KPNW-FM lasted about a year and a half with an Alternative / AAA format. Next!
A few years back, on of our local Seattle area FM stations, Click 98.9 flipped to Rock, call letters KVRQ. They called themselves, unremarkably, "Rock 98.9". I remember wondering what Rock 98.9 could bring to the table, as -- at that time -- we had KISW 99.9 for Mainstream Rock; KNDD 107.7 for Alternative Rock; KFOO 102.9 for Classic Alternative Rock, and KZOK 102.5 for Classic Rock.
As it turned out, KVRQ Rock 98.9 filled the niche between KISW and KZOK very well. They were a fun station to listen to. They played a lot of 80's, 90's and 00's music that the other stations didn't concentrate on, and the music was programmed very well. You could hear Motley Crue, followed by Red Hot Chili Peppers, followed by Linkin Park, followed by Rage Against The Machine, followed by A Perfect Circle, followed by Disturbed, followed by Danzig... you get the idea.
Rock 98.9 was yanked off the air after a year and a half. They had a lot of loyal listeners, like myself (as well as a couple musos I know in the area), but they weren't promoted enough, and consequently didn't get the ratings. They did a few promos at rock shows, but the problem with Rock promotions is that there aren't many current rock stars, and 'classic' artists -- who usually play at the local Indian Casinos and draw crowds of maybe a thousand or so -- don't usually have the same pull that the few, huge classic rock acts like the Stones, Pearl Jam and Metallica have. And apparently having a fifth rock station in the metro just wasn't paying the bills.
The banner which was atop the long defunct KVRQ Rock 98.9 website.
They were a fun rock station. They lasted just a year and a half, to 2 years.
I wrote an article about KVRQ Rock 98.9 here.:
So, being that Rock 98.9's ratings weren't what the owners, Hubbard, desired, they did what seemed natural: they flipped to Country -- now they were "KNUC The Bull". Why Country, especially in tech mad, anything but farm country, West Coast Seattle, the home of grunge? Well, Country music is the most popular music format in the US.
The Bull got ratings, but they never beat their main competition, a longer established station on 100.7 called The Wolf. The Bull's promotions were mainly at Country shows. Country radio is one of the few remaining formats where word of mouth, and or promotions at shows works. This is because Country is one of the few remaining formats that has big stars. But even with a popular morning show, and whatever promotion they were doing, The Bull's ratings began to drop after about a year.
The station was then flipped to KPNW-FM, an alternative / AAA (Adult Alternative) station. A lot of the radio guys on the radio forums I go to thought KPNW-FM (there is a KPNW-AM, a talk station in Eugene, Oregon, about 350 miles south of here) might be a non-starter. AAA is a dying format nationwide, and there are AAA channels on the streaming services that have gained the listeners that the Over-The-Air radio stations cast off when they flipped to other formats in the 2010's. The Pandora app on my smartphone has an AAA channel. I'm sure the other platforms have them, too.
That said, KPNW played an interesting mix, and, once again, just like Rock 98.9 before them, they got some loyal listeners. I listened to KPNW-FM a lot. It wasn't always my cup of tea, but they played a decent mix of music. The station wasn't promoted much, however. There were no KPNW billboards, no KPNW placards on buses, few, if any ads in local online media -- nothing like that.
In other words, they weren't exactly creative in their attempt to reach all the alienated AAA listeners.
It was another case of Radio thinking "If we just put it on the air, the listeners will show up, as if by magic." That might have worked well in 1985, when FM listeners tuned around a lot, but it doesn't work so well in 2024, when FM listeners don't tune the dial much. Most radios in newer cars, for example, don't really have dials. You have your favorites, and punch the virtual buttons on the dashboard screen. Also, many listeners use streaming services a lot.
Radio somehow hasn't figured this out yet. More on that later...
Anyway, KPNW's ratings started low and then kept going lower.
The logo for The Bull last time around, when it was KNUC 98.9 FM. The new logo is similar. I posted the older logo here because I think it looks a bit cooler.
On a radio forum I go to, where a lot of pros hang out, I asked them why KPNW wasn't promoting their station to gain listeners in an increasingly multi-media, internet dominated world.
In other words, why weren't they advertising? Stations used to do that all the time in previous decades. I used to see radio station billboards, and placards on the sides of buses. The concept of advertising a radio station seemed to work back then -- why not now?
What I got back from the experts was the keyboard equivalent of a shrug. Experts there said that KPNW was indeed promoting. They were giving away tickets to shows. They may have had some sort of presence at some musical events (what type of presence isn't really clear).
