In his shoes, the best bet to boost ratings quickly in a good advertising demographic would be to try an “MTV five year plan”. That is, team up with a local recording studio to produce local content, “The Boston Sound”.
Bring in all sorts of local musicians, punctuated with visiting celebrity musicians in town for concerts, with the idea of becoming “the” radio station for the high school, college, and young 20’s crowd.
It could be a loose format, playing recorded live shows at local clubs, studio interviews with popular musicians, maybe throw a few instrument specific symposiums.
But the meat and potatoes would be local bands and solo acts. And give them a lot of the responsibility to muster up an audience for their stuff.
After five years, they would know if it was a hit or if they needed to move on with other formats.
That could work but they wanted something immediate and figured they could appeal to a “good demo”. Who knows
maybe one of the other stations in town with that type of
format could be wounded and change to something else
(news-talk 94.5 anyone? naaaaahhhh...)
College stations like the one I’ve been involved with since
the 80s do have local bands on etc.—it’s admittedly a niche
type of deal as most people apparently are too involved
with national acts or what’s on their Ipods etc. What you’re mentioning sounds like the old WBCN or WFNX...and they live on via HD or web radio (wfnx.com, radioboston dot com) in some ways. But the times are a-changin’, it’s not like the old days. Maybe they considered it or maybe it can be suggested to them.
We had a guy down on Sunday with his electric piano,
singing and playing original songs and covers (Michael
Troy formerly of the band The Beloved Few). Former Boston bassist Fran Sheehan has dropped by (though he doesn’t
play anymore). Of course our station is only 130 watts.
(But we streamcast.)_