Both AOR and Country Stations Draws Extreme Ratings Share in Motor City

 

 

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DETROIT — The two big winners in this market in the October /November Arbitron ratings are country-formatted WCXI-AM and AOR outlet WRIF-FM.

The country Golden West station is benefiting from the fact that WDEE-AM abandoned the format early this year, leaving a clear field for WCXI. WDEE is now known as WCZY and plays beautiful music.

Although the Golden West chain is owned by Gene Autry, this is the first station of the chain that has moved into the country format. Program director Bill Ford is making the most of the situation and includes a number of old Autry records in the format. The DJs make frequent remarks about playing records made by the “boss.”

WCXI switched from a contemporary format in February, but it was not until this latest Arbitron book that the ratings substantially improved. The station climbed from a 2.0 share in the July /August book to a current 5.6.

Morning man Deano Day, who was hired from WDEE climbed in ratings from a 1.8 to a 6.3. R.T. Griffin, who has been in country radio for 20 years climbed from 2.6 to 7.1.

Ford says the station’s success is due to attention to country music’s roots. “Too many programmers cut off their library at 1965.” Ford says. He also has increased visibility of the station by having the DJs make 400 local public appearances in the past 10 months.

The ‘Riff

Over at ABC’s WRIF-FM program director Tom Bender has achieved an overall growth in share from 4.8 to 6.3 by playing “a purer form of AOR (album-oriented rock). We play many more new wave acts and have purged the Top 40 crossover acts such as Cat Stevens, Paul Simon and Al Stewart,” he says.

Bender explains, “Detroit is more hard rock-oriented than either coast. For example Jimi Hendrix is more important here.

Bender has also assembled a lineup of the market’s top rock DJs. He hired WWWW-FM’s morning team Jim Johnson and George Beier just before the rating period. As a result Johnson and Buyer delivered a 6.0 share in morning drive up from 3.9 in July /August while the Burkhart /Abrams Super Star W-4 fell from 4.0 to 3.2.

Bender also hired Karen Savelly away from WABX-FM and installed her in the 6 to 10 p.m. slot. The station’s share in that time period climbed from 6.0 to 10.0. Bender wooed CBS promotion man Ken Calvert back into radio and placed him in the midday period. Calvert registered a 6.8, up from 5.0.

Some of Bender’s success, as seen by the competition, is the result of an Arbitron book that does not favor adult radio. “It’s just not a good book for adult radio,” says CKLW-AM program director Bill Gable.

Gable’s formerly rocking outlet that now is adult contemporary beams a signal into Detroit from nearby Windsor, Ont. Gable points out that the latest Arbitron is the first to use Extended Sample Frame in this market. The audience measurement system has been in use in larger markets for more than a year.

It is a method to include listeners without listed phones in the survey. Some critics claim this. technology skews Arbitron’s figures to a younger and often non-white listenership. Most unlisted numbers are not held by up-scale people who pay to be unlisted, but by lower income people who move so much they just get left out of the phone book.

CKLW fell from a 5.5 share in the summer and a year ago to 4.4. The old-line MOR (middle of road) giant in the market, WJR-AM also had a bad book. The station fell from 14.1 to 10.0 overall and in the 7 p.m. to midnight slot from 22.6 to 5.0, a reflection that Detroit Tigers play-by-play added a substantial summer audience.

WJR program director Jim Long says the new numbers have forced him to take a hard look at what the station is doing. One thing he did was to hire Jim Davis away from WOMC-FM to be afternoon drive man. Davis registered a 6.6, down from a summer rating of 10.2 when Marc Avery was in that slot.

Avery was deemed to have “too old an image” to continue on WJR, so he was snapped up by WOMC program director Dave Shafer, who installed him in morning drive on the Metromedia MOR outlet.

Avery delivered a 4.3 share, up from the 3.1 the station had in the summer. Shafer also hired Tom Dean, who has been at ABC’s WXYZ-AM and WDEE, at the start of the rating period to handle afternoon drive. Dean came through with a 5.0 share, up from a summer’s share of 3.1.

Shafer also hired Steve Peck from WABX to be music director so that Jim Scollin can put down that second hat and concentrate on his mid-day jock duties.

WNIC-FM’s adult contemporary format held its own overall with a 3.5 share in both the summer and fall books, but morning drive climbed from 2.3 and 3.3 reflecting a new morning drive team of program director Jim Harper and Jerry St. James. END

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Information credit and news source: Billboard; February 2, 1980