Access Atlanta > Entertainment > Radio Talk > Archives > 2008 > December > 29
Monday, December 29, 2008
12/29: Back from vacation! 1230 goes all sports w/1340, radio station spins
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The modest signals of WFOM-AM/1230 (heard mostly in Cobb County) has dropped news/talk and gone all ESPN syndicated sports talk including Mike & Mike in mornings and Tirico & Van Pelt during the afternoon. It will be known as 1230 the Fan 2.
David Dickey, who runs 680/The Fan, 1230 and WALR-AM/1340, now has three all-sports stations. 1340 now airs Fox Sports News syndicated talk shows and will be known as the Fan 3. 680 will be local focused, except for Colin Cowherd middays.
Dickey said when Bill O’Reilly said he was leaving, it opened up his chance to give ESPN Radio an entire station to itself over at 1230, which had been news/talk until December 22. This also enables Dickey to sell all three stations in tandem to a similar coveted male-oriented demographic.
Rival 790/The Zone, which had been using Fox Sports News as well as Sporting News, is now exclusively working with Sporting News radio for its syndicated news and talk. (The 2 Live Stews are syndicated on Sporting News).
So Atlanta now has four sports talk stations, albeit two on limited signals.
- The Bull is now promoting itself as the station that plays more country music than Kicks (without mentioning Kicks of course). Based on data from Mediabase 24/7, the Bull is indeed playing more music. But will it matter?
Cox Radio tried this tact a few years ago before the River came along on 97.1 with a hip-hop station (97.1 Jamz) to counter V-103. The station for virtually its entire life kept harping on how it played more music and fewer commercials than dominant V-103 but in the end, it could never garner much in the way of ratings or revenue or truly cut into V-103’s power base. Jamz was gone after two years.
The Bull is in a similar battle with Kicks. After two years, the station has been trying to find some traction with several different strategies. Given the fact it’s a soft economy and the station’s commercial load is probably lighter than Kicks, bragging about more music is easy. We’ll know soon if this tactic works. The station is still seeking a new male host to work with Kristen Gates for mornings.
During the week of December 21, the Bull averaged 324 songs a day while Kicks had 307. That week included Christmas and fewer ads than normal. That was a 123 song difference.
The week of December 14, Kicks averaged 298 songs vs. 314 for the Bull. That came out to 112 more songs for the Bull over the week or 2/3 of a song per hour.
For the week of December 7, the Bull averaged 317 songs while Kicks had 288. That was a 205 song differential or about 1.2 songs per hour.
Here’s the average number of songs played per day by a sampling of radio stations in Atlanta for comparison for the week of December 14 (the 21st was a weird week given the holidays).
The Bull: 314 (can’t compare to a year ago cos the station was all Christmas)
95.5/The Beat: 304 (305 the same wk a year ago)
Kicks 101.5: 298 (285 same wk in 2007)
Star 94: 284 (301)
Hot 107.9: 283 (275)
Project 9-6-1: 279 (291)
Dave FM: 269 (254)
Q100: 262 (numbers are depressed by the Bert Show, which plays virtually no music, 272 a year ago)
V-103: 242 (225)
Grown Folks: 202 (the station does all talk or heavily talk parts of the day… 197 a year ago)
