What do you do if your station can’t do a music test this spring? That’s a question that an increasing number of music stations have to ask this year. Many stations that did library testing every spring now find it put on hold, at the very least. Programmers that did research on a less regular […]
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From the moment the first PPM numbers came back, a new set of programming rules quickly took hold: fewer and shorter jock breaks, shorter sweepers, more cold segues, constant appointment setting, and a return to two stopsets an hour. But in this week’s Ross on Radio, Edison Research’s Sean Ross takes an extensive look at the Philadelphia market and finds surprisingly little correlation between winning radio stations. So are program directors too distracted by “The Cliches of PPM”?
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The reported bankruptcy filing at Sirius XM Radio undoubtedly has some AM/FM broadcasters licking their chops. But even in the unlikely event that that terrestrial radio loses a competitor in the near future, it won’t “solve everything” for other broadcasters. Too much has changed. In this week’s Ross On Radio, Sean Ross looks at what would happen “If Satellite Radio Went Away Tomorrow.”
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When the subject is Britney Spears, where’s the first place the celebrity press calls? Edison Research. Okay, maybe not. But Edison did get a call from USA Today about the comeback success of her recent “Circus” album. And that prompted Edison’s Sean Ross to ask why the people hyping the Britney and Kelly Clarkson comebacks […]
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National radio was supposed to offer something that local radio couldn’t match, something more than just the potential for cost cutting. Instead, as it spreads across the dial on a weekly basis, much of the programming available is neither fish-nor-fowl, unable to pass for local, but not offering the full bigness of being national. And yet, with most of us having grown up with something besides local programming – whether it was MTV, “American Top 40,” Howard Stern or Tom Joyner, national radio ought to be better. In this week’s Ross On Radio, Edison Research VP Sean Ross lays out a vision for “What National Radio Could Be.”
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2008 was a year where format innovation began with a bang and slowed to a crawl, but in Ross On Radio’s annual look at “The Most Intriguing Stations of 2008,” there’s still a lot to write about. It’s just not necessarily coming from U.S. terrestrial radio.
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A year of radio tumult can be counted on to produce some heated discussion. And one of the best forums was the comments section at the end of 2008’s Ross on Radio columns and our postings to Edison’s The Infinite Dial.” This year’s topics prompted comments both from radio’s heavy hitters and from displaced listeners, who often ended up on our site because there was no other place for them to go. Two Country-themed columns in particular generated what were easily our most heated discussion threads to date. So if you didn’t get a chance to go back and read the comments, here’s “The Best Of You” from 2008.
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A year ago, the fall ratings book kicked off with a typically heavy series of format flips. This fall, however, format launches have slowed to a crawl, and many of those that have taken place involve moving existing stations from AM to FM (or to a second frequency). So why is there more excitement about new iPhone apps than new radio stations? The economy is one culprit, but Edison Media Research VP Sean Ross digs deeper in the new Ross On Radio: Stasis We Can’t Believe In? Or, Where Did All The Format Changes Go?
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WVAZ (V103) Chicago, which launched 20 years ago this week, wasn’t the first Urban AC, but it was the format’s breakthrough. Under then-co-owner Barry Mayo, now president of Radio One, and OM Tony Kidd, V103 found a formula that was, in retrospect, so simple that it was hard to believe it hadn’t been done everywhere. And soon it was. In 2008, Urban AC faces a more complicated landscape, informed, but hardly created by the advent of PPM. Edison Media Research VP Sean Ross looks at V103’s birth and the format’s evolution in this week’s Ross On Radio.
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For more than 20 years, two music formats – Country and Oldies – have been thought to perform well in bad economic and political times, while Top 40 has struggled. Edison Media Research VP Sean Ross asks if there’s a real cause-and-effect, or just a coincidence in timing. And he looks at how each format has the ability to speak to listeners in this time of uncertainty.
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The iTunes Music Store’s new “Genius” application can recommend songs or even create entire playlists based on others in your library. In doing so, Apple has engaged Pandora on the iPhone battlefield for the recommendation franchise. But in this week’s Ross On Radio, Edison Media Research VP of music and programming Sean Ross tries out the new application and concludes that radio has still developed a more sophisticated paradigm for evaluating listeners’ tastes. So “Is Your Station Smarter Than A ‘Genius'”?
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Nearly two years after the launch of WWFS (Fresh 102.7) New York, the idea of a younger-leaning AC station continues to intrigue the industry. Often, however, that concept plays out as a station with younger imaging, not necessarily younger music–something that became apparent in Philadelphia this week where two very mainstream ACs are now sparring for the more contemporary package. Edison Media Research VP Sean Ross has some thoughts this week on why “soft and contemporary” has been so hard to translate musically in this week’s Ross On Radio, “Why Is It So Hard To be Today’s Soft Rock”
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