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Chr stations that don't play the same 40 songs over and over

TheBigA said:
Hahahaha! Three months later, the station flipped to country.
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Who cares? KKBQ was still taking risks like it did for years prior to that like KRBE. They and KNRJ at the time catered to what was popular in the clubs in Houston (6400 and clones) and on their mix shows. It was very niche for Houston.


KKBQ aircheck from '89:
KKBQ - 1990:

93Q Mixshow recordings: Mixcloud
Power 104/KRBE Mixshow recordings: Mixcloud

KRBE 1988:
KRBE 1988:
KRBE 1990:

KRBE 1991: 104 KRBE Houston - Mostly unscoped (1991)
 
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DavidEduardo said:
The owners did, and they recognized a format that was not working and changed it.
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David, my point wasn't that KKBQ just decided before a flip that they were going to play songs outside of top 40. They had already been doing that for a few years. Being the radio guru that you claim to be, I thought you would have realized that. Guess not.
 
2Son said:
David, my point wasn't that KKBQ just decided before a flip that they were going to play songs outside of top 40. They had already been doing that for a few years. Being the radio guru that you claim to be, I thought you would have realized that. Guess not.
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I am not claiming anything. All I am saying is that, after a coupla' years of trying a broader approach to Top 40, the format was blown up for a totally different style and music genre.

They tried what was a counter-trend approach and failed. Nobody else picked up on that experiment because they realized that the way to expand Top 40 was to add more gold and recurrent material, not more new, unknown and unresearchable stuff.
 
2Son said:
It was very niche for Houston.
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Which is why it was a failure as a radio format. Just like EDM.

Radio stations take chances every time they add a new song to their playlist. They will often play those songs before they get research and before those songs chart. That's how songs get in the chart in the first place.
 
Radio battles of the '80's and early '90's

"KKBQ (93Q), KRBE, and KNRJ (Energy 96.5) in the late ’80s when Houston became an Alternative hotbed and stations were battling to be first with the new Depeche Mode record (or even the new song by Celebrate The Nun)"

https://www.edisonresearch.com/ten_great_radio_battles_of_the_80s_and_early_90s/

As I stated, this was niche for Houston during that period in time. I never claimed that these radio stations or their formats would last indefinitely. The OP was about CHR stations that didn't play the same 40 songs over and over and my response was about a specific station in time that played outside of top 40 (and I added KRBE in a later post which in fact did continue playing music outside of top 40 for quite some time after that).
 
2Son said:
Not what the OP is about. Stay on topic.
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I'm just responding to your comment. Read the second part of my post:

Radio stations take chances every time they add a new song to their playlist. They will often play those songs before they get research and before those songs chart. That's how songs get in the chart in the first place.
 
TheBigA said:
Radio stations take chances every time they add a new song to their playlist. They will often play those songs before they get research and before those songs chart. That's how songs get in the chart in the first place.
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And plenty of "new" formats just never achieve the goals they anticipated. Competitors adjust to block them. The concept may have been poorly researched. The music style turned out to be a disco-like fad. The concept was OK but the execution sucked. The research was poorly interpreted.

Proctor & Gamble researches the heck out of new brand extensions and products. They test them with trials, and even test market roll-outs. Yet half of them fail and are gone within two years. Yet nobody does better at it than P&G.

So we should expect that plenty of new formats on existing stations will fail. That is one of the reasons why companies tend to accept a mediocre performance from a current format over the risks of a new format and huge expense.

Each song we add, as you say, is a tiny unresearched risk. And every format change is a huge risk, even when well researched.
 
As I stated before, these stations catered to what was popular in the clubs in Houston and some of the music bled into regular airplay. It was niche for it's time in Houston.

In mid-1987, KRBE took a lean towards dance and began weekend mixshows called "The Friday and Saturday Night Power Mix". To counter, KKBQ began its own weekend mixshow, Club 93Q. In January 1988, KRBE retaliated by going on location with The Saturday Night Power Mix to a nightclub with the house DJ mixing live on the air. KKBQ scrambled for the next five months to find a club to host a live mixshow. On May 29, 1988, KKBQ launched its first ever weekly live broadcast, called 93Q Live On the Cutting Edge from Club 6400." The music skewed towards an 18+ crowd and eschewed Top 40 hits; true to the show's name, it was a mix of industrial, EBM, new wave, gothic rock, synthpop and Hi-NRG dance. Ironically, a good amount of the music on 93Q Live On The Cutting Edge had actually been heard previously on KRBE's Saturday Night Power Mix.

KKBQ beat KRBE at its own game, and the Club 6400 shows set the standard for future mixshows on radio stations throughout Houston. The Club 6400 shows became so popular among Houston's youthful set that the term "6400 music" became a collective reference for the types of music played at the club, and the reference, to this day, is still understood by many Houstonians in their late 30s to early 50s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KKBQ
 
2Son said:
As I stated before, these stations catered to what was popular in the clubs in Houston and some of the music bled into regular airplay. It was niche for it's time in Houston.
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As I stated before, that's why it was a failure. The percentage of the potential radio audience that goes to dance clubs is small.

Having said that, I know of several stations that did club shows for Friday & Saturday nights. I think WKTU still does one in NYC. It's a fine way to fill a low-rated daypart. I wouldn't call that a risk.
 
TheBigA said:
As I stated before, that's why it was a failure. The percentage of the potential radio audience that goes to dance clubs is small.

Having said that, I know of several stations that did club shows for Friday & Saturday nights. I think WKTU still does one in NYC. It's a fine way to fill a low-rated daypart. I wouldn't call that a risk.
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We could go all day with this. I stated very specifically, It was niche for it's time in Houston. It lasted as a competition between the stations for almost 4 hours - during that time, I would hardly call it a failure. Furthermore, KRBE didn't disappear and it still played songs outside of top 40 for many years after KKBQ had flipped. I never asked for a diatribe as to why or whether or not a station would remain a success based upon what it was or what a market was doing at any specific period in time. I was simply responding to the OP.

If you'd like to learn more about that time in Houston, here's a read: “The deejay after midnight”
 
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2Son said:
KRBE didn't disappear and it still played songs outside of top 40 for many years after KKBQ had flipped.
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KRBE is STILL playing songs outside the Top 40. Just this week, they added "Grand" by Kane Brown. It's not in the CHR Top 40. Kane is primarily a country artist, but occasionally releases pop songs. I'd consider it to be a risky add. As I said, radio stations take risks every time they add a new song. This is just one example.
 
TheBigA said:
KRBE is STILL playing songs outside the Top 40. Just this week, they added "Grand" by Kane Brown. It's not in the CHR Top 40. Kane is primarily a country artist, but occasionally releases pop songs. I'd consider it to be a risky add. As I said, radio stations take risks every time they add a new song. This is just one example.
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But KRBE has been for a very long time a CHR that is almost a Hot AC. A bit more current, a bit faster rotation and a bit newer gold than Hot AC, but very, very close to being an adult targeted station entirely.
 
I think we reached Peak Top 40 in the 1970s. Now some will argue, but my theory is solid. Because we had radios that looked like this back then:

cb549f2d10c516a183db7ac0b2a684c5.jpg
It wasn't typically the upwardly mobile News/Talk listening business person who wanted these radios, Or Classical fans. It was the kids who loved Top 40.

And it was probably the era of Peak Radio. Because radio was so ubiquitous by then, they were literally disguising it as food.
 
What's now called EDM is a lot like Smooth Jazz was; a niche' audience that is a vocal minority of the larger radio listening pie.
Public stations might get away with it, as supporters are donors, but don't look toward securing a solid demographic that advertisers/agencies want to reach.
 
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