[BC] Re: Making format choices

[Glen Kippel]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 6:36 PM, <WBRadiolists at aol.com> wrote:

> That's very possible... but it may also be linked to their decision to
> change
> the format. I remember hearing that a few stations dropped it specifically
> because of that. I used to enjoy listening to it when I had to do overnight
> Engineering work at the station... until they ruined the format.
> -----------

KHCS dropped it in part due to their switch to A/C from Inspo.  I was glad,
however, when they dropped the two "traditional" songs per hour that were
there because of the Northwest College trustees.  The final straw,
though, was when they went to mostly non-hosted music.  I figured we could
do non-hosted ouselves and go back to more of a 35-54 demo.  We already have
K-Love and Air-1 here on the lower demo side and Family Radio, most of whose
listeners are dead.  I was aiming at the middle.  Unfortunately the
coprorate president wanted "variety"  and so now there is some A/C, some
MOR, a lot of Christian oldies from the `70s & `80s and the occasional
Southern Gospel and hymns (would you believe -- Jim Nabors?).  That's not
variety -- that's insanity!   I guess they haven't correlated the fact that
their loss of 70 percent of their revenue may have something to do with the
fact that they have lost 70 percent of their audience.  Ya think?

Now you may not be old enough to remember Al Capp's "Li'l Abner" comic
strip, but there was a character called "Joe Blxtflsk" (I may have the
spelling wrong).  He wore a long black coat, there was a black rain cloud
over his head and calamity followed wherever he went.  Well, I knew a Joe
Blxtflsk once -- his real name was Scott Campbell and around 1973 he talked
the owner of KSON-FM in San Diego into playing Christian music.  But, it was
a mix of contemporary (The Imperials, The Archers, etc.) MOR (Doug Oldham,
Bill Gaither Trio, etc.) Southern Gospel (Gold City Quartet, Oak Ridge Boys
-- when they were still a gospel group) traditional (George Beverly Shea,
Frank Boggs, etc.)  and black gospel (Andrae Crouch, Dixie Hummingbirds).
After a few weeks I called him up and suggested that he pick a format and go
with it but he said he knew what he was doing.  He folded in 6 months.
Never pulled a book over 0.5.  He then pulled the same thing in Houston and
then in Omaha and failed there, too.  Just a faulty programming concept.
Hey, you got to find a niche and super-serve that.  You can't please
everybody.  But some people know better, right?