[BC] The end of small town radio

[Scott Bailey]

Kevin,
  
We are not after a teen demo, we are after a young, female adult demo, with males secondary. Kids in high school, as far as audience wise, mean nothing to us. The Hot AC target demo is 25-45 female. If you go to the Citadel Media Site, click under formats, you can read about the music format. 

We're not concern about teen listeners, as we are not a CHR station, we are more interested about their mothers listening. It's working, but slowly. Hot AC is a step above your typical AC format. It's more intense, but not sleepy time music, and we don't play Michael Bolton over and over, but we do play some of the same songs that the typical AC station would play mixed with songs from the CHR current charts, with no rap, or hard rock.

We have more listeners now than we did with our former 60's-early 70's Oldies format from Dial Global. It was the "Oldies Channel", now called it's called "Kool Gold". We had it for 11 years back then Westwood One owned it. It worked great for 6 to 9 years, then, we noticed a change in the town. 

"Younger People" started moving in as more new housing was being built, new chain restaurants moving in, a highway built that gets people to work in Nashville quicker, and our Oldies Audience was starting to be rejected by our advertisers, due to the advertisers were younger. Mom and Pop businesses here are being ran or owned by younger people. That's when I started to look at other formats. We changed from Oldies to Hot AC in 2006.

Also, this is why Nashville itself does not have an "Oldies" station on the FM dial anymore. 

Another reason I think Nashville doesn't have an Oldies station on FM anymore is that Country Music is changing to lean more to a pop/rock sound. It appears that's what the people want. The former Oldies FM station in Nashville was loosing a ratings battle, ad agencies were not buying them, thus they had low numbers in the Arbitron book. 

There are many individuals in Nashville that will disagree with what I've said because they are a "50's-60's pop music fan, but I believe the new country music, like Taylor Swift, Carrie Underwood, Keith Urban, etc. are beating them out, audience wise, and we are playing these artist, as they have hits on the Hot AC charts.

--
Scott Bailey
WMRO Radio, Gallatin, TN
  
-------------- Original message ----------------------
From: Kevin Raper <kj4hyd at gmail.com>
>
> Scott Bailey wrote:
> We have just about gave up on announcing about school closings here. Like I 
> said, the kids and parents get the info faster than we do from the school board.
> 
> If you want that young Demo, you are going to have to EARN it! And yes, 
> that requires PEOPLE. Do a LIVE remote from the local High School every 
> morning. What is for Lunch? Who is on the Honor Role? Get a Broadcast 
> class going. Hire a popular High Schooler to do Afternoon Drive and ALL 
> of their friends will be listening. Roll up in the Student parking lot 
> in the WMRO Van and give away Bumper Stickers, and give promo CDs to 
> anybody that puts a WMRO Bumper Sticker on their car. get a bunch of 
> Transistor Radios permanently tuned to 1560, and give them away as "WMRO 
> Communicators" so students can hear what is going on at School. Do ALL 
> of the HS Sports, not just the football. Get the cheerleader squad to 
> cut you some WMRO Cheers. The High School Choir can sing your Jingles. 
> Yes, some of those things were worn out in the 1950s, but they STILL work!
> 
> -- 
> 73,
> Kevin Raper
> KJ4HYD
> CE WCKI WQIZ
> 
> 
> 
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