Every once in a blue moon, something will happen in the radio business, and my friends that still work in radio will ask for my insight into what is about to happen. This happens more when it is on a national level, but this week, one of the local stations here started stunting (in this case, all Christmas Music). The question was, what format do you think they will go to, and why?
Looking at the most successful stations in the area, and the other stations already here, I explained I thought they would go with a Hot Adult Contemporary format. I also said for it to be successful they would have to keep the drive time programming local and live, they would need to have an extremely focused music library, and they would have to position the station with something that would get people's attention, not just the cookie cutter "Today's Hits, and Yesterday's Favorites" type of dribble.
They flipped the station to "The New Mix 93, the station with MY Mix of Music" this morning. The same lame hosts, in some cases screwing up and calling the station by the old name, and I think some of that was voice tracked!!
The music is typical for programmers not used to real competition. "We're a mix station, so we should play stuff people don't usually hear!" I can hear the committee programming this station in my head like the nagging of a 90 year old off their meds. You gain audience by playing music people know and love, not an album cut off an obscure album that didn't have one song break the Top 100, much less a number 10, and most certainly not a number 1.
I am going to restrain myself here. Instead of going off on a tirade on cookie cutter formats, management cutting past the point of having the ability to produce a viable, creative radio, or about how all the people that are needed have left the business, I will change the subject.
I found out today that my hometown radio station has been sold to a religious company, and will be gutted and turned into a christian teaching ministry station. It is the station I first got on as a kid. I used to call the morning guy every morning and tell him cheeky jokes I would find in books from the library. I went home in 2004 as that station's program director and I put all my energy and focus into making it a great station again until they pulled the rug out from under us. I am saddened that my hometown loses this part of the community, but I know it is all a part of the cycle that radio is in now.
On the bright side, after 10 years as an engineer, I can still predict how things work in radio.
Drop me a line anytime: bigdaddy@ccwinteractive.com
I could spend hours going off on why this will be another station that will flip format in a year of so.
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