Finding A New Home for Heritage Brands

It’s eerily coincidental that the sale of Country KRTY San Jose was announced a day after WAMO Pittsburgh became part of the local Audacy cluster. WAMO was a heritage Urban station that had barely recovered from a 1996 move to a lesser signal when it was sold outright to religious broadcasters in 2009. WAMO was so important to Pittsburgh’s African-Americans that its sale was a plot point in August Wilson’s last play, Radio Golf. Then it was sold (along with two AM sisters) for only $9-million and disappeared. 

Pittsburgh went nearly two years without another R&B/Hip-Hop station. In 2011, Martz Communications returned the WAMO calls to an AM/FM translator combo. Two years ago, that FM frequency became the FM home of Audacy’s N/T KDKA and WAMO’s format moved to a second FM translator. Recently, WAMO has been in the 1.0-1.3 share range. By contrast, WBLK Buffalo, WDKX Rochester, N.Y., and KPRS Kansas City have similar heritage and full signals; they have remained among the mainstream R&B format’s most vital stations. I’m cautiously hopeful about what a new owner will bring WAMO.

I’ve been sorry about most of the heritage brands lost in station sales to EMF, a quality broadcaster whose expansion I don’t otherwise begrudge. But for all the regret I feel about KSWD, WRQX, WPLJ, WROZ, WLUP, and so many others, the KRTY sale has been more dismaying to me than any since WAMO. As with WAMO owner Sheridan Broadcasting in 2009 radio dollars, KRTY’s sale price of just over $3-million was late owner Bob Kieve’s lifetime of stewardship being cashed out for not much cash, even after vaulting to a 7.5 share and a market lead.

More typically, KRTY was a 4-share radio station over the years, but it was always a viable market franchise in San Jose, even as the Country format struggled in San Francisco. Other stations complained about available product. KRTY championed new music and found its own hits. Other stations badgered listeners to “download our app” and then burdened the user experience with unlistenable stopsets. KRTY ran testimonials from streamers worldwide and had a tenable spotload. KRTY had refused to participate in the format’s downturn, but it couldn’t resist the gravitational pull of the industry overall.

As a favorite station, I hope KRTY finds a new home with its staff and stationality intact. There are three FM stations in San Francisco under a two-share. There are only two rated FMs in San Jose below KRTY’s usual four-share threshold, although that doesn’t reflect several FMs that have already been taken out of the mainstream commercial radio fray through sales to non-comm or specialty broadcasters. The fear is somebody trying to do Country in the Bay Area on a non-viable signal or jerry-built from parts-found-around-the-house—a station getting minimal ratings, but blocking the franchise for anybody else.

GM Nate Deaton has raised the possibility of continuing without a stick as KRTY.com. That hasn’t proven to be such a viable option for most stations in exile, but as Cupertino’s local Country station, KRTY would be an intriguing partner for Apple Music or another pureplay. Sharing successful local stations with the world is one of the things I’ve wanted from broadcast radio’s better-resourced competition all along. Every FM station has app promos saying “stream us wherever you are.” The first KRTY app promo I encountered featured someone listening from Israel. It seems like a logical candidate.

Besides the streaming experience and spot-load, it’s possible to look back at the last 15 years and see the disenfranchisement of listeners as one of broadcast radio’s tactical errors. Every format change displaces a few people to whom we have had little to offer but a barely-tended HD-2 frequency. When seven-share radio stations (or even four-share stations) start going away, that’s a lot of listening that we can no longer count on making its way to the next-best-available FM choice.

Beyond saving KRTY and revitalizing WAMO, I’ve been thinking about what other heritage stations deserve another shot. When I threw the question out to Facebook friends, there were hundreds of comments and about 65 stations named—some of the stations recently claimed by K-Love like WPLJ and WLUP, but also some stations going back a lot further. There were also, it must be noted, a handful of commenters dismissing the question as nostalgic folly to begin with. Who still cares besides radio folk?

Yet, radio is dominated by heritage franchises. Two years ago, I looked at a page of market ratings from 1984. More than 35 years later, an average of 40% of those stations were still represented in some similar form in the same market. In Radioinsight’s listing of the top 20 stations, only four are stations launched in the 2000s. The “new” WKTU has lasted more than three times as long as its namesake. Big, established brands are definitely one of radio’s strengths. 

If existing franchises can be reinvigorated by returning to their roots—think XETRA (91X) San Diego or WLIT (Lite FM) Chicago—are there really no brands that could be revived altogether? The line between sentimental and strategic is indeed narrow. The big AM call letters seem of interest only to radio geeks, but they seem to work even for Classic Hits stations that target listeners who should be 20 years too young to remember their predecessors—the often-market-leading WAKY Louisville for example. 

With heritage calls, the line between strategic and merely sentimental is fuzzy. As a researcher and consultant over the last 15 years, I’ve been involved with a handful of brand relaunches both successful and not. Calgary’s XL103 brought back an AM Top 40 brand that had been dormant in the market for about 20 years. XL remains a successful Classic Hits station 15 years later, but two different heritage AM brands have been tried unsuccessfully on FM in Vancouver. 

It’s worth noting that Calgary had a better signal than either of the Vancouver stations. In general, it seems to matter if a station remembered for its bigness isn’t obviously diminished in its new form—something confirmed by WAMO and important to the future of KRTY. As with the “Lost Factor” of songs, call letters endure best if they were big franchises to begin with. The original KDAY Los Angeles was a niche and so is Classic Hip-Hop KDAY. But it’s a niche that has lasted for most of the last 15 years.

Sometimes the passage of time is an advantage. I’d like to see a current-based rock station in Boston under any call letters, but if that station were called WBCN, it would be less of an act of hubris than a decade ago when recent memories of the original loomed larger. Also, it helps that the similarly revered WMMR Philadelphia and WIYY Baltimore have learned to successfully live in the halo of their heritage brands, not just their shadow. Same goes for a new Triple-A KFOG San Francisco, particularly now that KITS (Live 105) is gone as well.

Some of those who dismissed the discussion of throwback brands rightly asked “why not create something new?” It shouldn’t be an either/or proposition. Radio needs its phenomenal stations again and there are several ways to get there. In the mid-‘90s, over the course of a three year period, New York saw four such stations. Among them were:

• Hip-Hop WQHT (Hot 97), powered by a relatively untapped body of new music;
• Adult R&B WRKS (Kiss 98.7), driven by classic R&B that had been missing from the radio;
• WKTU returning dance to the air after three years and heritage calls that had been missing for a decade;
• WHTZ (Z100) segueing back to Mainstream CHR—like WLIT and 91X, it made a decision to start delivering on expectations again.

Any of these could still be valid strategies. All are clearly more difficult than they were 25 years ago. But a heritage brand is a head start.

(Update: I wrote this two days before Alpha’s AC KBAY San Jose moved to fill the Country hole, two months ahead of KRTY’s scheduled departure. KBAY was at a 4.7 and had been a market leader with Classic Hits a few years ago before returning to AC. During that time, it also became a surprise contender in the San Francisco ratings. So it’s an encouraging vote of confidence for Country in the market on a viable signal. It’s also good news for Country’s national numbers which are always lower when the format has no New York outlet. I’m still intrigued by the KRTY on Apple Music idea, though.)