Drake Vs. Sklar

[Weiserguy]

This has been an interesting discussion, but I'd feel a bit more sanguine if either of you seemed more aware of the timeline in the Wayback Machine.

"Musicradio" WABC finally died in May of 1982, switching over to Talkradio on 5/10/82. SuperRadio had been on the drawing board in 1981 and '82, Sklar's baby, and then got cancelled a month or two after The Day The Music Died. At that point in time, Malrite didn't yet own WVNJ (100.3), and it wouldn't flip to Z-100 for another year. At that point also, WPLJ was successful in its own right with their "New York's Best Rock" AOR format; Larry Berger wouldn't get approval to flip PLJ to CHR until mid-1983, beating Z-100's launch by a handful of weeks.

From the perspective of the SuperRadio project, both stations' format flips were a year in the future, and unknown unknowns (to use Don Rumsfeld's immortal phraseology).

Side note: Ingram, Lundy, Barsky, Jay Thomas and the other guys who'd been signed as 5-day-a-week talent for SuperRadio, were to be compensated accordingly. Lujack, Dr. Don, the others who were only signed to do one weekend day each week, also were to be compensated accordingly. Everyone who had been signed had to have their contracts paid off or bought out when the project collapsed. There also had to have been studio arrangements for anyone who was not going to be located in NYC. (This was over a decade pre-Internet, and datacom to do Top40 remotely would have been really expensive for anyone trying to do it from a home studio.)

One other point: at the same time this was playing out, ABC also had just launched Talkradio (or was it TalkRadio?), so the radio division had their hands full, and, I suspect, saw Talkradio as the more promising service to devote their resources and limited bandwidth to.

 

[DavidEduardo]

What you seem to be missing (possibly because you're not old enough to have been there and heard it live 42 years ago) is that there was a big difference between the WABC style of Top 40 and what became popular as CHR on FM with stations like 'KTU, Z100 and 'PLJ.

The other factor is that "back then" radio was at its most profitable point ever.

Of course, that was a time when jock salaries, even in big markets, were not high and "big morning shows" were just starting to develop in the later 70's. So taking a satellite format which took inventory did not seem attractive to most stations.

Sure, there were lots of secondary stations, daytimers and suburban FMS. Those were not what ABC wanted but that was about all it was going to get in major markets. And in the smaller markets, ad sales could not support such a project.

The satellite music networks that were born at with the approach of the 80's specialized in smaller markets where better talent was not accessible. They took inventory and they charged monthly fees. With hundreds of stations, they had economy of scale and made money.

 

[DavidEduardo]

This has been an interesting discussion, but I'd feel a bit more sanguine if either of you seemed more aware of the timeline in the Wayback Machine.

Better to just follow the programming and music aspects at R+R / RADIO and RECORDS MAGAZINE - Music and radio industry journal

And follow the business of radio at BROADCASTING MAGAZINE - Business magazine from 1931 to 2002

Both journals have a fairly concise and accurate account of what was going on in radio, Top 40 and formats in general.

 

[TheBigA]

One other point: at the same time this was playing out, ABC also had just launched Talkradio (or was it TalkRadio?), so the radio division had their hands full, and, I suspect, saw Talkradio as the more promising service to devote their resources and limited bandwidth to.

The topic of Superadio and Talkradio was covered in The Rush Limbaugh Story:

Ed McLaughlin knew firsthand that syndicated talk worked poorly during the day because he himself had been unable to succeed with ABC Talkradio's daytime lineup when it was among the networks under his authority. Begun in 1982 by ABC Radio Enterprises, a kind of research-and-development department that was out of McLaughlin's purview within the company, Talkradio was eventually made one of his ABC radio networks and allowed to stumble along with unimpressive affiliates and meager financial returns (after several years of big losses). Talkradio was a prime candidate for extinction, but industry watchers believed that ABC feared serious credibility damage if it scuttled yet another hour-upon-hour format. Painful memories of Superadio, one of the great debacles in media history, ran deep within the company. Superadio was envisioned as a round-the-clock, Top 40 sound that local stations could take by satellite from ABC in New York without having to hire their own personalities. Major disc jockeys of the format such as Dan Ingram, the wisecracking great of WABC; Larry Lujack, Limbaugh's boyhood hero from the Chicago dial; Robert W. Morgan, a veteran of Los Angeles's KHJ and elsewhere; and Jay Thomas, a New York radio personality who later moved to KPWR in Los Angeles (and a starring role on NBC-TV's "Love and War") were signed to do airshifts and state-of-the-art studios were constructed for their use. Rick Sklar, the programming genius behind WABC's unprecedented success with Top 40 in the 1960s and 1970s, was hired to work similar magic at Superadio. The problem, however, was that only a few stations agreed to become ground-floor affiliates, and losses were projected into the millions of dollars even into the fifth year of operation. As a result, an embarrassed ABC junked Superadio at the eleventh hour before the scheduled sign-on in 1982.

