Focusing on my original comments, these two picks do not represent A) the target demo for this station and the ethnicity of the youth of Los Angeles B) experience in the format C) smart programming. This is Los Angeles. This isn't a try out in Bakersfield. This is a station that is trying to knock down the #1 biller in the nation. Having already heard both on the air, they obviously do not know the music, they don't know CHR formatics (and you don't learn them on the job in Los Angeles) and they don't have the "look" or are part of the lifestyle of what is their typical listerner. I would have picked someone Hispanic especially to go after KIIS at night.
If AMP makes the same mistakes as KKHR, it doesn't matter what the year is. The same rules apply today as they did 25 years ago. Nothing has changed basically. KIIS is still buying their listeners as they have for even longer than that. If you think you're going to topple KIIS without challenging Ryan Seacrest, you will be a failure.There have only been two stations that have challenged KIIS in over 25 years and one is gone, the other hasn't topped them in many years. Both had/have personality morning shows. The flash in the pan stations, like Pirate Radio, or the poor adult competitors to KIIS, like B100 or Movin and plenty more we could mention could never even come close to making a serious dent in KIIS. After these moves, and unless they are undone in the near future, it looks like AMP's got a long list of company in Los Angeles radio history to join.
I would not draw on any comparison between KROQ/98.7 and KIIS/AMP. Apples and oranges.
You flip flop. First you say in a post that you can’t compare what’s going on today with what happened decades ago, and then you draw comparisons between KKHR and AMP. Make up your mind. Telling us that KIIS buys their audience is obvious, but the playing field when it comes to promotion has been leveled considerably since the days of KIIS giving away sports cars and big money as most of the huge companies that own radio stations now won’t ever spend that kind of money. Gannett got out of the business long ago. KIIS does it like everyone else now, all smoke & mirrors. What KIIS has is a morning host who got lucky when he scored the American Idol gig and an audience to build on that was handed to him by Rick Dees as well as a heritage that it continues to live off of. Plus it hasn’t had any competition in years. What’s more it has the home court advantage as a known brand that continues to dominate. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be beat, just that no one has been able to bring it all together to do it. If Amp can get their act together and is given the right promotion it may surprise you. If not, it’s as doomed as all the others that have come and gone.
As for the apples & oranges you speak of, I was explaining that competition can make inroads and if you look at the numbers you can see that 98.7 is putting some dents in KROQ’s ratings, and doing it with very little more than lots of music.
You keep mentioning ethnicity and how good and young the talent should look and while it’s true that the days of radio talent being heard and not seen is long gone it’s not a deciding factor. For me, it’s how the talent sounds on the radio as that’s his or her primary job. I’ll take a staff of great sounding hard working jocks over some good looking stiff any day. As for ethnicity, I would want an integrated staff so that the station itself as a whole can appeal to every race color and creed that falls within the demos I'm looking for. You’ll disagree for sure, but I expect you to.
As I tell everyone, you will need to point to specific posts that show any flip flops. None from me.
KIIS is still giving away cars. Do you think they don't?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06qfuE9hsU8 as an example. Paying Your Bills has been done by KIIS during previous economic downturns and proved to be a powerful tool to promote the station. I expect it will do the same now. What has AMP got to counter it? Concert tickets.
You've got two white guys back to back, totally new to the format and lifestyle, in prime positions where the younger end of your demo is going to need to be super-served. Negative. This is Los Angeles,
[EDIT] not Seattle. I would have put a Hispanic on just to counter-program KIIS's aging white guy in the same shift. I've already said I've heard them both on the air. They don't know the music. That's quite obvious. They also don't know CHR formatics. That's quite obvious. Stryker has a bad habit of using "check it out" as a crutch. Make him some real hip. Would be nice if they had something about him on the website. Nothing.
As for inroads, go look at the early AMP ratings. Without jocks they're already doing ok. Putting these jocks on will only damage them.
KIIS has had more competition over the years than any other radio station (Power and The Beat being their biggest competiton...and many others including KBIG under AMFM, B100, KKHR...). I don't know what you are trying to claim. As for Dees, he had plenty of competion. Jay Thomas, John London & The House Party, Steve Harvey, to name a few. Dees peaked in the mid-80's. He was dragging KIIS down in the end even without a direct format competitor.
Watch the video of McCabe that I posted. He looks like a small town dufas new to radio. The whole video goes nowhere. It's embarrassing (as is their van for a Los Angeles radio station).
I'd like to know why AMP is claiming to be commercial free when in reality they had been playing adlets for NBC over the weekend. They seem to have adopted a new positioning statement today "All the hits, half the talk" (what does that mean?). They're also doing "Commercial Free Mondays". "We're over with those 10,000 Songs in a row" Stryker just said on the air (as he rushed his set). Then why is it still on the website?
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