Utah's Beat U92

[dspete]

Could have thrown this on the other U92 Thread??
But KUUU has tweaked it up with alot of Old School Throwbacks
Which is good for me as I'm older now but still remember alot of the 90's stuff they are playing so yea I'm now listening more and more to Utah's Beat

[CAwasinNJ]

Hip hop all sounds the same to me.

I guess the question is, what will this do to the ratings? Will the existing listeners accept more throwbacks, and if not will new listeners more than offset the loss? And that leads us back to where it always does...advertising. The only radio advertising I really see is for Bonneville stations, and that's on COZI 5.2 where the time is practically free. Am I missing where all the radio station ads are?

[seattlefollower]

Wow! I am not a big fan of hip hop but have recently found myself listening to more R&B "throwback" stations, in my local market that is "Jam'n" 107.5 which changed first in 2014. I do find WMJM Louisville more interesting, though - more R&B, less hip hop.

However, after seeing this post, I thought I'd give KUUU a try. I never listened to KUUU when I lived in Utah, but it's sounding good to me right now. I did find it interesting they used an imaging sting to highlight a Ja Rule throwback after already playing several songs that are 15-20 years old at this point surrounding it. I suppose what hit me about that was that I probably haven't heard a Ja Rule song on a non-hip hop/urban focused station in years, whereas crossovers from Eminem or P. Diddy or Nelly might crack into a Bob/Jack/variety FM or a specialty format on a Hot AC/CHR. Travis Scott didn't seem to fit as well to me with the older tunes, but I see why he's there. The other "new" song I heard so far in the past hour or so is 'young, wild, and free' by Wiz Kalifia, which I don't even think is that new.

My personal favorite throwback station for many years was "Groove 99.3" in Bakersfield, though they do not add any newer music.

It seems like U92 is going to pull in that "female, 36 year old" demo... which might work for advertisers, kinda right in the center of 25-54 and 18-49. These midday commercial breaks remind me of X96 though, so clearly their sales team is still doing cross-selling when they can.

[henry]

U92 sounded GREAT when I listened to it over 4th of July weekend. Best it's sounded in probably 5+ years.

Hip-hip is going through some hard times. The new music is so fragmented and it doesn't have that fun "party" vibe the format used to have. New hip-hop is dark. And that doesn't play well in a lot of "white" markets (for lack of a better term).

For the older crowd, an analogy: You know how *new* rock has gotten muddy due to fragmentation, so "rockers" like KBER started adding a lot of classic rock into the mix? That's basically where U92 is at. Hip hop has a 35-year back catalog. (In a post-Beatles world, U92 is like a rockin' top 40 station existing in 1990). Plenty of room to dip into the "classic hip-hop" mixed with the better new stuff and build a quality station.