Who's flipping to Country?

[Zeta7Fan]

Also, back during B94.5 days country was not as popular as it is today.

I'm not quite sure if that statement is true.  If you remember, there was that period from about 1991 to about 1995 when Country was red hot. There were a bunch of new artist that had come along and shook up the format and brought in new Country listeners. Brooks & Dunn, Garth Brooks, Tim McGraw, Toby Keith, John Michael Montgomery, Wynonna (as a solo artist), Martina Mc Bride, Little Texas and Patty Loveless were some of the artist who brought new excitement to the format, just as Lady A, The Band Perry, Thompson Square, Zac Brown, or Taylor Swift do today.

The only hard numbers I can give you are from the Orlando 3 county metro. When you add all of the shares of County today, you get about 7 shares of County listeners (in March there was only 5.2), in a population of 1.5 M. In B94.5 era, when the population was just under a million, you could at times have 17 to 18 shares of County. As Just Me mentioned, I don't know about nationally, but in Orlando, Country was more popular back in that era.

[Buzz Jackson]

One of the reasons B-94.5 was put on was because country was hot at the time. The idea was, with duopolys emerging, to put on a second country station before another cluster did. Who better to provide an alternative to K92FM than the same folks who made K92FM successful?

In the global sense, those of us in the country format still think of the early 90's as the "boom years." Certainly the format has been successful since then, but the biggest growth in recent memory was in the 1989-1994 time frame.

I believe that 94.5 was going to be country anyway - regardless of whether it got LMA'd by NewCity. NewCity was able to strike a deal that let them control the competition and hopefully prevent someone from going after their cash cow.

Somewhere around here I still have copies of some of the ratings. Yes, B-94.5 made some inroads 18-34, which was the goal. I had moved on when the decision to flip it to Star 94.5 was made, so I don't know what the reasoning for the eventual format change was. But my sense is, since NewCity was heavily into research, they felt K92FM was safe, and that B-94.5 was probably not worth the effort. Judging by the success of 94.5 as an urban AC since then, and the fact that nobody has challenged K92FM since B-94.5 departed the format, it looks like they made the right decision.

B-94.5 was my introduction to country radio and it was a blast (I had only done Top-40 prior to joining the Bee Team). I made some great friends - many of whom I am still friends with - and learned a lot that still guides me today.

Buzz
B-94.5 class of '92-'94
now PD/afternoons, KiiM-FM 99.5, Tucson

[Parttimer]

Really it comes down to the same thing as most format conversations in Orlando... the market is 40% Hispanic and African-American. That means, essentially, that 40% of the market has ZERO interest in country music. You'd be fighting for too small a slice of the pie.

[DJ Mo]

Que? Quien es Garta Bruks y Poquito Wayne?

[radiobum]

I like the suggestion someone made of making WDBO-AM  Classic Country- Americana even better.