Less than a year after launching, Soft AC “Star 93.3” KGSR Cedar Park/Austin has segued to somewhere in between AC and Hot AC.
The adjustment moves KGSR in-between Entercom’s combo of AC “Majic 95.5” KKMJ and Hot AC “Mix 94.7” KAMX. Now positioning as “Nothing But The Hits”, “Star 93.3” is now featuring a playlist of pop songs from the past 10-12 years as opposed to the gold based Soft AC it held. The station is using WBEB Philadelphia style “song tags” to identify everything it plays.
KGSR showed its first ratings bump since its March launch in the Holiday 2019 Nielsen Audio ratings as it rose from a 2.0 to 2.7 share. Since the station launched last Spring, the cluster has come under new ownership as Sinclair Communications under the operating name Waterloo Media acquired the 50.1% controlling stake held by Emmis.
Heard between 4:15 and 5:15 central time today were:
- Lady Gaga – Just Dance
- Adele – Rumor Has It
- Selena Gomez – Back To You
- Jonas Brothers – Only Human
- Tones And I – Dance Monkey
- Imagine Dragons – Natural
- Bruno Mars – Grenade
- Lizzo – Good As Hell
- Pink – Blow Me (One Last Kiss)
- Taylor Swift – You Need To Calm Down
- Maroon 5 – Memories
- Justin Bieber – Love Yourself
- Panic At The Disco – High Hopes
- Meghan Trainor – All About That Bass
- Camilia Cabello – Never Be The Same
The Soft AC format was meant for bigger Texas cities, like Houston & Dallas. Stations like KODA & KVIL would benefit from this.
Soft A/C doesn’t work unless you’re in Florida or San Francisco. Besides, KVIL has been Alternative since the day Entercom acquired CBS Radio in 2017.
That’s likely news to the folks in Seattle and Detroit.
They had been playing more non-soft AC newer titles for a little while. It seemed pretty natural to just segue right into more current AC than trying to make it work with gold AC.