I said "But.... what about advertising, though?" Radio used to advertise heavily -- and now, with so much competition from streaming platforms like Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, ApplePlay, and other platforms, advertising seems like a no-brainer.
No, said the experts. That's not how it's done. You do what KPNW did -- ticket giveaways. "That's how you reach their potential listeners."
OK, offer ticket giveaways -- but to who? If your potential audience doesn't know your station is present on the FM band, how are they going to get your tickets? The point is to get people to listen to the station, right? How is giving tickets to people who already are listening going to gain more listeners to your station? FM listeners don't troll the band looking for new music like they did when I was a kid. They keep their radio on a couple presets, and -- increasingly -- they use streaming services, streaming playlist, and curated streaming channels (like Pandora's AAA/Adult Alternative channel -- which I can get on my phone through the app) to listen to music.
You've got to find a way to get them to check out your station. They're not going to find it on their own anymore.
Not everyone is a radio nerd. Today, it's more like "What's a radio?"
Anyway, any time I asked questions about KPNW's lack of internet and billboard promotion, I got what seemed to be canned replies. "That's not how it's done in radio," seemed to be the gist of it. "It's word of mouth. That is the only thing that works."
Now, most businesses probably love it when a satisfied customer tells others. So the concept of 'word of mouth'? I get that.
But advertising is a billion dollar business for a reason. Advertising often works.
I shook my head after these interactions with the experts. If THAT is really how the people running radio stations think you promote your content brand with all that internet competition out there, RADIO IS DONE.
Now, I'm no radio expert. I'm a radio blogger / journalist, but I'm no expert. I'll admit that completely.
But I can tell you this: whatever form of promotion KPNW tried -- ticket giveaways, word of mouth, it wasn't working.
As Radio ditches music formats that cater to age 50+ demos, treating the older demographics like they are little more than yesterday's trash, the migration away from Radio to services like Pandora and Spotify continues. Pandora has several channels featuring the AAA/Adult Alternative music that a lot of college educated, older demographics like. They also have several oldies channels, including a surf music channel. They have a smooth jazz channel, too.
Radio ditches 'em, Pandora hitches 'em.
THE INTERNET: IT'S A DIFFERENT ANIMAL. GET USED TO IT.
News flash: The Internet is becoming the dominant form of music consumption, with YouTube, Spotify, Apple and Pandora leading the way. Amazon Music is also a key player. The radio based platforms like IHeart and Audacy have a long way to go to compete, but they're trying.
But when your industry is losing listeners to online platforms, shouldn't it be time to think outside the box?
Whenever I mention the FACT that in 15-20 years the vast majority of the more than 15,000 radio stations in the US will no longer exist, even online, the radio experts respond with crickets.
But it's fact. Online is a different animal. There are visibility issues. There are subscription problems. If you run ads, it can drive listeners / content consumers away from your site, so you have to work around that issue. There are expensive digital royalties for streaming music services -- including the radio ones. Even if you get them to load your "app", your "app" may be lost in the gazillion other icons on their phone's screen.
Online -- even for a radio station -- really isn't plug and play. Especially when you switch off the transmitters and antennas, and your entire operation is just one more website out of millions of them.
And that visibility issue is MASSIVE. It's so easy for any content channel to get lost in the vast internet static. Just ask any online newspaper that still failed. There are a gazillion news sources, valid and invalid, out there -- all that competition for screen time. The competition for the news marketplace today even is global in scope. All those websites, worldwide.
And even a decent local newspaper has issues keeping the lights on. Even national newspapers have problems. Ask the LA Times, which loses tens of millions of dollars a year, and laid off more than 100 staff in the past couple of years.
The internet is a harsh mistress.
When I bring this up on the radio forums, no one gets it.
And that, in itself, is another problem.
THE 'NEW ECONOMY' ISSUES THAT ALL THAT RESEARCH MISSED
When the Audacy radio corporation bankruptcy was a news issue on the radio websites a couple months ago, one guy asked the experts: Why didn't the big radio companies foresee that the internet media competition would hit them in the wallet? Why didn't they -- with all their blessed RESEARCH and highly paid consultants -- foresee that the internet would drive down advertising rates, because of the infinite number of slots -- you know, all that competition?
The experts really didn't have a good answer. I suppose a lot of what is slamming radio now is post-Pandemic economics, something that nobody could foresee. But it still remains: the Internet has been vaunted as THE FUTURE since 1998-1999 -- just before the Dot-com crash -- when news articles were constantly talking about the "New Economy" versus the "Brick and Mortar" economy. That was 25-26 years ago.
