Changes for KXBL-Big Country 99.5

[Radio55]

How much per month will Journal pay for the sat programming on Big Country?  Is it a barter thing? Or a bit of both.

Sorry to see Big Country go (and KVOO-AM), but God Bless Billy Parker... he's gonna outlast them all! 

Seems that Journal is always looking in the other direction when good things come their way... well, someday, maybe someone will buy the stations and bring them back to glory.

[tulsarick]

JournalGuy just because you  drink Journals kool-aid don`t expect the rest of us to. Does this satellite crap have access to a music library not available in house? NO LOCAL LIVE ON AIR is unexcusable. 

[tulsarick]

Speaking of Billy Parker---an absolutely great friend & all around wonderful man---it appears after October he won`t have William Todd Bingham on his show for a few years.

[radiosharpie]

Good luck with the programming.  Waitt Radio Network's Classic Country format should be called the "Crappy Country" format.  The music isn't very good.  The library doesn't get freshened up very often either.  Instead of opening up the library a little and reaching for BIG music, Journal has once again taken the cheap option.  Because Big Country is supposed to keep all the wolves off of KVOO, Journal doesn't want it to succeed...just break even after all it's considered the number 3 station in their cluster.  When Big Country was doing well in the ratings for a while, all the powers that be said it was a fluke.  I don't think so!  Open up the library and breath new life in Big Country 99.5...truly make it a BIG COUNTRY station.  As it is, the satellite programming will never be as good as local radio.  NEVER!! 

[Kent]

How much per month will Journal pay for the sat programming on Big Country?  Is it a barter thing? Or a bit of both.

Hard to say what they would pay for satellite programming.  In most cases, contracts are for three years, and it's usually heavily barter based.  However, there are usually conditions requiring payment and/or additional barter spots depending on a station's AQH and how often the satellite programming airs. 

I work weekends for a cluster of two FM's, one is the ABC's satellite oldies/classic hits format pretty much all-the-time, and the other one runs local programming about half the day and ABC's Today's Best Hits the other half.  The oldies station is #1 in the area, and I've been told we don't pay ABC to carry it.  I was told the hot AC pays about $200/month to carry Today's Best Hits.

[NightAire]

I picked a lousy time to preview the new satellite feed (midnight Saturday night) but I'm a big believer you can tell a lot about a station by what they're doing when they think nobody's listening.

First, I have to say the fidelity of the station strikes me as slightly improved.  Perhaps it's the radio I'm on right now, but it always sounded a little pumpy and thin before...  not so much now.

Initially the imaging didn't do much for me either positive or negative, but then I heard the line, "yes, Britney... there was country before Shania."  O.K., that made me chuckle.

There doesn't seem to be a jock overnights.  That's disappointing although not unusual.  If I'm getting a national feed, though, I'd expect an overnight jock.

At one point an OBVIOUS jock liner played into a song, complete with the upturn in the voice at the end of the ID, trying to suggest the sentence wasn't finished... and then no jock!  That's pretty silly sounding.

The hour I sampled struck me as a pretty broad mix, which is both good and bad.  It was nice to hear a Hank Williams Sr tune thrown in, but I hear an awful lot of 80s.  I still say this kind of format either needs to end at outlaw country, or start with the urban cowboy movement.  Many of the songs struck me as less than mega-hits...  if that means they're rotating a huge library, fantastic!  If they're going to play 300 songs and many of them aren't the home runs, it's gonna be old in a week.  Long-term listening will be the only way to tell if this is TSL-building or lousy selections by the MD.

It's sad to see local jocks go, but at the same time 99.5 was NEVER a contender for the 1170 Big Country throne, and the signal in Tulsa still isn't great...  this may be the best way for them to keep the format on cost-effectively.

As someone else on this thread said, 99.5 seems to have always been about deflecting anger about killing KVOO-AM...  not that it worked...

Another possible reason for doing this: is it possible that the station was successful in the ratings, but perhaps the audience was all 55+, making it a hard sell to the agencies?  If so, perhaps from a business standpoint your most logical move is to cut costs (go satellite) and keep the local advertisers who believe in the format on-board.

If they go younger to reach a more "marketable" audience, they risk cutting in to 98.5's audience...  if 98.5 goes younger, they risk LOSING their audience.  (Young Country is dead, isn't it?)

Unless 98.5 dumps country (not likely because it's still a money maker for them) or 99.5 dumps country oldies (to go to what?), where they are is where they likely feel they have to be right now.

The underdog, 1170, is the only one who looks that good right now... and their ratings weren't that impressive looking last time I looked, but at least they have an optimistic future...

Final impressions: because there's nowhere else to go to find this music, 99.5 will hold much of their audience... and because there is not THAT big an audience for the format and the audience is aging, noone will compete with them.

GRADE:  C+.  It's weak radio, but it's pretty good business.

[Kent]

From checking the website, they're definitely running Waitt's Country Classics format.  In a sense, I like Waitt better than the other satellite formats because they at least have a few locally tailored breaks.  A friend of mine used to work there, and I remember he told me they did three year contracts that were all barter.  I got a chance to tour the facility about 5 years ago, and everyone told me they really enjoyed working there, but they also admitted they would have liked to do more live radio as most of what they did was voicetracking for local breaks.

[NightAire]

You mention local breaks; I heard somebody or something Sunday afternoon who opened and closed their break with Big Country 99.5 and it did NOT sound like the "local fires the ID" type-thing.

Also, good news for 99.5: I was in at Lowe's in Owasso and they have a toolbox there with a built in stereo (and a built in fridge!  Good grief...) and it was on and tuned to 99.5.

So somebody certainly likes them!

[Bob Oshea]

Hey, I got to hear the "new" Big Country 99.5 and the music was terrific.  I've read a lot of stuff pro and con about satellite and have worked with satellite where we were local for a few hours and then satellite for the remainder of the day.  Naturally I prefer local, live 24/7 with one owner stations......sigh, however I thought the station sounded pretty darn good.  The processing was like I remember it being when Ray Klotz was the engineer, before I retired from the airwaves.  As far as simulcasting the AM & FM, that would be financial suicide.  KFAQ is souding a lot better and with Chris Medlock in the afternoon that talker is cookin'!  I don't like talk radio, per say.  But I do like parts of the lineup.  There will always be a market and audience for classic country.  The same may not be true for talk radio.  Having stated that, talk radio has become the contemporary listening publics "newspaper".  So I don't see it going anywhere anytime soon.  As far as the fm signal getting into office buildings better than the AM, forgetaboutit.  We could never get that damned signal to penetrate a treehouse!

[Kent]

You mention local breaks; I heard somebody or something Sunday afternoon who opened and closed their break with Big Country 99.5 and it did NOT sound like the "local fires the ID" type-thing.

There are two possibilities for what you heard.  One possibility is a local break.  The other, believe it or not, is a generic break that had local stabs at the beginning and end of it.  Waitt uses an automation system called STORQ, and I suspect KXBL has replaced Maestro with it.  It used to have two streams, one of which was data and one of which that was music.  However, I've been told they've since gone with just the data stream.  So, they no longer use network-fired breaks on the local system.  Omaha does the music logs, and their jocks voicetrack the breaks and, if needed, the stabs.  Since everything works in sequence, you don't have those awkward network segues.