A friend asked me the other day how a market could sustain two Country stations. She lives in LA and of late the one here is struggling to stay in the top 25 stations in town so I understood her question. So many markets have two Country stations and in a few markets they are competitive.
San Antonio, Dallas and Phoenix come to mind. SATX and Dallas can be excused because after all it is Texas. Dallas is competitive even though the Wolf has led the way for seems like forever there. Phoenix was a seesaw situation for awhile but it seems to have settled on one winner of late.
Las Vegas, Seattle, Portland, Tampa are all two station markets. The problem is that Country is a niche format in so many areas that carving up what is already a limited format makes the results even more difficult.
Then we get to Nashville. Country Music's capitol city. There are four Country Music stations in Nashville and PPM is beginning to separate them. WSIX is currently the Country Champion but the question is whether it will stay so after Superstar Gerry House packs up his microphone in December. WKDF has taken the back up spot so far. They have always made me think that this was the Country station for non-country music fans. I have always felt that you need to be in a motorcycle gang to listen to WKDF. Don't know why. Maybe it is left over from the old Rock days. I guess I'll have to listen again this week when I'm in town for the CMA show. I'll get back to you on that.
WSM-AM is in third place this month. Of the four stations this one has the most definable image. You know what you're in for with SM-AM.
Bringing up the rear this month is WSM-FM. They could change their slogan to "Today's Bland Country Radio." Cumulus does really well in Dallas against Citidel and Indianapolis against Emmis (though that is not going in the right direction, losing the cume battle usually portends bad things. Plus outside of mornings WFMS is boring like WSM-FM) but they have failed to find a position that jumps off the radio in Nashville.
When I was at Cumulus I would get "the call" from Lew Dickey about every third trend. " What happened in Nashville?" Because this station has nothing to call it's own it is always at the luck of the diaries...and now meters.
We are hearing about the impact of "first listen". WSM-FM will always struggle to be the first listen station. In two Country station markets you want to be first listen, of course, but the other guy is gonna do something wrong and you're there. If you're fourth...well.
No comments:
Post a Comment