Variety Hits Mailbag
July 25, 2005
From: Robert Shroll
To: LouPickney@gmail.com
Date: Jul 25, 2005 12:11 AM
Subject: 105.1 MIKE FM (Lompoc, CA)
Lou
A 'sem-retired' #1 Grand Rapids, MI radio guy living 4 miles from Neverland (now there's a combination) in Califronia.
I can pick up Mapletons' 105.1 MIKE FM (Lompoc, CA licensed) - amazingly - I enjoy it. Radio has gone through so many changes... and as you said.. These things happen.
April 1st is the best date.. because they flipped the same weekend that 103.3 KRUZ flipped to Hip-Hop (a disappointment for such a powerful signal). KRUZ then moved down the dial to lesser power 97.5. The oldies in Santa Barbara also fell victim that weekend as a
result.
Robert "Radar" Shroll
Lou: It is interesting to me how many people from different demographic groups enjoy the Variety Hits format, sometimes in spite of their own expectations. The fact that it appeals to so many people is part of the magic, since that leads to it being put on many car pre-sets and, consequently, it coming up in a wide array of Arbitron diaries. Even if the TSL is low, the cume is high enough that stations are finding wide success with it.
The fact that 96.3 Jack FM in Nashville has both my Mom and my brother Matt as P2s is astounding to me, and is an accomplishment that I thought no station would EVER accomplish. Matt normally listens to "The Squizz" on XM (he originally got XM for Christmas 2003, as at that point the Bubba The Love Sponge show aired on XM, and since I work for Bubba and he knew how good the show was, he got it to hear Bubba), but when it comes to terrestrial radio, he's a P1 for 102.9 The Buzz (modern rock) and a P2 for... Jack. My Mom, meanwhile, is the typical adult female radio listener. She's a P1 for Mix 92.9 (AC), but her P2 switched from Oldies (the old format on 96.3) to, you guessed it, Jack. That stayed true even when Cumulus stuck Oldies on 97.1. Her response on why Jack trumped Oldies? "I was getting tired of hearing the same songs all the time." Now I work in radio, but when I talk with my parents, I don't talk about radio, so it's not as if I had been preaching about overly tight playlists to her or anything. She reached that conclusion on her own.
© Copyright 2005-2007 Lou Pickney. All Rights Reserved.
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