Posted on 08/19/2006 4:16:04 PM PDT by summer
...The abrupt switch...left Los Angeles, the nation’s No. 2 radio market, with more than 10 million people, without an area-wide country music station, even as the genre remains a potent force on the Billboard sales charts. It joins New York, the biggest radio market, which has been without a major country station since 1996, and San Francisco, the nation’s No. 4 market, which lost a major country station in 2001.
Paradoxically, Los Angeles consistently ranks as one of the top two markets for country album sales (it accounts for roughly 3 percent of all country sales so far this year) and plays host to the genre’s biggest touring acts. Thursday marked the first night of a sold-out three-night stand by Mr. McGraw and Ms. Hill, country’s power couple, at the Staples Center arena.
But the station’s corporate parent, Emmis, which is based in Indianapolis, concluded that even having the city’s only country station — billed as “America’s most listened-to country station” — was no longer worth it, and that it could do better. The switch to what it calls “rhythmic pop contemporary” was dictated by economic common sense: a country station that draws predominantly white listeners aged 25 to 54 could no longer stay afloat in an ethnically diverse megalopolis. ...
“Country is a tough format to do in a market that is an ethnic melting pot,” said Rick Cummings, Emmis’s president of radio. “The appeal of the format is fairly limited when it comes to ethnicity.” In Los Angeles, he said, stations that cater mostly to white listeners are “playing for less than 25 percent of the marketplace on a good day.”...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
That's Bill Clinton's theme song!!
So right.
Play more Freddy Fender and Charlie Pride.
I believe we need to make every radio station a latino station in order to remain profitable during the next decade, and beyond. Our state here, California, is on it's way out. the illegal aliens call this the frontier of the north. Unless we do something the only music we will need will be the latino music industry.
(kind of sarcasm.)
a shame...esp. since a big part of country in the past was the sound that emanated not far from there; "The Bakersfield Sound"
a friend had sent me tapes of KZLA in the past. They used to do oldies on Sunday nights hosted by Mac Davis & his wife.
For every middle class departure there is a Spanish-speaking replacement.
Serving 25% of the population is a a pretty big deal, actually, when radio stations fight for individual ratings points. I don't think any station gets more than 10% of the Los Angeles market.
Whites are a pretty affluent market, so it surprises me that they would not be perfectly well represented on radio. Of course the "right" kind of whites are. For instance, I'm sure the 94.7 KTWV ("Smooth Jazz") audience is almost certainly majority white and yet I think the ratings are sufficiently high to ensure its survival. As I recall, it just cracks the top 10, which is not bad for a format aimed at affluent listeners. Not to mention public radio stations, which definitely don't sound minority no matter how PC they are. For that matter, isn't Republican talk radio majority white almost by definition?
Hmm. Maybe whites aren't badly served after all. Perhaps it's that country music appeals to low-income whites, while the other stations I mentioned appeal to higher income whites?
Still, there seem to be plenty of stations aimed at low-income blacks, so that can't be too much of a problem.
Perhaps the real problem is that music listeners are now controling their programming with iPods and don't listen to radio that much at all? The only time radio is on is in my car. In Pittsburgh, where I live now, that pretty much means public radio. All our local music stations are vile.
D
I suppose you could still argue that none of them is an "area-wide" station, since their patterns don't cover west L.A., Santa Monica, or Malibu. But, from a realistic standpoint, it wouldn't matter much because THE country music fan out there doesn't listen to the radio much, anyway.
Re your post #23 - Good suggestions!
LOL! You must not listen to country music very much. That's such a stereotypical description.
Sigh...no I don't; there's a rental house down the street that has turned the open garage door into a Mexican version of the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater - therefore, I only listen to Ranchero music these days.
You poor thing! Does it make you get the munchies for tacos and burritos, and the need to cross illegally into another country? (just kidding) ;)
the radio station you speak of (kzla) had less than stellar ratings.
http://cclamp.radioandrecords.com/RRRatings_EM/DetailsPage.aspx?MID=148&RY=2006&RQ=2&MP=0&OTHER=2&MN=Los%20Angeles&MS=CA&MR=2&12P=10790100&UP=7/18/2006&SU=CM&BPER=7.6&HPER=40.7&OPER=&NSD=8/21/2006&CE=0
Terrestrial radio is DEAD. Sat. radio is the future.
I listen to Outlaw Country on Sirius. They play old, new, and off the wall.
Roll on Mississippi,
Big river roll,
You're the childhood dreams I grew up on,
Roll on Mississippi,
Carry me home,
Now, I can see I've been away too long,
That man could sing
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