Which is why Limbaugh began as a single show, rather than as part of a format. At the same time NBC Talknet focused on just two shows in the night hours.

Historically ABC Radio fumbled several times in the 80s. In 1988, they lost Casey Kasem, replacing him with Shadoe Stevens, Ultimately they had to cancel American Top 40 completely.

 

[Weiserguy]

I guess that clarifies the spelling of those two products.

There's only one point I can disagree with in the excerpt BigA quoted. Hindsight is always 20-20, but in 1982, all these folks were trying to project into the future. There was one set of assumptions when each project got greenlit, another as the launch date approached and they evaluated the affiliate signups, and still another (for Talkradio, since Superadio had been put out of its misery) after they had retrospective real world experience with how the format performed. Talkradio may have been a loser, but the programming came out of KABC (and to a lesser extent KGO or WABC), and those stations continued successfully programming for their local audiences even after Talkradio's last death rattle.

 

[DrAkbar]

Sklar's rise to network VP at ABC Radio pretty much stopped with the end of Super Radio. ABC realized sales just weren't there for something of this magnitude, and the decision was made to shut it down before it started. Joel Salkowitz Profile by Scott Benjamin

On the same page with the Superadio story, there's a story about changes at KHJ, which had flipped from Top 40 to country, and was now struggling in the country format. Top 40 radio as it had been done was changing.

Cap Cities (which eventually bought ABC) one upped KHJ, switching KZLA-FM to country before Neil Rockoff & RKO made the switch. "We all grew up to be cowboys" was a slick presentation, but Country listeners preferred the "Three In A Row" less talk format of KZLA on FM.

 

[TheBigA]

Talkradio may have been a loser, but the programming came out of KABC (and to a lesser extent KGO or WABC), and those stations continued successfully programming for their local audiences even after Talkradio's last death rattle.

The conclusion I can come to is ABC was better at programming stations than networks. In fact all three heritage radio networks did a pretty bad job of adapting to the new realities of radio once FM came along. Smaller independent companies replaced them in terms of offering the kind of programming the FM stations wanted. Ultimately all the three big networks could do was hourly news.

 

[DavidEduardo]

The conclusion I can come to is ABC was better at programming stations than networks. In fact all three heritage radio networks did a pretty bad job of adapting to the new realities of radio once FM came along. Smaller independent companies replaced them in terms of offering the kind of programming the FM stations wanted. Ultimately all the three big networks could do was hourly news.

But ABC did the best job by having non-simultaneous news networks in several varieties. They could then have 3 or 4 affiliates in every market. Stations got the news they needed to fulfil FCC license requirements and all were happy. For a while.

 

[TheBigA]

But ABC did the best job by having non-simultaneous news networks in several varieties.

I agree. They figured a brilliant way around the FCC's network rule. Also an efficient way to use the single phone line.

Afterwards Mutual did a similar thing with the Mutual Black Network. NBC did it with The Source.

 

[TomásEstefan]

Sklar's rise to network VP at ABC Radio pretty much stopped with the end of Super Radio. ABC realized sales just weren't there for something of this magnitude, and the decision was made to shut it down before it started. Joel Salkowitz Profile by Scott Benjamin



Cap Cities (which eventually bought ABC) one upped KHJ, switching KZLA-FM to country before Neil Rockoff & RKO made the switch. "We all grew up to be cowboys" was a slick presentation, but Country listeners preferred the "Three In A Row" less talk format of KZLA on FM.

During that time period I read an article about KHJ that I think was in the Los Angeles Times. It seems that many listeners, and potential listeners who saw the innumerable KHJ promotional billboards around the metro, were insulted by the "We all Grew up to be Cowboys" slogan. They took it to mean that Country music listeners were being stereotyped as "hicks from the sticks". They were not pleased...

 

[DavidEduardo]

During that time period I read an article about KHJ that I think was in the Los Angeles Times. It seems that many listeners, and potential listeners who saw the innumerable KHJ promotional billboards around the metro, were insulted by the "We all Grew up to be Cowboys" slogan. They took it to mean that Country music listeners were being stereotyped as "hicks from the sticks". They were not pleased...

It's not uncommon for people out of the target audience for a station to be mystified, annoyed or offended by the message in a station ad.

