For nearly 20 years, some broadcasters have been talking about dropping spots and selling sponsorships only. Now, three Eastern Long Island, N.Y., stations are trying just that–billing their jockless “FM Channel Casting” as a way to compete with spotless satellite radio. But will the economics work? Does going jockless mean competing with satellite and iPods or capitulating to them? And will listeners accept even four short spots as “commercial free”?
When the Aerosmith version of “Come Together” performs well in music research, are audiences responding to that performance of the song, or the strength of the original? Is the ongoing appeal of “I’ll Be Missing You” by Puff Daddy (er, P. Diddy, er, Diddy) still getting a boost from “Every Breath You Take”? Well, not every song that’s a remake or a sample does well in research. And if there is a halo effect for remakes, some radio programmers are looking for more ways to take advantage of it.
In less than a year’s time, reggaeton has gone from fringe music at Latin radio to the core sound of several new major-market launches every week. Detractors are questioning the music’s long-term viability, but the real triumph here is Latin radio’s increasing success in attracting younger Hispanic listeners, something that has eluded many broadcasters for more than 20 years. Don’t count on the repatriation of younger Hispanics to end any time soon.
With so much gold popping up on so many stations, you’d think there would be a place for a station to sell itself as the new music choice. But there aren’t a lot of formats where programmers feel entirely confident about the current available product, save, perhaps, Country. But “Today’s Best Music” could still be a viable franchise if programmers were able to back it up by finding more great music, and if they could come up with a fresher way of saying it than “Today’s Best Music.”
For anybody who grew up in radio, “Do jocks matter?” should be a rhetorical question. But there’s nothing like seeing Cousin Brucie, Fred Winston and numerous others replaced by jockless radio stations, as we have in recent weeks, to bring that question back to the fore. This week’s “Ross on Radio” asks why so many programmers should equate “music-intensive” or “different” with “jockless” and looks at the last 15-or-so years’ worth of attempts to have production do the job of the air personality.
It wasn’t so long ago that most major FMs chased the lucrative 25-to-54 demo and left all other listening on the table. The upshot was multiple AC, Country, and Oldies stations in a market and a dearth of Top 40, Urban or young-end rock stations. So with the recent loss of Alternative, Oldies and even some hip-hop stations, you have to wonder, has the “25-54itis” of the late ‘80s/early ‘90s returned?
WCBS-FM New York, which switched to Jack FM on June 3, was a 33-year Oldies format icon. But it was also a format maverick–different for many years from the 250-song, heavily focused music machines that the Oldies format had become. Edison Media Research VP of music and programming Sean Ross looks at what made CBS-FM different, and why it should have had a better chance at updating for 2005 than many of its format brethren.
While broadcasters are smart to embrace the new technology, Edison VP/music and programming Sean Ross argues that they shouldn’t be so quick to surrender entirely to the concept of an “on-demand” media world. What made radio great, Ross says, is the shared experience, whether it was the Beatles on WABC in 1964 or the top 40 revival of 1984. And it’s the shared experience that could make radio necessary in an otherwise on-demand world.
Does the wide variety of today’s Jack/Bob stations have any application on the R&B side? Well, there is a new generation of listeners who are too young for traditional Urban ACs but perhaps ready for something more adult than today’s more narrowly defined Hip-hop stations. Beyond that, there’s a long history of wide variety at R&B radio: well before Jack or Bob, there was Frankie, Donnie and Sunny Joe.
After years of being encouraged to keep it tight, the success of Jack/Bob-type formats means that PDs are suddenly looking to build 1,000 song libraries of their own, or at least add some depth to their existing playlist. And already some decisions that made sense in some very particular market situations are now being institutionalized around the country—regardless of whether they make sense in other markets. If you’re designing a library from scratch, or if you’re just adding “throwback” or “legends” cuts to a successful station, read this week’s Ross On Radio: The Care And Feeding Of Variety: Building A 1,000 Song Library.
Like a lot of mid-‘90s Alternative hitmakers, Green Day followed up their breakthrough success by telling pop radio to go away. Unlike many of their counterparts, they got a second, and now a third chance at mass success—the latter with a project that would have scared many acts and their labels. Green Day’s success proves once again that both radio and labels are cutting bait on acts too quickly, and that listeners are still looking for meaningful content, whether it’s in Rock, Hip-hop, or any genre.
Sean Ross recently got an e-mail asking, “Would ‘Stairway to Heaven’ have called out if callout existed in 1971?” It was, after all, a complex eight-minute record with multiple potential hooks. So we asked programmers who were actually there in callout’s early ‘70s development what they remember about what did and didn’t test, and about its implications for today.
