James Cridland

Multi-platform changes to radio, and respecting the audience

New York City, and the Empire State Building
  • A closure in New York… WCBS-AM “NewsRadio 880”, a 57 year-old all-news radio station for New York City, is to close next week. After the end of a contract, ESPN New York 98.7 - owned by Emmis - will turn into a music station while they try to sell the station (just $50mn). The music format has yet to be announced. The home of ESPN in the city gets shifted to 880 AM instead. Audacy owns WCBS-AM 880, which will be renamed WHSQ. Audacy also owns all-news “1010 WINS @92.3FM”; which does better in terms of the ratings. “Owning the competitor” is an interesting strategy, but the company clearly feels that there is a benefit to owning two different formats. WINS started simulcasting on FM in 2022. Naturally, after 57 years, listeners have expressed their sadness at its closure. I’d be interested in how ESPN fares on AM - you would assume a loss in audience; and this might be an interesting test to see quite how much.

RCS

  • A closure in London… KISS 100, a 33 year-old black and dance music station (and the first to be licenced in the UK), is to come off its FM frequency in the capital, and in most other parts of the UK. The FM frequency is to be used by Hits Radio, a top 40 competitor to Capital. KISS has 2mn listeners (0.8% share); Hits Radio has 4.8mn (2.8% share). On the face of it, it’s a sensible decision from Bauer to place a more commercially accessible station onto a London FM - both stations are owned by Bauer, which says that 90% of the KISS audience listens on digital. London listeners will get more KISS stations on DAB.

  • A goodbye in Sydney… the “two-blokes-and-a-girl” 2DAY-FM breakfast show, with Dave Hughes, Ed Kavalee and Erin Molan, has been suddenly pulled off-air after three and a half years. The station is owned by SCA, and breakfast on the station has been a problem for the company ever since losing Kyle and Jackie O to a competitor. It’s unusual in that the show has been pulled right in the middle of survey 6 (out on Oct 1) and they don’t appear to have a replacement - in fact, Hughesy, Ed and Erin are still promoted on the 2day website more than a week later. Notable, and inexcusable, that 2DAY-FM didn’t let the team on-air to say goodbye to their listeners: just lazily slapping a non-stop music show on-air. One perplexed listener posting onto Facebook: “I missed you this morning. I kept waiting for them to say why you weren’t on.” Why should listeners bother with a radio station, if the radio station can’t be bothered with its listeners?

  • A recommendation on YouTube - Geoff Lloyd tells us why “People are idiots”: from ten years ago, but still a pervading view in radio. This video was from Next Radio, a radio conference that Matt Deegan and I ran - I’m so pleased we videoed all the sessions. It was great watching this again - the man is a genius.

  • This is fun - and very Jack FM. “Half-assed payday. Hear half a song. Win half a grand.” Let’s just hope their automation works properly.

…and, I’m always a sucker for a good graph, and this is a good graph, posted by Liam Thompson over on LinkedIn and showing radio market share in Dublin for some of the big stations:

Dublin market share

… as with any post on LinkedIn, there may be a smidge of self-promotion in there… Liam is working for the company that owns Ireland’s Classic Hits Radio and Radio Nova, the station on the left-hand side that has posted some astonishing growth over the last year. The post mentions that he suggested swapping the breakfast show teams from Ireland’s Classic Hits Radio and Radio Nova. He did so in April 2021 - which shows that radio needs time to grow - but congratulations on a well-earned #1 music slot.

I’m in Los Angeles, in a random hotel lobby (thanks to a flight cancellation and a bag that wasn’t checked all the way through) - on my way to Podcast Movement next week. Hello if you’re going!

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Where I am speaking next

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