"Nickname unavailable" wrote in message
...
On Jul 12, 1:42 pm, "David Eduardo" wrote:

you have insinuated that f.m. caused the demise of these stations,
but in my area, many moved to f.m. once they were bought out, then
came the ridged playlists. that is what we are really discussing.

In her area, there was no local Fm, but the ones nearby took all the
audience of the AM, which was power-challenged, and the AM turned in its
license.

Relatively few AMs moved their programming to FM. When the simulcast ban in
metro markets went into effect in 1967, stations that had an FM put
different programming on the FM. Later, many realized the FM was going to
make more money than the AM... so they kept the formats.

I went through a list of major markets... just a sample of the top 25, and I
can't think of more than a couple of cases in the 10 years after the
simulcast ruling where an AM format moved to a co-owned FM. The Top 40
stations that were big on AM got beaten by challengers on FM... like WMYQ
(FM)and WHYI (FM)in Miami, and AMs WQAM and WFUN, owned by others,
eventually both changed formats. That happened in markets from Birmingham to
Phonnix. In a couple of cases, staitons that got waivers, like KUPD Tempe,
AZ, fired up a bigger transmitter on the FM and the FM became the dominant
part... but there was no mass migration anywhere to FM by existing
formats... because the AM owners were too late in reacting and someone had
already claim jumped the format on FM.


FMs have essentially all the music audience, so there is no issue between
AM
and FM here. It is just a radio issue, with no band distinction.

nope, its a corporate mentality that limits choice.

No, it is reality. In the 70's, one by one the Am music staitons died
against the challenge of FMs doing the same typé of format.... WABC, KHJ,
WIXY, WQXI, WQAM, WCAO, WLS, KLIF, KQEO, KTSA, KILT, KXOK, WHB, KIMN, KFRC,
KCBQ, KCPX, KENO, KTKT, KLEO, KOMA, KAKC, WRBC, WHBQ, KELP, KERN, KRIG,
WMAK, WKGN, WKIX, WISE, WILS, WSNX, KQV, WHHY, WBSR, WAPE, WABB, WLCY, WLOF,
WLEE, WPOP, WKBW, WDAK, WCOL, WROV, WGH and many other Top 40s that
dominated their markets in the 60's were almost gone by the end of the 70's,
beaten and crused by FMs. Listeners did not want the limited signals, the
night directional nulls and the low-fi quality combined with man made noise,
so music went to FM. Those big AMs did not give up easily... they simply
lost as more and more audience went to FM as the formats people wanted
appeared there.

I was in a top 15 market when the most attractive format suddenly appeared
for the first time on FM. The total share of about 15 FMs had been around 15
share points before that. In 6 months, the total FM share was over 50, and
that one station reached levels of 33.5 share in one book. People
immediately moved to FM when the format they wanted appeared there.

Radio uses techniques to determine the appeal of each individual song in a
specific genre (or "format") and they play, as a rule, all the songs that
have wide appeal and don't play the ones that a significant numbers of
listeners don't want to hear. In each format, there are different numbers
of
songs that tend to define these formats, in every market, often even in
different countries.

that's why people are loading up ipods with music they cannot hear on
the radio, plugging them into their radio jacks, and ignoring
corporate owned bland radio.

Actually, most of what is on iPods, per several studies, is exactly the kind
of music that is on the radio, or has been on the radio. The interest in
offbeat songs is restricted to a small group of people, and the main reason
to have an ipod is to play only the songs you like, which is often less than
the playlists of the three or four radio stations the average person listens
to weekly.

Country stations average in the 600 to 700 songs, Tallahassee or Spokane.
Soft ACs go from 300 to 350 songs. CHR's (today's term for Top 40) around
120. And so on. The reason there are no more is that listeners as a group
don't like any more songs, no matter how deep the research goes.


corporate research is so good. or, is it that corporate research only
chooses what the corporation makes money on.

Research like that is not corporate. It is simply finding a group of people
who like the general kind of music your staiton plays, and asking them to
score each song that has been played or is being played.


And every so often there is a station that plays 1500 songs in a 700 song
format, and dies, proving the rule. The reason playlists are the size they
are is that the listeners who selected the songs indicated that that was
all
they liked enough to play.

you ignore what is going on, on the internet.

What has been going on on the internet in the last few weeks is the
downloading of millions of Michael Jackson songs that were hits on the
radio.

And I suppose you have never had the experience of going to see a favorite
singer or group, only to have them play a bunch of new songs from the new
CD, and then performing a perfunctory medley of your favorite hits by that
performer. Didn't the audience complain, moan or boo? They came to hear
hits, not unknown songs. A lot of people don't get that.