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Does san diego really need 2 alternative stations?

TheBigA said:
The older the music = the older the audience, which means harder to sell. The reason why soft AC hasn't grown is because the format is hard to sell. Audacy may get a smaller audience with alternative, but it's younger than it would get with soft AC.
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San Francisco, Sacramento, and even Chicago have successful Soft ACs. And none of them are retirement havens. KBEB skews more heavily towards softer tracks compared to, say, WDUV, which is interesting, considering that Sacramento skews a little younger. And KISQ does pretty well among 18-34 and 25-54 whilst being pretty mellow.

Anyways, back to San Diego. Wouldn't a growing non-white population (yes, it's growing) make alternative radio less viable? And I'm not sure if non-post grunge Alternative does well among a more conservative military audience. Even Boston and Providence, which both have a high concentration of liberal whites, lack commercial alternative radio.
 
victorres43 said:
San Francisco, Sacramento, and even Chicago have successful Soft ACs. And none of them are retirement havens.
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My comment was about revenue. If you look at KISQ, it's a Top 5 station in the 6+ numbers, but falls out of the Top 10 in 25-54. That makes it harder to sell. The goal in radio is revenue.

victorres43 said:
Anyways, back to San Diego. Wouldn't a growing non-white population (yes, it's growing) make alternative radio less viable?
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There are a lot of reasons why alternative is less viable, and that's one of them. Those changing demos don't make soft AC more viable.
 
TheBigA said:
My comment was about revenue. If you look at KISQ, it's a Top 5 station in the 6+ numbers, but falls out of the Top 10 in 25-54. That makes it harder to sell. The goal in radio is revenue.
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True about revenue, but I thought KISQ was doing well within 25-54? At least a few books back, it was. It's more of a shocker that KISQ was doing well within 18-34, though.
 
Some of the titles on K-Bay are better suited for Classic Hits. Speaking of, the playlist of Sunny would need to have some of those 80's AC hits eliminated and moved to the new Soft AC. Another one in the cluster that would present overlap issues
 
victorres43 said:
True about revenue, but I thought KISQ was doing well within 25-54? At least a few books back, it was. It's more of a shocker that KISQ was doing well within 18-34, though.
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WFEZ Miami does very well 25-54. This format seems to do well in markets with a large, growing Hispanic and Asian population. Soft AC is very appealing to Hispanic woman 25-54.and does well for WFEZ in that demo. Many of the songs on a Soft AC are popular in Mexico. So a San Diego Soft AC would benefit from that.
 
KilowattKat said:
WFEZ Miami does very well 25-54. This format seems to do well in markets with a large, growing Hispanic and Asian population. Soft AC is very appealing to Hispanic woman 25-54.and does well for WFEZ in that demo. Many of the songs on a Soft AC are popular in Mexico. So a San Diego Soft AC would benefit from that.
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Hence why you don't see "country" pop like I Hope, Before He Cheats, Cruise, and Body Like A Back Road crowding the playlists of KISQ and WFEZ. Latinos and Asians are less receptive toward these types of songs. Even KOIT plays these songs very sparingly, if ever. Although, songs like You're Still The One, There You'll Be, Amazed, You And I, and Islands In the Stream do not test terribly.
 
94.9's ratings seem to be on the rebound. I suspect that station's playlist has undergone fine tuning similar to the other Audacy alt stations in recent weeks.

Makes sense for now to stand pat with the existing format.
 
victorres43 said:
True about revenue, but I thought KISQ was doing well within 25-54? At least a few books back, it was. It's more of a shocker that KISQ was doing well within 18-34, though.
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Perhaps at one time, but not anymore. The growth it had in 6+ should have carried to 25-54, but it didn't.
 
TheBigA said:
Perhaps at one time, but not anymore. The growth it had in 6+ should have carried to 25-54, but it didn't.
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Probably a more stable, [relatively] lower-cost operation for iHeartMedia San Francisco, then, with less high profile personalities and such. Perhaps iHeartMedia is keeping this station on air because of cume, which is just behind KOIT. KISQ cannot go much more uptempo or newer, however, or it will trample over KOSF or KIOI.
 
powers said:
I would agree with the WOW! Factor being a good choice here, but it would have to be on a more independently owned station, like one of the four owned by Local Media of San Diego - none of them run anything in HD. 100.7 used to have HD but it was turned off. I can't see Audacy or iHeartMedia using that format here as it's not one of theirs anyway.

Classical is handled by KPBS/HD2 on 89.5 and 94.9 is already using two extra HD stations - the HD2 is reggae-formatted Bob Radio (for Marley) and the HD3, which was the dance-formatted GLOW format, is now Comedy Now, which came over from 97.3 HD3 when that one became BetQL.
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I still miss XLNC1 104.9.
 
Speaking again of S.F. for a minute, KISQ, KOSF and Star 101.3 also complement one another very nicely for sales purposes. Those three stations combined likely reach a very nice cross section of middle and higher income adults. Definitely a good counter to Bonneville's KOIT. Audacy's decision to flip KITS to Variety Hits will do a better job - eventually - of complementing KLLC than the former Alternative format.
 
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victorres43 said:
Anyways, back to San Diego. Wouldn't a growing non-white population (yes, it's growing) make alternative radio less viable?
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One of the things that people keep forgetting is that a few years ago, it was Sunny 98.1 that started out as a Soft AC. It shot to #1 pretty quickly and was still #1 when the decision was made to make it Classic Hits. For that reason alone, I think a Soft AC would work here - but with regard to the growing non-white population, Audacy also has a history with The Wave in LA. That station segued to an Urban AC format....another format that is missing here in San Diego. It might share some audience with competitor Magic 92.5 but that station is more of a straightforward Rhythmic Classic Hits format. Or maybe a mix of Soft AC with elements of The Wave? Naw, that might be too much of a stretch.
 
Another Iheart Soft AC success story is KBEB Sacramento. They were at a 7.4 in 6+ in the book before this Christmas one that came out. All Christmas KYMX took some wind out of their sail temporarily. Granted, I don't know how they are doing in 25-54.

It was when Audacy, then Entercom at the time, bought KIFM from Lincoln Financial that all the tinkering away Soft AC begin. I remember thinking "If it ain't broke, why fix it?". So why not bring back, a proven, successful format.
 
TheBigA said:
You also don't know how they are billing, and I'd suggest revenues are a better representation of success than 6+ ratings.
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They are essentially tied in revenue, around 14th or 15th in the market. That means they bill a bit less than half of what the average of the top 5 stations bill, but in a market with less than $130,000,000 in billing doing about $3.5 million during the pandemic is not bad; if they recover proportionally they are both $4 million or more stations.

We have to remember that there are 23 Class B or Class C FM in the market because of the 7 full power ones in Tijuana. Further, there are 6 more Tijuana stations that are technically Class A, but with much higher antennas than the US permits and those stations do take some of the market audience and revenue.
 
sdwulfdawg said:
KPBS HD2 Classical is a crap classical station that is nothing more than a classical music jukebox. I'm a classical music afficionado and find it unlistenable most of the time.
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How about KUSC 91.5 FM from LA? They come in well in the North County on a regular radio and they have a good mix of classical music.
 
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