Bye Bye Mikey show..

[radio-darn]

You guys are brutal on this guy, he must of sucked

Well he did have a good-paying radio job the last couple of years, which most of  his critics on this forum have not - and he's probably getting paid to not work through 2013. He has was not a good mix for that station, but he has done well in the past and those who did listen to him on 94.9 loved him: http://www.facebook.com/mikeyshow  He is openly a Christian and that certainly offends some of the atheists here.

Remember: this is a board where people spend lots of time debating formats on low power AM stations, so it has little resemblance to actual radio listeners

[johndavis]

Well he did have a good-paying radio job the last couple of years, which most of  his critics on this forum have not - and he's probably getting paid to not work through 2013. He has was not a good mix for that station, but he has done well in the past and those who did listen to him on 94.9 loved him: http://www.facebook.com/mikeyshow  He is openly a Christian and that certainly offends some of the atheists here.

Remember: this is a board where people spend lots of time debating formats on low power AM stations, so it has little resemblance to actual radio listeners

I don't think Mikey's problem was his faith. His problem was being a talk show unwisely plopped onto a station that's branded as "all about the music."

Considering that 94/9 has struggled to break a 2 share ever since Mikey came aboard, what's the difference between KBZT and any of Art Astor's AM stations?

What do you do to 94/9 to break through the mediocrity and make people care about the station again?

[wirelessfugu]

how stupid, what was LFM and Garrett thinking, smarter radio
people than that, in a PPM market not playing music and on
an alternative station in San Diego, being a non-Bill Maher
and talking about it on the air. Not a fit...

[radio-darn]

What do you do to 94/9 to break through the mediocrity and make people care about the station again?

Well since they are asking people to email ideas about the morning show it sounds like they still don't know.

Remember, Mikey didn't hire himself to do mornings there: management did and they are responsible for this station being a failure and of course their request for emails makes it sound like they still don't know what to do and that they still feel the need for a morning zoo of sorts, instead of just playing the music. Now maybe they do actually know what to do and this is all an act, but if they couldn't maintain past success, one would have to think they are not qualified to do the even harder task of recapturing it.

[johndavis]

Now maybe they do actually know what to do and this is all an act,

I've lost count of how many times stations have played the "tell us how to build your favorite station" game and invited listener suggestions all while preparing to launch what they've planned to do all along.

Heck, I worked for a guy who tried to play that game with the staff at a station he bought. We went to weekly staff meetings to give our "input" which was promptly ignored. He put a suggestion box in the break room, where the only suggestion put inside was "tell (the engineer) to not spay paint the suggestion box indoors." We launched a format best described as the owner's personal jukebox.

Soliciting feedback on air is a good gut check for what your research is telling you, but it's not a substitute for research.

However, since hiring Mikey was seen as a slap in the face to the station's P1's, asking for input is a nice public  gesture as you try to get those P1's back.

[Radio3787]

What the hell is a P1 or an M1?? I listen to both 105.3 and 94.9 in the mornings and still don't know why they have those dumb nicknames for their listeners.

[johndavis]

What the hell is a P1 or an M1?? I listen to both 105.3 and 94.9 in the mornings and still don't know why they have those dumb nicknames for their listeners.

A P1 is the industry's name for a primary listener. (in other words, for that listener, the station is their primary station, the one they listen to the most and punch into first) You try not to piss them off because they give you the most listening.

P2's are secondaries. You try to get them to come back more often and stay longer.

Both are important, because in PPM both help you. (In diaries, the P1 would just write down their fave for 4 hours straight.) The reality is that people punch in and out all the time for any given reason (they walk out of the room, they get out of the car, they don't like something, you're in commercial) so you're always trying to give people a reason to come back and stay longer the next time.

I'm not familiar with M1, other than being it the big motorway in the UK.

[Radio3787]

Thank you for that explanation.  I never knew it had to do with PPMs.  I think I remember Mikey Show saying they couldn't use P1 because that was claimed by 105.3 so they came up with this M1 stuff that I guess stands for Mikey 1? I don't know.

[Media Hack Chris | SDR]

stands for Mikey 1? I don't know.

You have it; when the Mikey show started at fm 94/9, they used P1 for a while but then started M1. Mikey 1.

[radio-darn]

What the hell is a P1 or an M1?? I listen to both 105.3 and 94.9 in the mornings and still don't know why they have those dumb nicknames for their listeners.

Radio is not in the entertainment business, it's in the advertising business, so it was inevitable that they would start thinking of listeners in terms of ratings jargon.

94.9 had two sets of P1's - neither set very large apparently - those who preferred the Mikey Show and those who preferred the rest of the programming.

The problem is now they have to figure out how to make someone elses' P1's become their P1's because it's not like those who loved them most pre-Mikey are automatically going to come back. They've transferred their affection to some other station(s). Who knows, they may find they get even worse ratings without Mikey. Maybe be he was actually the good part of the station and the rest of it sucked