 

[gr8oldies]

During that time period I read an article about KHJ that I think was in the Los Angeles Times. It seems that many listeners, and potential listeners who saw the innumerable KHJ promotional billboards around the metro, were insulted by the "We all Grew up to be Cowboys" slogan. They took it to mean that Country music listeners were being stereotyped as "hicks from the sticks". They were not pleased...

There's an aircheck of KHJ with the general manager announcing the impending format shift, saying "the music we grew up with doesn't speak to us anymore" and that there was a music from America's Heartland that would. Yecch. If I remember right the flip coincided with the Urban Cowboy era, and maybe that was the tie-in.

 

[gr8oldies]

I agree. They figured a brilliant way around the FCC's network rule. Also an efficient way to use the single phone line.

Afterwards Mutual did a similar thing with the Mutual Black Network. NBC did it with The Source.

In the 70s Mutual had Progressive News at :25 and :55, (their version of ABC Contemporary), Comprehensive News at the top and bottom, and I don't remember when in the hour Mutual Black fed, Apparently there was an attempt at a Spanish language network, one problem being the accent used not being compatible with potential listeners.
There was indeed NBC's Source (it was in place before John Lennon's assassination as there are airchecks of stations carrying it from that night), and CBS tried a young adult network with RadioRadio (not branded that way).

 

[gr8oldies]

The topic of Superadio and Talkradio was covered in The Rush Limbaugh Story:



Which is why Limbaugh began as a single show, rather than as part of a format. At the same time NBC Talknet focused on just two shows in the night hours.

Historically ABC Radio fumbled several times in the 80s. In 1988, they lost Casey Kasem, replacing him with Shadoe Stevens, Ultimately they had to cancel American Top 40 completely.

McLaughlin, then retired from ABC, first took over Dr. Dean Eddell's hour-long show, and when Owen Spann left Talkradio, the two hour opening occurred for Limbaugh. The evening Sally Jesse Rafael and Tom Snyder evening shows were ABC, but not part of the daytime Talkradio brand.
Toward the end, Talkradio dropped its KABC-based shows and originated shows out of WABC, citing satellite costs.

 

[TheBigA]

If I remember right the flip coincided with the Urban Cowboy era, and maybe that was the tie-in.

The movie came out in June 1980, and the format flip was November. So yes. But the real reason that the Top 40 era on AM radio was dead. They thought there was a window for country, but they were wrong.

I don't remember when in the hour Mutual Black fed,

It was at :50 past the hour.

 

[michael hagerty]

The movie came out in June 1980, and the format flip was November. So yes. But the real reason that the Top 40 era on AM radio was dead. They thought there was a window for country, but they were wrong.

RKO made the decision right after the April/May 1980 book was released.

The lone Country station, KLAC, an AM, was #7 with a 4.2---the third book in a row where it had more than a 4 share and was top ten.

RKO thought KHJ could beat KLAC with promotion and a slicker sound. But---as Dr. Akbar mentioned above, Cap Cities took advantage of RKO's advance announcement of the format flip and went Country with KZLA AM/FM before KHJ's flip. Now there were four signals with Country music.

KHJ never got traction and was out of the format in 2 and a half years. It took until the middle 80s, but KZLA-FM eventually ate KLAC's lunch.

 

[TomásEstefan]

McLaughlin, then retired from ABC, first took over Dr. Dean Eddell's hour-long show, and when Owen Spann left Talkradio, the two hour opening occurred for Limbaugh. The evening Sally Jesse Rafael and Tom Snyder evening shows were ABC, but not part of the daytime Talkradio brand.
Toward the end, Talkradio dropped its KABC-based shows and originated shows out of WABC, citing satellite costs.

Way back when-The "Los Angeles" station carrying the evening Tom Snyder show was little KWNK 670 in Simi Valley!

 

[MassMusicMan]

The first question I would have had as an ABC exec is simple:

"We're burying WABC as a music station this year, after three years of ratings freefall. What makes us think the same basic approach to the format is going to be a hit nationwide?"

Because the problem with WABC was more the delivery vehicle (AM radio) than it was the programming?

 

[michael hagerty]

Because the problem with WABC was more the delivery vehicle (AM radio) than it was the programming?

So, go back in this thread where I post the ratings and tell me why WABC was losing to WNBC for its final year as a music station. WNBC was top 10 for that year. WABC’s last music book was 16th.

 

[radio128]

So, go back in this thread where I post the ratings and tell me why WABC was losing to WNBC for its final year as a music station. WNBC was top 10 for that year. WABC’s last music book was 16th.

Maybe more people preferred Imus in the Morning on WNBC over Ross and Wilson on WABC?