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Oldies but goodies: 3WS on the move in the ratings
"Bob is taking his records and going home, because you obviously don't share his taste in music. In the meantime, we'll play your favorites. Oh, and the new name of this station is YOU."
OK, that's probably not going to happen. But as Bob-FM's ratings slide and 3WS continues its surprising resurgence, it's obvious a tinkering with the Bob format is in order. Bob, you may recall, is the station that advertises that it plays anything. For about a year, it was the talk of the town. It had a playlist of thousands of songs. It would intentionally follow Madonna with Lynyrd Skynyrd or seque from the Backstreet Boys to Led Zeppelin. It had very little interference from disc jockeys.
Other radio stations reacted by adding more songs and ellminating some of the jock talk. And Bob kept on bobbing along. But eventually, it tightened its playlist - and listeners noticed. Its first-person drop-in lines ("Bob is going out to buy some more CDs,") became annoying. And people began noticing there wasn't much of a Pittsburgh feel to the station.
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In the latest unofficial ratings, 3WS trails only the long-running powerhouses KDKA-AM, WDVE and WDSY.
Talk station WPGB (104.7-FM) rounds out the top five, but not because of the addition of Pittsburgh Pirates baseball. In fact, the station suffered a .5 drop since adding the Battlin' Bucs. (In fairness, the ratings decrease also could be attributed to the lack of any real political hot-button issues during that time period.)
WKST-FM, which is as close to a Top 40 station as Pittsburgh has at the moment, leads the second half of the Top 10, followed by WJAS-AM (adult standards), Bob, WAMO-FM and WSHH (adult contemporary).
The much-publicized "Man Zone" station, WTZN (93.7), barely made a ripple despite the presence of Scott Paulsen, John McIntyre and John Steigerwald and WZPT (Star 100) continued to disappoint with an adult format that doesn't quite jell.
By the way, if you're one of the few still listening to Star 100, you may have noticed that changes are underway. The station has picked up "The Top 8 at 8," an old B-94 segment that features the top eight songs of the day." It's also leaning heavily toward newer music as if it were B-94 without the rap. So far.
Meanwhile, Bob is staying the course (being eighth in a 20-station market isn't horrible). But its lifespan seems to be limited. The two-year-old "Jack" format at New York's WCBS just went silent in favor of a sound very much like the current 3WS.
More Bob?
The proliferation of HD channels - if not HD receivers - has prompted WRRK-FM to begin two HD-only stations. One will feature all local bands, while the other will focus on B-sides (flip sides of old 45s from the '60s to '90s) and some other little-played material.
Just play the hits
One of the ongoing battles among radio junkies is the sometimes widening disparity between songs people buy or, increasingly, download, and songs programmers put on the airwaves. In its heyday, radio's top 40 mirrored sales, and pretty much in the same order. Not anymore.
According to a list published in USA Today earlier this month, only four of the Top 10 downloaded songs of the first half of 2007 were in the Top 10 among airplay. The most-heard songs on radio with their download rank in parenthesis: "Irreplaceable" - Beyonce (14), "Say It Right" - Nelly Furtado (7), "Don't Matter" - Akon (11), "Buy U A Drank" - T-Pain (5) and "You" - Lloyd (80). At the other end of the spectrum is "This Ain't a Scene, It's An Arm Race" by Fall Out Boy. It''s No. 4 among downloads, but No. 102 in airplay. And it's not because the boys use the word "ain't."
Although R&B (hip hop/rap) is still the most popular radio genre, it's beginning to lose its luster. At the same time, country music nearly doubled it presence on radio. R&B now accounts for 44 percent of airplay, country 24 percent, pop 23 percent and rock 9 percent. Don't know how those genres align in Western Pennsylvania, but rest assured, rock is significantly more popular here.
