[BC] Listener perceptions/preferences & FM/AM

[Rich Wood]

------ At 11:42 AM 2/13/2007, WFIFeng at aol.com wrote: -------

>Exactly. Did those listeners all drop dead at once? I seriously doubt it! It
>would have been major news... no, they did not... but their *stations* pretty
>much did! I can't imagine that each major market couldn't have one such
>station that would prosper. After all, they would be *alone* in the 
>market providing
>that format... and I am quite sure that there are plenty of businesses who
>would like to play a radio (set to that station) in the lobby. Now, 
>their only
>choices are "Smooth Jazz" (in markets that have it) or Classical.

Neither the format nor the listeners dropped dead all at once. The 
death of Easy Listening had a number of causes and took quite a long 
time to disappear. Stations could make more money with higher spot 
loads, salespeople wanted something easier to sell to young media 
buyers, record companies stopped producing the music causing us to 
have to record our own and advertisers felt older listeners didn't 
change brand loyalties easily. Young listeners had no brand 
loyalties. Easy Listening simply became heavy lifting. WJIB (96.9), 
Boston, wiped out the AM competition, WEZE (1260), in a single book 
after intentionally being off the air for about 6 months. It was 
WXHR. The AM was WTAO (740), the current WJIB. WEZE had a typical AM 
spot load with all sorts of clutter. In the second book we were #1 
overall 10am-7pm. WBZ (1030) was the uncontested AM drive leader. I 
recall graphing the numbers. WBZ's command of morning drive went off 
the page. WHDH (850) with magnificent personalities was close behind.

The problem with multiple stations with the same format was that one 
was dominant. The rest, in Boston, at least, took a half share each. 
Those shares would, most likely, have gone to WJIB. The low shares 
were almost impossible to sell. Gradually, the secondary stations 
changed formats rather than compete with WJIB. So far as I know the 
station has never had numbers like it had with Easy Listening 
(adjusted for deflation - double digit shares are now rare). It's 
changed call letters and formats many times since. It's now Talk as 
WTKK. It had an unusually good book this Fall with a 3.6 12+ but 
usually hovers around a 2.7-2.9. The same was true of XTRA, San 
Diego/Tijuana. Same call letters but many different formats since the 
last Easy Listening book with a 4.7 12+. After decades as an English 
language Border Blaster it's now Spanish.

A station can't survive based on lobby listening. Much of the music 
died with vinyl. I would bet easily 80% of WJIB's library was never 
released on CD. To duplicate it today we'd have to go to record 
companies and make copies of the masters. The other option is to 
locate some of the many collectors and transfer the vinyl to digital. 
The last time I saw WJIB's library was when a jock and I packed it 
into a U-Haul and stored it at WGY, Schenectady. We were commonly 
owned by GE at the time. Much of it was in bad shape and 
irreplaceable, resulting in a switch to taped syndication from 
Schulke Radio Productions (SRP).

I expect to see it return in some form as a secondary format. With 
today's digital turntables and software pop and click filters we 
could get some very high quality audio. It's a massive job to do it 
right and probably won't happen until 3010 when there are enough 
receivers to provide a salable audience. I'm talking about 
traditional Easy Listening, not the later vocalized versions that 
hoped to attract young listeners. Those blew off the core listeners 
and didn't attract the young. Maybe by that time loudness wars will 
have subsided and we can process the way we used to when the format 
was dominant.

Maybe Music Choice will be willing to share its library.

Smooth Jazz is the elevator music of the 21st century. Even it's 
losing its luster. How many alto saxes can a person take?

Rich


Rich Wood
Rich Wood Multimedia
Phone: 413-454-3258