dya@unc-c.UUCP (06/08/84)
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C'mon, Stuart. Drop the hammer on a punk? Could you at leat
explain why you disagree with me without all the inflammatory
remarks and ad hominem arguments? I wasn't flaming at you, just
an entire industry. If you want to defend Burkhardt/Abrhams or
the Fred School of Broadcasting, go ahead, but you bore me with
savoring the kill.
For the record, I did not warm chairs for SRG. Just because
a station BUYS an automation service does not mean that they are
AUTOMATED. WPEG is LIVE, LIVE, LIVE. The philosophy is that open
reel at 7 1/2 IPS on ITC and Scully machines sounds much better
than carted music or 45's with cue burns. Or do you believe in
compressing the signal to 1 dB or less of dynamic range so that
the difference between a Scully and a Close-N-Play is nondistinguishable?
The only thing automated about WPEG is that there is a PDC-4
Super Clock on an ITC cart machine which records Mutual Black
Network (OK, Sheridan) for delayed broadcast on the morning program.
No picking out a record with the exact length to nail the top of
the hour network tone on the head.
Nice, new tapes every week from a service which is just as
heavily courted by record companies as the other guys. Oh yes, we
built a device which permitted us to add non-Drake stuff to our
machines. What's so wrong about having a tape which stops 1 second
before a cut? I believe cart machines have stop tones, too? And
they didn't padlock the fast forward and rewind on the Scullys
and ITC's. I look at pre-toned tapes, of superior audio quality,
as a convenience. (Skeptics, look at the front of a Drake tape,
note that the 15 kc tone is balanced within 3 degrees channel to
channel and plays back at 0 vU. Try that with an Aristocart!)
Or is it just what you play, and not how you play it? Audio quality
is #2, bub, on the decision to listen to a station.
>THEY'RE THERE TO MAKE MONEY!!!! PERIOD!!!!
Spare me from the merely obvious, please. Perhaps that is
why those techniques which you belittle so much allowed WPEG to raise
which you despise so much (does it threaten how much YOU know about
MAJOR MARKET radio ?) that WPEG raised their rate card from about $3/spot,
AAA time, to well over $ 40 /spot, AAA time, in a very short time. Now,
I don't think that being able to sell out your scheduled traffic with
an increase of 1200 % in rate card is public service or wimpy. In
fact, it would seem to me that this is pure capitalism. Make a better
product and sell it.
Why should I violate an Arbitron confidentiality agreement. Drake
maintains an entire long list of stations, some of which are chair
warmed, others just purchase the service, who are #2 and #1. They
have several SuperSoul stations (some in big markets) which are
grinding their CHR competition in the dust. Call Drake-Chenault
please! OR call Fred Graham at WPEG. In fact, WPEG SuperSoul leads the market
in several demographic groups. Wanna know why? Because this market
has 5 other FM's that do exactly what you say: Hot clocks, standard
issue programming. Now, you'd expect them to lead in this market. But,
THERE IS ONLY A FINITE NUMBER OF LISTENERS TO GO AROUND IN THE TSA,
and when 5 stations are doing essentially the same thing, they are
going to distribute the same audience 5 ways. Now, it's not FAIR to
say, well, you add up the 5 CHR stations and they have a rating which
is over WPEG. No, sireee. In fact, WSOC-FM which is Country is # 1.
Most of the CHR stations in this market aren't even in the top 5. Three
of them are beaten by TALK.
I would also point out that the Greensboro-High Point-Winston Salem
market is the same way. Here, I have Arbitron data which I can release,
as it was published in a sales brochure in unsolicited mail by one
of the stations involved.
OCT/NOV 1983, TSA 6AM-MID TOTAL PERSONS
WTQR-FM 20.6
WQMG-FM 16.3
WSEZ-FM 7.1
WSJS-AM 6.5
WRQK-FM 6.1
WTQR runs "Great American Country", WQMG runs soul, WSEZ-FM
runs CHR/country, WSJS runs talk, WRQK is CHR. WQMG is actually
#1 in total males all time periods.
>Supersoul, medium mix. Probably lots of pops.
What a crock. So what if it IS pops. Who cares (and it actually
isn't.) Then, if it is mostly pops, why does WPEG and WQMG Greensboro
lead all those CHR stations?
