Is it me or does WOGL play a very safe playlist. I know they have pretty good ratings, but it seems like they will not take a chance with any songs from the 80s or early 90s. They seem to focus on Madonna, MJ, Springsteen etc. If you look at other CBS/Entercom stations, they play new wave, they play 80s rock such as Whitesnake, Poison, Motley, Def Lep. They also play a little pop rap, such as Young MC, MC Hammer, Vanilla Ice, Tone Loc, Wil Smith. I was just wondering if anyone else noticed this. I would like to see them take a chance and try sprinkling in some of these artists. Especially since they are an 80s focus now. I think their ratings would increase as well as developing a younger audience.
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WOGL Playlist
- Thread starter AM/FMRAINMAN
- Start date
Based on what?
Perhaps it's what their research and data tells them--and that "taking a chance" isn't (yet?) where they need to be. (I know I've heard Whitesnake on 98 more than a few times, for what that's worth.)
I realize one can say anything is "taking a chance" but when it's your business on the line, "taking a chance" can and should be backed by solid data.
I agree, but I am just comparing to WCBS in NY. They play all of the above. So Does Krth in Los Angeles, WOMC in Detroit, Sunny 105.9 in Orlando, KLUV in Dallas and KOOL FM in Phoenix. Btw, I have heard Whitesnake on WOGL...but only specialty shows and not on their daily playlist. I do not have the research to back anything up...It was just something that I noticed. Maybe, radio listeners in Philly would just rather hear Bruce, Madonna and MJ.
Based on the current ratings, apparently they do.
Or the CHR sound of WODS Boston -- CBS decided to abandon oldies completely there! Be thankful for what you've got.
And in fairness, I don't do comparisons to other stations, so I can't speak to that. (Pretty sure one of the Whitesnake plays was on the "regular" morning show--i.e. not A to Z, but not staking my life on that.)
I take it for what it is--and assume the powers that be have a good read on what works best in Philly, which might not be the same as in another city. (And I wonder how many ways one could slice all of those different stations in different cities--is the position that they're all essentially the same and WOGL is the outlier, or is each a bit of a different flavor customized for its city, in some ways overlapping and in other ways not?) To me that's not safe so much as tailored.
I can tell you that WODS, when it was oldies, was quite different from WCBS and WOGL. Very rock/pop-oriented, with limited Motown, limited disco and even more limited R&B. I'd say that was a Boston-tailored station, especially since the only station left in the market (other than rimshotter WBOQ Gloucester) still doing classic hits, WROR, is a rock-leaning classic hits station with no Motown, no disco and virtually no R&B. 'CBS and 'OGL were nothing like it.
I would prefer a mix of both. I love 80s and early 90s r&b but also love 80s new wave and 80s rock. I think that would be a really good mix of music for the station. I was also wondering if they are going to change their jingles to more of a Hot Hits style sound. This November is the 30 year reunion that the station changed from Hot Hits/Hit Radio CHR to Oldies/Classic Hits.
Based on what I've heard about Boston's racial make-up and dislike of non white almost anything, i'm not surprised that their local radio is such.
WOGL did air the JAM Outstanding package which was also used during the Hot Hits years. Wouldn't mind hearing the Z100 packages on WOGL though. I just hope they don't get Reelworld jingles like several of their sister stations have.
Also, I remember WODS. They might have been more rock-leaning than WOGL, but certainly not as much so as CBS-FM is nowadays.
I would love to hear the z100 packages, the Turbo Z. I also love the flamethrower packages. To hear WOGL do those would be really cool. Do you know if any CBS/Entercom classic hits stations use these? I feel like an 80s focused station would be ideal for these two jingle packages.
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KLUV was still using them last I heard. WCBS-FM, WJMK, WOCL, and WOMC used to, but have switched to a "modern" sounding Reelworld package created for WJMK which IMO sounds anachronistic on this format.
You can hear some of the CBS station resings from Z100 packages here:
http://jingles.com/jam/radioids/demodl-CBSFM13.php
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I think it is interesting to note that while WCBS FM can look to the 80s and see 2 very successful chrs that they can play their music from the 80s of today for the adult demo they want to go after. z100 and plj in the 80s were so often top 3 in every female demo, teens 18-34 even 25-54. The same is not true in Philly, 98 WCAU, while I station I loved as a kid, simply did not have really any listeners over the age of 20. WMMR was the dominant station in the 80s in Philly. It would stand to reason then that WCBS FM should be the one playing the 80s pop and rnb songs that the most successful stations in NYC in the 1980s did, while WOGL should go with the rock songs of the 1980s as that is what Philly listened to in the 1980s.
