KIFM format change

[jazzguy]

This is my first posting to this site, which I found after searching Google for KIFM format change.  Like many others, it appears, I too am dismayed by KIFM's format change.  I found the manager's letter interesting.

But here's my overall point.  Does anyone know what it costs to run a station like that on an annual basis?  I'm sure they would never tell us by how much they were either profitable or losing money.  It'd be nice if someone who had money could buy the station and just let it be.  Say as long as it was profitable, even if it broke even, then fine, so be it.  I find it hard to believe that it couldn't break even.  SJ stations are dropping like flies across the country - so with their iPhone app and the Internet, they should be able to exploit the fact their competition is dwindling rapidly.  Radio to me seems to be a mostly zero-sum game since you can only listen to one station at a time, so does it really make sense to constantly chase new listeners while alienating loyal current ones?

The drop in listeners the manager pointed out in his letter was interesting.  As much as I liked them prior to their change, their were still flaws.  Too many repeats and not enough variety in the smooth jazz genre (which is huge, by the way) were chief among them.  If that is true and other people felt the same way, then perhaps that could explain some of the drop in listeners over the years.

What really troubled me about this letter was that it seemed to be driven in large part by the a change in the ratings formula.  If his bosses can't recognize the subjectivity in something like that, then maybe their bosses need to find new people to replace the ones beneath them.  I have a son in college.  Some of his classes have the usual 90-80-70... scale with which we are all familiar with.  But, some scales go lower and others are even higher.  He has told me that it depends on your teacher and even within the same department, not all teachers do the same thing.  A "B" in one class could have very well been an "A" if he or his friends had taken another section of it from a teacher who curves.  My point?  It's all subjective, so why not just run the station and as long as it's profitable, who cares?  It's not GE or IBM for goodness's sake, it's a radio station.

[producer57]

If the genre is huge then
Why have stations dropped like flys?
Even though the whole business of selling CDs is really down=In the whole country 13,452 contemporary Jazz CDs were sold
and 3000 of them by Trombone Shorty and Galactic. I think the artists,labels and stations let this whole thing go down due to
greed and unrealistic expectations. If it can't survive in San Diego-Where can it survive?

[radiobum]

I remember thinking when I read years ago that sales of smooth jazz cd's were down "why would anyone buy one ?!"  Most of it was/is so generic that you could just turn on the radio and hear the same bland music. Why couldn't these stations have incorporated some contemporary jazz like Pat Metheny ?! Maybe they'd still be around if they did.  It was interesting when I saw David Benoit maybe seven years ago he brought out another player do do smooth jazz and the rest was contemporary non-smooth.

[AnotherCat]

I was talking to an artist a few days ago about his new CD and he said that a lot of industry people had told him he should cut
out the electric guitar solo on one of the songs..BA is gone but the mentality that anything exciting should not be a part of this format lingers on

[producer57]

As they say a leopard never changes it's spots-I don't get the mentality out there-They blew up the format but still want to hold onto what blew up the format?

[AnotherCat]

As they say a leopard never changes it's spots-I don't get the mentality out there-They blew up the format but still want to hold onto what blew up the format

they really don't get that removing every element of the music that was interesting or exciting is what blew up the format. They think it needed to be marketed better (convince agencies that 55-64 demographic was a good buy) or to play more pop songs and teenage artists (to get "younger" listeners).

[DavidEduardo]

they really don't get that removing every element of the music that was interesting or exciting is what blew up the format. They think it needed to be marketed better (convince agencies that 55-64 demographic was a good buy) or to play more pop songs and teenage artists (to get "younger" listeners).

Agencies generally don't set the demographic target of ad campaigns. The client does, and then tells the agency.

[AnotherCat]

regardless...how big a list can you build of clients who want a station that hits primarily 55+

[DavidEduardo]

regardless...how big a list can you build of clients who want a station that hits primarily 55+

A radio list would be nearly blank.