I was reading the KFOG thread about their main audience falling in the 35-64 demo and wondered if the same thing was happening to KINK. When Alpha took over the station group, they said they were going to do everything they could to not screw up KINK and David reported some time ago that they were the #2 biller in town but I just wanted to get a sense of how things were going with them. I hoped to get a 25-54 and 35-64 ranking.
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KINK Ranking
- Thread starter semoochie
- Start date
oldradiotapes
Leading Participant
Too bad they couldn't be counted on to fulfill their empty promise.
Alpha Broadcasting: "We're Portland Proud, dammit, and that's all that actually matters in life!"™
They bought the station 7 years ago. The problem with a station that has an older audience is the audience keeps getting older.
So those 55 year old listeners are now 62. That puts them in a different category.
Sooner or later something has to change. Or else they should make the station listener-supported. It might work in Portland.
That promise is about half a decade old now, and I think we should give them a lot of credit for hanging in despite the decreasing billing and considerable aging of the audience. The station's audience is no predominantly outside the sales demos that most larger clients seek. By hanging on so long... perhaps too long... they painted themselves into a corner where the audience has declined, the billing as been reduced and will likely not recover when the post-virus era begins and the remaining audience would have been way too old for a successful large market radio station.
All that is why they absolutely had to change. They coasted on reputation and the "we are Portland and we are different" attitude to sustain what is a totally declining/dying format and Alpha sure gave it the most until they had very little choice but to reinvent themselves.
The billing collapsed in 2019, falling by almost half from 2018 and steadily declining over the last decade or so. They were badly affected by the PPM, which showed that there was an absence of the secondary cume that most stations benefitted from in the new measurement system; KINK just did not have secondary listeners who only showed up with passive measurement.
As to ratings, they barely make the Top 20 in 25-54, but if you go 35-64, they pop up a lot, and then if you go 55 and over they are top 5. But even there they were not winning. They waited about 4 years too long to off that format and put it to rest.
I wonder why AAA skews so old? KINK plays some music that was recorded after 2000, even some current material, although the artists might be older. Meanwhile, Classic Rock and Classic Hits have figured out a way to keep younger listeners interested.
It does seem to be a trend for public broadcasters to try AAA. The NPR News/Talk stations in Minneapolis and Dallas have AAA on a second FM station they own. There are listener-supported AAA stations in NYC and LA owned by universities that get decent ratings and donations.
And just a few weeks ago, the public broadcaster in Nashville announced it would end Classical on 91.1 WFCL and replace it with AAA. The classical format will move over to HD Radio. A few years ago, KUT-FM Austin started a AAA station after acquiring a not-full-signal commercial FM outlet and made it listener-supported. Of course, Austin is special. There's another AAA station on an AM outlet that feeds six or seven FM translators around the market. And there's a commercial Progressive Country/Americana station in Austin as well.
There are only a handful of AAA commercial stations on full power signals. KINK Portland, KBCO Denver, WXRT Chicago. I wonder if their listeners treat them as a more adventurous Classic Rock station that also plays some post-2000 selections?
It does seem to be a trend for public broadcasters to try AAA. The NPR News/Talk stations in Minneapolis and Dallas have AAA on a second FM station they own. There are listener-supported AAA stations in NYC and LA owned by universities that get decent ratings and donations.
And just a few weeks ago, the public broadcaster in Nashville announced it would end Classical on 91.1 WFCL and replace it with AAA. The classical format will move over to HD Radio. A few years ago, KUT-FM Austin started a AAA station after acquiring a not-full-signal commercial FM outlet and made it listener-supported. Of course, Austin is special. There's another AAA station on an AM outlet that feeds six or seven FM translators around the market. And there's a commercial Progressive Country/Americana station in Austin as well.
There are only a handful of AAA commercial stations on full power signals. KINK Portland, KBCO Denver, WXRT Chicago. I wonder if their listeners treat them as a more adventurous Classic Rock station that also plays some post-2000 selections?
Thank you David, that's what I wanted to know! Do you know when this adjustment occurred?
No, but maybe someone familiar with the market can give the timeline.
I've never been to Portland, and with what has been going on, it's not going to be on my agenda. I am wondering if radio has been hurt worse in that market (and Seattle) than any other market their size.
AbqAnonymous
Frequent Participant
That is a good question. For classic rock and classic hits they already know what songs in the following decades were hits and it's only a question of when is the right time to add them to the playlist. But AAA along with smooth jazz for some reason have failed to evolve to fit the current 35-54 demo. But why haven't these formats tried to stay relevant to the current generations? Or create a new format to replace them? I recall a recent Edison study suggested that at least quarter of those in the 35-54 demo said that new music was important. But it seems the answer is to just drop any adult format that plays any current music and put on more oldies.
CTListener
Walk of Fame Participant
The ascendancy of hip-hop, dance pop, EDM and other pure rhythmic genres -- none of which emphasize instrumental prowess or melodic complexity, hallmarks of earlier popular genres -- works against AAA connecting with listeners who grew up with that music on their radios. White suburban teens used to be the bedrock of rock radio; while it didn't specifically target them, they listened and became long-term fans. Those teens started listening to hip-hop in a big way in the '90s and as a result, a rock-based (or, as in the case of Americana, folk/country-based) format like AAA has little appeal to anyone. The nonwhite urban listeners were never listening to AOR-style rock in the first place, and the reduced portion of the white suburban audience that rejected pop's rhythmic revolution would rather try to keep hard rock alive (active rock, modern rock) or enjoy their old music exclusively (classic rock, rock-based classic hits). Oh, and guess what? With each passing year, more children who would have been rock listeners will be born to, and raised by, parents who loved and still love the rhythmic genres. In time, even classic rock may become an unprofitable niche.
You talk about formats evolving, and what happened to AAA is it became less commercial. They could have played other music that fit the format, but it would have alienated the existing listeners, who grew used to what the station had always played. Same with smooth jazz. That format evolved by adding more vocal music and less instrumental. For AAA, they add in some Americana. Over time, it became a different format. What we see happening to AAA stations as they age is the music moves to a non-commercial station in the market. So perhaps that's what happens to KINK.
If that's the case, maybe it's just a matter of time before KINK changes format and AAA is picked up by either the Jazz(more likely)or Classical noncom. Maybe, it won't even be all that much time!
Sad to say but I've seen a couple of classical non-coms do exactly that in the last few months. It really depends how active the music community is in Portland. In one case, they didn't wait for the commercial station to change. They saw an opening in the music, and took it.
On the other hand, I just read this:
That was from 2018. They've had a recent drop from 4 to 2.8.
I don't think so either. That's why I pointed toward the Jazz station. Of course, there's also a listener supported station that's been there a few months longer than KINK and you never know what they'll do.
You're talking about KBOO. They are the Portland equivalent of Pacifica. I know about them. They won't be changing their format to anything, other than 60s protest music.
I've been following the story of a station in Nashville TN that was originally the student station at Vanderbilt University, sold to the local public broadcasting group that owns the NPR news station, who flipped the college station to classical, and is now going to flip it to some form of AAA.
I agree that KBOO probably won't change. I'm a little surprised that they're still around, in that they used to get most of their funding from Classical aficionados and that money dried up about 40 years ago, when we got a dedicated Classical station. I didn't want to use purely local call letters, to avoid non-Portlanders feeling left out, so I just referred to the various formats.
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