Screwing up heritage stations (wasRe: Talking Information Ctr.)

[SteveOrdinetz <steveord@wavewizard.com>]

At 08:44 AM 1/21/00 EST, Dib9@aol.com wrote:
>
>
>I will never understand Saga's handling of WPOR.  In various ways, they
drove 
>off all the popular, long time members of the on-air staff.  (Their
treatment 
>of Hal Knight is just the worst example of how they have handled the 
>station.)  I think the original thought was the staff at the time did not 
>sound contemporary enough.  After a couple of years with an air staff that 
>generally sounded like they would fit better on a CHR station, Saga has
hired 
>people for mornings and afternoons that have a more traditional approach to 
>country radio.  Why didn't they just keep the people they had?  
>


Not to entirely blame Saga...a few years ago country radio went on one of
their periodic "let's ditch this image of being a bunch of hicks" stages,
and tried to modernize the sound.  Just because everybody else is doing it
doesn't mean it's the right thing, and the format failed to attract enough
new audience to replace the audience that was put off by this.  Bigger
stations than WPOR have fallen for this...look at Z-100 in New
York...they've gone off the cliff several times...first by going very
rap/urban, then later the other extreme by being essentially an alternative
station that played a couple token dance/pop songs so they'd keep their CHR
reporting status.  They've never fully recovered from these gaffes either.  


As for bringing back market old timers, sometimes that works, sometimes it
doesn't but that's a whole different thread.