Truth is it is all corporate, they will go with a safe boring homogeneous playlist that is the same coast to coast that will garner safe mediocre ratings be it Philly or Des Moines. Take Phoenix, KOOL there certainly isn't playing all the amazing 80s Phoenix hits that made KZZP a legendary #1 station just like CBS wont play the dance songs of the 80s that put hot 1035/97 on the map that all the other stations 955 987 1003 1075 were forced to play as well. What they do will do ok, it wont tank, it is just bla and as so the ratings...bla. It takes more care and understanding to take the station to that next level. Each hour of music has to be perfectly blended so as to keep the cume they are going for now by playing the same old played out songs but also add the passion and excitement that would increase the time spent listening along with more instances of listening.
Truth is it is all corporate, they will go with a safe boring homogeneous playlist that is the same coast to coast that will garner safe mediocre ratings be it Philly or Des Moines. Take Phoenix, KOOL there certainly isn't playing all the amazing 80s Phoenix hits that made KZZP a legendary #1 station just like CBS wont play the dance songs of the 80s that put hot 1035/97 on the map that all the other stations 955 987 1003 1075 were forced to play as well. What they do will do ok, it wont tank, it is just bla and as so the ratings...bla. It takes more care and understanding to take the station to that next level. Each hour of music has to be perfectly blended so as to keep the cume they are going for now by playing the same old played out songs but also add the passion and excitement that would increase the time spent listening along with more instances of listening.
Yes, each hour needs to be carefully blended, but the rest--"safe," "boring" and "homogeneous"--not so much.
These are people whose livelihoods depend on carefully understanding what songs the listeners today want to hear, and that doesn't necessarily correlate precisely to what happened 30 years back. Audiences move in and out of markets, demographics change, tastes change. They're going to be testing a wide range of music (and tossing aside what simply does so poorly that there's no point in it). Maybe MMR played it, maybe they didn't. Maybe people "over 20" listened to WCAU (and the various incarnations of 106) more than "conventional wisdom" might suggest.
Yes, it's corporate. Corporations owned stations in 1985, too. And the music was carefully--tightly--managed.
Yes, yes, yes! The complainers shouldn't be comparing which mid/late-'80s hits get played today on classic hits stations to the entire catalog of mid/late-'80s Top 20 (or 40) hits. They should be comparing it to the number of mid/late-'50s hits oldies stations were playing in the mid/late '80s -- or to the number of older songs of any vintage that got airplay on Top 40 stations of the '80s. Very few indeed, and all very safe choices based on how well they had aged.
I looked at a couple of random 80's boos as and the statement that you base your assumptions on is not really true.
1982. WCAU FM was tied with WMMR in 18-49 and way ahead in 25-54. An in women, they dominated.
In the mid-80's WMMR was dominant, and WCAU had fallen but there was also a fragmentation of CHR shares with a second competitor.
By the later 80's WEGX had gained enormous traction under Malrite and was beating WMMR in the Female demos and was a serious overall contender.
While, for the decade, WMMR was a big station, it was a ten-share big station and 90% of listening was not to them. Saying that a classic hits station shoul emulate their playlist is suggesting they should change to classic rock, a niche already occupied. CHR stations have generall y been huge cume machines with shorter TSL... so the music they played was more widely exposed.
So CHR music was definitely familiar, as those stations were always huge comers, while 'MMR was more of a. TSL play.
The reason PHX stations don't play the local "hits" is that back then the market was less than 2 million and now it is over 4 million an at least half the people are not natives or were not there in the pertinent 80's years.
"Flow" affects TSL, not cume. Cume is driven by format and general playlist feel as well as talent, promotion, etc.
In general, Sunbelt markets will have a lot of growth and migration, so the playlists will not have much local feel. Low or no-growth markets will be able to localize as the population is stable.
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I loved both WEGX Eagle 106 and Hot Hits 98. Does anyone know the last time WOGL changed their jingles? It has been a very long time. I would love to hear them add turbo z and flamethrower jam jingles.
They last got new jingles in the summer of 2015. The jingles come from the JAM packages Nonstop Power (WPLJ/KHIT 1987), Xyrock (KRXY 1988), Home of the Hits (WCBS-FM 2004), and Turn Me Up (WMEE 2005). Their TOH jingle (from the Hyperlink package) has been in use since 2011, but most of the other ones they use are from the 2015 composite.
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