No, My station didn't just advance the hot clock 7 1/2 minutes
just to sweep the quarter hours. They simply avoided the practice
of trying to ensure listening regularity on the part of the audience.
Yes, I consider hot clocks a bad programming practice because everyone
else is doing it, and at least in this market, where 5 CHR FM's do
it and can't get a decent rating, yes, it is a bad economic practice
as well. It is probably a lot easier to sell #2 with a unique format,
sir, than to sell a sound-alike FM. As far as I can tell, the strategy
worked then and it works today. If you can be perceived as different,
you will get a different and loyal audience that results in HIGH CUMES.
That's why you don't have 5 country stations, and that's why the other
5 FM's in this market don't play SuperSoul. Look, I don't deny that
with enough money, you can buy listeners. The point was that we threw
out the notion (and they still do, today) that people will "push the
button if a song is over 3:07, etc."; that the perception of playing
more music should be generated by long music sweeps without talking
about long music sweeps. Oh yes, is 14 mins/hr commercial load adequate
for you?
I back up my claims and opinions of radio with a proven track
record in markets such as Richmond and Charlotte. They are not idle
opinions but real ratings gains "against the odds." I have to fight
these entrenched ideas about radioey radio all the time, and I got
sick of it. My philosophy has NEVER been to try to win listeners
from the other guy, but to expand the total radio listening universe
in a market (homes using radio * time) to increase ratings.
As for "drums and call letters" jingles, they just don't wash
with me. Again, you completely misinterpreted the argument. The dream
of every PD is to get the station a loyal audience that doesn't push
the button, that doesn't need to be reminded that they're listening
to XXX. They know what they like and are aware of what they are
listening TO.
When I said the "shotgun approach", you get the "shotgun effect."
Lots of stations playing CHR, none of them getting huge ratings
shares. I thought that HIGH CUMES lead to HIGH RATE CARDS; at
least that's how we were taught to play the game. No, WPEG is not
heavy on pop at all..about 1 record in 15 at the most (14 of which
aren't in the CHR station's rotations...or they find their way there
about 6 months later.) From a business point of view, I would
rather have consistently high cumes rather than constantly
jockeying around for position. It's a little easier for the sales
executive to explain why his station is comfortably high book
after book than why his station fell 3 slots because his rating
dropped 0.7 point (it happens all the time.) Now, there are markets
where CHR is #1, but there are also markets where Country and Soul
lead.
I couldn't make the kind of money I wanted to make at WPEG because
even though they are # 2 (and they ARE), their jocks still make about
55% of what I make as an EE now. When I was there during the largest
ratings increase in Charlotte radio history, the money was terrible.
And I like EE more than radio, anyway. I'll return to radio when
station ownership is a possibility.
As for angry owners and sponsors, nothing but smiles at the
station under consideration. The sponsors target a specific audience
which is predictable, and the owners are counting their money. What
could be wrong with that?
Anti-CHR doesn't mean pro-NPR stuff, either. But you can get
away from the CHR cliche and be successful. You can't believe that
every successful station follows a formula. And, incidentally, the
standing policy at WPEG is the jocks play exactly what they want
to play. This is because they hire personnel who know what it takes
to make the entire station sound the way management wants it to
sound. There are boundaries, (you don't play Bach on SuperSoul)
but intellegent jocks running their own affairs leads to high morale,
and helps increase ratings. Jocks who are told what to play are
doing NOTHING more than what I can program a Harris automation
machine to do.
Ad hominem attacks (like being a "chair warmer at an automated
station", or SuperSoul couldn't possibly be #2) are pretty
dumb. Why not give Bill Drake at Drake-Chenault a call and have
a little chat with him about all the #1 stations he has with
which do have chair warmed automated formats. I despise ad hominem
attacks especially when the person doing the attacking has probably
never been in this market, and has absolutely no facts to back
his "claims" up except what he has seen in his corner of the
universe. Have you really been in all 9000 station in the U.S.
and polled them to see which ones were using hot clocks or not?
Hot clocks are a tool, and I think they are the wrong tool, if you
want to break clean from the CHR rat race.
If you would like to discuss programming techniques and their
relative merits, that's fine.
Flame all you want when you can show that I am "WRONG". But as it
stands, what I said orignially might be considered "wrong" but if
it works, what the heck? I just call it "different." And the
difference worked well. And since the bottom line was to make money,
and they did (and are, tons of it) what's wrong with that ?
David Anthony