KAAM flipping to Christian Talk

What I know of KPYK tells me that they get more billing than you might think. I believe the Monkern (sp?) Family bought it from the bank for sweat equity. Once it was paid for, they could do what they needed. Sports and religious services did pay a lot of the bills. They have other advertising revenue too, but clearly not big dollar amounts. Still, it's a small staff and I'm sure they make a nice little profit to stay in business.

An outfit like KAAM can't do that in a market like DFW.

With small town AM stations it almost doesn't matter what your actual format is, you get 90% of your sales from high school sports and Sunday church.

Really depends on the town. I've worked small town stations where Friday night and Sundays were what carried the station and I've worked some where you had one paid program on Sunday and carrying high school sports was break even at most (then again they weren't winning teams in each instance). I would say that today it is even more likely the bulk of billing comes from school sports and paid programming on Sundays.

The station I worked that made almost all of it's billing on weekends was a daytimer and we didn't carry high school sports. I recall counting the commercials that aired the whole 7 day week: 44 commercials. Paid Christian programming and Spanish language or paid gospel music shows: 16 hours and 45 minutes. In fact we even had a trio that came in to play music live Saturday morning to promote where they were playing Saturday night. That was a hoot! Everybody bought payment in on Friday for their weekend shows (the rule was pay by 2pm Friday or you don't go on) so the owner could make a bank deposit before the cutoff time. That was the first station I ever worked that relied so heavily on paid programming.

Speaking of paid programming, I once sold for a Christian station...all preaching/teaching. We could sell most of the weekday hours except early afternoon and late afternoon. In lieu of playing music and such in unsold times, the DJs were told to give a bonus replay (their choice) of a paid program but to announce it's regular(paid) airing time and the beginning and end. Actually it was pretty fun and definitely not 'stuffed shirt'. There was a preacher that told the best lawyer jokes and another that told great preacher jokes (about a poorly educated retiring preacher asking about his possible replacement's initials after his name...what is a BS...exactly what you think it is...and a PHD...well, that's piled high and dried).

DavidEduardo said:

My point is that not everyone has the same taste. And the mere existence of a station playing music a listener does not like will not make them curious to listen to it.

And most people here, I am sure, are not particularly fond of the nostalgia format, big bands or the crooners. If there are any fans, they are likely in their 70s which simply makes my point.

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KAAM hasn't played crooners or big band music regularly in nearly 20 years. As I write this they are playing Didn't We Almost Have It All by
Whitney Houston from 1987. Followed by Every Day With You Girl from 1969. Then 1972 's City of New Orleans by Arlo Guthrie. The jarring lack of a
" sound" ... goes back to the 620 days (1996-98) when I ran ads for my business. Jaan Mccoy and Hue Beavers both believed just play a whole bunch of different stuff and everyone will find one or two they love....but forgot they will also hear more songs that they hate. Younger people today are far more appreciative of 50 year old music than we were... https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...-do-young-people-listen-really-old-rock-music The drive time blocks of quack medical and financial planner paid shows was a good reason NOT to even bother setting a preset for 770. Their Ibiquity HD sounded pretty good..dropping back to muffled telephone quality mono analog AM in 2010 made both the programming and sound quality awful. The demo with the highest net worth is 65+ They buy stuff, travel, and often go high-end, as if to make up for driving a 3 speed manual shift Ford Falcon or giving their wife a 1/10 carat diamond wedding ring from Joe Daiches Credit jewelers 40 years ago. The demo with highest listening to AM radio is also 65+. An oldies music station on AM should work --- even better that right wing talk aimed at the same age group..(since there are many talk stations competing for the same audience. and the barter deals are great for the syndicators but terrible for the station owners.) How many listeners will listen online? The demo least likely to "listen online" is also 65+.

ropertex said:

Younger people today are far more appreciative of 50 year old music than we were...

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I agree that they're appreciative of it. They know it, and they might enjoy a song or two under certain circumstances. That doesn't mean they'll listen to a 24/7 format on a small AM radio station for a long enough period to make a difference in the ratings.

Roper Tex I haven't been in radio in years, but I have listened to every station in the area for many, many years under all kinds of formats. I agree with you 100 percent. There are a bunch of college grads from the 60's and 70's that got REAL college educations and have made something of themselves. They are now in the 60+ range and are starving for their music and many of them produce their own music because it's not out there. Many of them are very successful business people and they have functions at their homes. Guess what kind of music they play at their gatherings? Self produced 60's and 70's music. Some even have small bands in. Some have asked me to supply the music. The point is that there needs to be a break out station in this market for people like these. I truly believe that there are advertisers out there for this.

KAAM has always been all over the place, I would tune in for the oldies and leave when the crooners showed up and for Hubcap Carters show. Other than that I don't think I've listened to KAAM much at all in probably 10 years or more. I kind of figured they'd transition to 60s/70s oldies and scoop up the audience left behind by KLUV but sales would be hard despite Christian Talk attracting the same demo. About the only difference I can see is Talk will probably do better with agency sales.

KAAM did used to sound pretty good in AM Stereo but nobody had a radio for it.

I bought time on KAAM in the late 80's and it was the flagship station of my nostalgia radio network which ran old radio drama's like the green hornet and great comedy shows like Bob Hope and Jack Benny. It lead to more stations where I did the same for years and it was a good station I remember the building was very modern and it had lots of glass walls and was a fine time for me in radio as a client instead of a worker at a station. I will miss KAAM as it was and wish them well trying to survive in anyway they can. As Bob Hope would say thanks for the memories KAAM Dallas.

I harken back to the days of Hubcap Carter (RIP) and the Saturday Night Oldies show (No requests, but suggestions are OK..) and the wonderful AM Stereo sound they had, until sunset. Then the signal would drop, and so would the quality and stability of the Motorola AM Stereo system. Summertime helped extend the full power listening time and received quality.

Megapsycle said:

I harken back to the days of Hubcap Carter (RIP) and the Saturday Night Oldies show (No requests, but suggestions are OK..) and the wonderful AM Stereo sound they had, until sunset. Then the signal would drop, and so would the quality and stability of the Motorola AM Stereo system. Summertime helped extend the full power listening time and received quality.

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Agreed. Their monster daytime signal put good stereo out West about 290 miles, when co-channel KKOB started interfering. When they succumbed to the siren song of HD, I couldn't get HD lock less than 10 miles from their towers, and my HD radio was performing perfectly on other HD stations in the area, some much more distant. The sound went bad as well. It is no wonder a music format didn't attract an audience. When they stopped that HD nonsense, they should have opened up the audio to wideband mono, instead they left the muffler on. Perfectly good for talk - not much good for anything else.