50-100 anthem songs from the format, recurrents and only hit currents with dayparted songs from the 90's. Build the station around the synergy of the market, the audience and not worry so much about finding the next big thing. As Bubba Black use to say "We play music?" There is still to much thought put into the music and the building of songs and artists. The audience likes some of the stuff, but only the stuff they know about, not every little freakin' thing. 

Build her around a magic X-factor and watch the PPM metrics explode. 


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