Re: WBOS adds '70's to playlist.

[Mark Shneyder <mshbc@bu.edu>]

On Fri, 27 Jun 1997, Bill O'Neill wrote:

> 
> I caught a very slightly different mix driving around this noontime and
> thought I heard that R - word, as well.  There does seem to be an audience
> just waiting to switch back to BOS.  To their credit, over the past 2 yrs.
> of *music* tinkering, they have not *format-switched* in a very unusual
> progression.  Think about it - from the soft, ecclectic of the early 90s to
> the 'Rock of the 80s & 90s', the songs still fade out, no talk-ups,
> processing is still tuned for long-form (yes, the mod monitor actually has
> some bounce b/w  -7 - 0 dB! - what courage ;-)   I would personally like to
> be able to better discern b/w 92.5 and 92.9 a little better.  And since it
> seems XRV is in this for the long-haul (as long as Joanne Doody stays, and
> she tends to hang in there), then BOS might want to take back some of its
> center of the 25-54 demo (versus lower end of it now.)  We'll see.
> 

I noticed that 'BOS' morning drive is extremely music-intensive now.
They rarely backannounce songs. That's okay considering they abandoned
their short-lived 'no repeat workday' experiment and are back to tight 
rotation(Wallflowers' "One Headlight" is engrained in everyone's head
by now :-). An occasional 'BOS timecheck' is squeezed
in each sweep but that's about it. Morning jock(Ken Shelton) doesnt do
much chit-chatting with newsperson or traffic reporter anymore.(I hope 
they're not paying him by the word :-). With so much talking everywhere
else on the dial, I am sure their audience testing showed some trends
calling for less or no babble...As far as adding 70s go, if you read the
trades you'll get the feeling that there's currently lots of uncertaintity 
in the radio business with the whole 90's rock music scene : when one-hit 
wonder bands like Hootie & Blowfish bomb with follow-up albums, that's 
understandable but when such heavyweights as R.E.M. and U2 
cant even bring back their loyal fans to the cash register, we've gotta 
problem, Houston. So, if you're a PD or a consultant at a modern rock  
station, what do you do then? The usual, boring thing : you turn to whatever 
worked before and what your audience is already comfortable with(ie, 
"70's ROck" or  "Big 80's"/"Colossal 80's"/"Amazing 80's"). Who would 
have thought back then  that Billy Idol's "White Wedding" or The Knack's 
"My Sharona" would create  a comfort zone for the 25-49's in the 90's...:-)

Speaking of Greater Media : They brought in consultants to work 
on Oasis 99.5. The word is that they are pouring some money(testing, 
promotional items, etc) and see if they can jumpstart the 'smooth jazz' 
format before it's all over...Personally, I would love to see them segue 
to some sort of R+B/Soul Gold format -- hearing NYC's WRKS-FM(Kiss 98) once 
again over the last few days kind of made me wish this market could have a 
place on a dial for a station like  'RKS...

- -Mark

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