Capital regretting moving the Weber State games to KLO-FM?

[David]

IMO, Capital Broadcasting may regret moving the Weber State football and men's basketball games to KLO-FM. There's been several complaints posted on The Wave's Facebook page lately about the music being interrupted by sports. 1430 appealed to a different demographic than 103.1, and KLO (AM) had been airing Weber State games for many years before Capital sold 1430. More importantly, if moving the football and men's basketball games to 103.1 has a negative impact on their ratings, that's definitely not a good thing.

EDIT: 1430 is still ID'ing as "KLO, Utah" at the top of the hour, with no city of license mentioned. Apparently El Sembrador didn't get the memo that the call letters changed to KMES in November 2020, and a COL is part of the legal ID. 😉 I realize no one except the FCC really cares, but Capital Broadcasting excluded the KLO call from the sale for a reason.

[henry]

With a small operator, those complaints really don't matter.

A late Saturday night game? Those ad spots are nearly worthless. But the brokered time from WSU might be $600/hour.

[David]

I don't know of many radio stations that can afford to drive listeners away and continue to thrive. Some listeners were already complaining about the 90's music being added to The Wave's playlist, and now there's also Weber State games that are causing people to tune out. Those games won't always be late night Saturday games, either. If Capital ignores their listener's feedback, it may be at their own peril. The ratings for 103.1 aren't that great, and Now 97.9 has been dropping in the ratings recently as well. Some of those losses can probably be attributed to gains for the other Salt Lake radio stations, which means a certain percentage of disgruntled listeners are leaving and not returning. With the myriad of available options for listening to music these days, local stations need to be responsive to their listeners in order to survive.

[amanuensis]

My car radio only has six presets. To make room for 105.5, one of the others had to go. 103.1 is the one that got the axe. As I posted earlier, I have much less interest in alternative music from the 90s than I do from the 80s.

(In case anyone is wondering, my other presets are: 94.1, 98.7, 99.1, 100.7, and 103.5.)

[oldiesfunhouse]

Since 105.5 was mentioned, does anyone know if Broadway plans to make online streaming of that station available at some point?

[David]

Jan 8, 2021 6:50:18 GMT -6 oldiesfunhouse said:

Since 105.5 was mentioned, does anyone know if Broadway plans to make online streaming of that station available at some point?

A note on the station's Facebook page from last week says KOOL 105.5 will begin streaming "soon". How soon apparently isn't known at this point. If you have a Facebook account, you might want to like the station's page so you'll know when they start streaming.

[drpepper]

I'll bet KBZN rebounds again. As for 103.1, sure some decisions will bring more ratings than others, but if 103.1 ends up changing formats it will have more to do with the already low ratings than WSU Athletics.

[dspete]

Wish 103.1 was more like KXRK's HD2 Classic Alternative
Only reason I put an HD radio in car was for that.

[David]

The listener complaints about the music on The Wave being interrupted by Weber State sports continues to mount on the station's Facebook page. When Capital is pre-empting popular shows like "Unrest on the Seventh Day" and "The Newer New Wave Show" for college basketball games, I have to wonder if they aren't hoping The Wave will die a slow death so they can do a format flip on 103.1. At this point Capital could probably put the America's Best Music satellite feed or a format similar to Easy 99.1 on KLO-FM and have about the same number of listeners. I still think moving the Weber State games to 103.1 was a mistake because of the difference in demographics between The Wave and KLO 1430, so I'll be watching to see if the station's ratings are impacted in the future.

[CAwasinNJ]

Trying to judge whether airing the Weber State games on 103.1 is a good idea or not based on comments on their Facebook page is foolish. In the first place, there is no context. It means that X number of people with a Facebook account were annoyed enough to go there and comment. We have no idea how many people either like having the games there or just don't care because those people are very unlikely to comment. There's also the question of how much (if any) the games affect The Wave's overall ratings. I'm not aware of any competing station they could jump to. The only indicator we have for that is the overall ratings, which at least are overwhelmingly based on the Wave format.

No sane company wants their station to do poorly. That's just crazy. If they want to flip they will.