These big radio companies depend on consultants, research, studies, polls, ratings services -- they have all of this expert information at their hands and they didn't see the advertising issue happening, and right now many of them seem to be lost when it comes to the future of Radio.
Personally, I think that if I'm still alive and kicking in 2045, there won't be more than a couple hundred AM radio stations on the air in the US, and more than 3-4 thousand FMs. And those numbers will probably drop, year by year. They may migrate to the internet, and still will probably fail. Because of the economics of streaming. Very few radio stations 20 years from now will have viable, independent streams.
The vaunted future of every station on the air today having a viable streaming station tomorrow simply will not happen. The economics of competing in an increasingly national and global media audio market, and the complications of internet streaming economics will not support it.
Now, maybe that future dominance of just 5-6 major streaming platforms is inevitable, promotion or no promotion, thinking out of the box, or not thinking out of the box. Maybe there is absolutely nothing radio stations can do to see the end of this century. But that said, it appears that "Radio" -- as we know it -- won't last. It will be streaming networks, on one of the massive platforms. Your local station won't survive. The economics won't support it anymore than it's supporting your local newspaper right now.
And the backwards looking leadership at a lot of radio companies seems to be helping it on its way into the electronic trashcan in the sky.
Either way, this latest debacle here in Seattle on 98.9 is a head scratcher. KPNW-FM looked like a potential money maker -- maybe not a massive moneymaker, as the older Millennials and younger GenX'ers they wanted to reach are in their 40's and 50's, the high end of the sales demographics. But AAA listeners are generally educated, and well-to-do -- not much different from your average Public Radio listener.
I thought that if KPNW-FM advertised and actively promoted their station, they had a chance. Seattle, the home of Grunge and Alternative, would be receptive to Alt and AAA music. The listeners just had to be reached out to, and found. So that they would set the virtual buttons on their car system to KPNW.
But it didn't work out.
There, of course is another wrinkle in this story. Another Seattle FM station, Star 101.5, flipped from AC to Classic Country. They're now "101.5 Hank FM" (not to be confused with the "Hank 101.5 FM" in Dayton, Ohio). They flipped Classic Country the same day that KPNW-FM flipped to Country.
The question is whether a Classic Country station can do well in a city that isn't exactly rural or Country lifestyle oriented. In the 1990's we had two big Country stations (KMPS 94.1, which often topped the ratings, and KRPM 106.1), and a third one that made an attempt (KYCW, Young Country 96.5).
But that was when Country was massive, and their big stars were literally superstars. Garth Brooks, Clint Black, Alan Jackson, Travis Tritt, Shania Twain, the Dixie Chicks, and some others were super popular even outside the Country music arena. But that was the 1990's and early 2000's. The young people who were into Country in the mid 1990's are over 50 now, and advertisers don't care about listeners over 50.
Also, Classic Country, as a music format, is said to be a hard sell to advertisers, as a lot of the listeners are older demographics. So KPLZ's flip from Hot AC -- one of the top radio formats in the US -- to Classic Country could be a gamble.
So what does this all leave for a station like "Hank"? It's hard to say.
I guess time will tell.
For those curious to hear "101.5 Hank FM" in Seattle (not the "Hank 101.5 FM" station in Dayton, OH), here is their website, creatively called "CrankTheHankSeattle".:
If you want to check out "The Bull 98.9", here is a link to their stream.:
If you want to get a feel for what many Seattle listeners thought about 98.9 flipping to Country and 101.5 being turned into "Hank FM", this RadioInk article covers some of that, and the numerous comments below the article are enlightening.:
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With that, I'll close this article. Life is normal. As per usual, I've been MW DXing nightly... Earlier this evening, I actually heard WWL, New Orleans, briefly on 870 kHz, on my Radio Shack 200629 with my crate loop. WWL were playing the Dave Ramsey Show, his theme song "Baker Street" (by Gerry Rafferty) being easy to pick out in the mix. The snippet came up for several seconds and then faded back to unreadable audio behind Pasco, WA talker KFLD.
I hadn't heard WWL in nearly a decade. New Orleans is a long, long distance from here. When I hear WWL, it generally means that the really long distance DX is coming in. So perhaps this present dud of a Solar Cycle is sharpening up!
One can only hope, as Solar maximums are also good for other things, like growing crops. :-)
Aside from that, the weather is improving. I have a few radio articles I'm still working on. I hope this blog post finds everyone out there -- all over the world -- doing well.
Peace.
C.C. April 4th, 2024.
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