Fresh Listen: The Wow Factor . . . Now

It’s a given that radio stations always evolve and tweak from the “First Listen,” especially those designed around a wide variety of gold. From the beginning, fans and detractors of “The Wow Factor,” John Sebastian’s 55-plus-targeted format on KOAI Phoenix, both wondered in particular about the early ‘00s country titles. Did they really fit with the ‘60s oldies? And the ‘70s classic rock? And Coldplay?

“The Wow Factor” launched last Sept. 30 and generated more reaction to its “First Listen” than any station I’ve covered recently, in part because its streaming was then geo-blocked outside the region (but no longer). It was Sebastian working on the same oldies/soft AC turf as WRME (Me-TV-FM) Chicago and KDRI (The Drive) Tucson, Ariz., which launched around the same time, but even more willfully. Nearly a year later, it’s time for a “Fresh Listen.” (The Drive generated a ton of reader response too. There’s a lot to say about both stations; here’s a separate “Fresh Listen.”) 

In the August PPM ratings, KOAI was at a 1.4 6-plus. The station has said from the outset that its target is 55-plus, a number not available to the general public, and those outlets committed to serving that audience have also been built on a sales proposition beyond ratings. (A recent local press story on Tucson’s Drive said that it was becoming profitable after a year.) 

The country titles — many of which were never crossover hits — were the biggest issue for most readers. I understood what KOAI was doing there; I understood that not every listener would. In my spot checks on the station, it felt like they became less prominent within 2-3 months. I haven’t encountered any of those songs in my listening, although I looked at a monitored playlist of the station and saw Kenny Chesney’s “I Go Back” and Keith Urban’s “Days Go By.” But those are both policy statements on a station of this sort. Plus, they’re two titles out of 1,053 — roughly the size of the original Jack- and Bob-FM playlists in the pre-PPM audience measurement days of the mid-‘00s.

The “Wow Factor” launched with the promise of “radical variety,” a line it still uses. On its monitored playlist, you will see “Baba O’Riley” and “Baby I’m-a Want You” next to each other. There’s “Dancing in the Moonlight,” “Dancing Queen,” and “Dancing With Myself.” In my recent listening, Wow Factor presents now as more focused on ‘60s/early ’70s oldies than it was at the outset. But when you start scrolling through that playlist title by title you see the outliers:

• More rocking titles from “Paranoid” to “Tom Sawyer” to “Kashmir”; from the Cars, “You’re All I’ve Got Tonight,” to Evanescence, “Bring Me to Life.” Those separate the station from Me-TV-FM or the major-market “The Breeze” outlets of the last few years. I saw “White Bird” by It’s a Beautiful Day, already one of AOR’s secret weapon songs by the mid-‘70s.
• More ‘60s/early ‘70s MOR: “Summer Wind”; “The Girl From Ipanema”; “Theme From A Summer Place.” That last song was the most perfectly “lost” title of all when I began looking at the “lost factor and which hits endure — it was 1960’s No. 1 song of the year, but had no monitored radio spins in the week when I did my calculations. But since then, KDRI has spiked it as well. 
• A second and third tier of ‘60s oldies beyond the “California Girls”-level “safe list” titles that never quite became “wow” songs again, but did become less readily available on large-market FM radio. I’m pretty sure that “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie” was a regular part of the format in the ‘90s/early ‘00s, but hearing “The Cheater” always got my attention, even then.

Here’s the Wow Factor on Sept. 22, just before 4 p.m.:

• Eagles, “Heartache Tonight”
• Blue Swede, “Hooked on a Feeling”
• Supremes, “Stop! In the Name of Love”
• Supertramp, “Goodbye Stranger”
• Rascals, “A Beautiful Morning”
• Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With”
• 5th Dimension, “Up — Up and Away”
• Nilsson, “Without You”
• Temptations, “I Can’t Get Next to You”
• Carole King, “It’s Too Late”
• Jay & Techniques, “Apples, Peaches, Pumpkin Pie”
• James Taylor, “Fire and Rain”
• Jefferson Airplane, “Somebody to Love”
• Spinners, “I’ll Be Around”
• Electric Light Orchestra, “Don’t Bring Me Down”
• Buckinghams, “Don’t You Care”
• Alan Parsons Project, “Games People Play”
• Simon & Garfunkel, “The Boxer”
• Pointer Sisters, “Fire”

One of the things that set Wow Factor apart at the outset was Sebastian’s imaging, always a highlight of his stations going back to when “Goodbye Stranger” was a current. The term “usage liner” isn’t as much a part of radio-programming lingo as it was at the time, and the Wow Factor does more on-air than most current outlets to explain the radio station, including:

• “Where surprises are no surprise at all”;
• “Not just oldies or classic rock. Not just country or smooth jazz or new adult hits. All the music you love”;
• “And the wows just keep on comin’” (over a ‘60s-style Bill Drake-style :00 ID stager);
• “A radio station like no other in a year like no other.”

Then there was this promo, employing the same pensive piano music used in corporate image advertising in recent years, and particularly over the last six months to assure us that we are all-in-this-together, even in these unprecedented times:

“Here’s to the crazy radio listeners. The rebels. The disenchanted ones. The ones who seek a different kind of radio station. They’re not fond of repetition of the same songs over and over again, or the practice of playing 10 or 12 commercials back to back. They can change things, like you do by listening to this radio station. If you know of somebody who has given up on finding something different … unique, tell them about the Wow Factor.”

UPDATE, April 25, 2021: Earlier this year, about three months after this article was written, KOAI began to show ratings growth. In the March PPM, its 6-plus trend was 1.5 – 2.5 – 3.0 – 3.3, putting it ahead of either of the market’s CHRs, for instance. Sebastian also notes KOAI is the leading music station 55-plus and the overall market leader 55-plus on weekends.

Here’s a recent listen to the station just before 1 p.m., April 24:

• 10cc, “I’m Not In Love”
• Supremes, “Baby Love”
• Naked Eyes, “Always Something There To Remind Me”
• Temptations, “Ain’t Too Proud To Beg” — this one was preceded by a sweeper declaring the station “the soundtrack of your life,” particularly appropriate given the usage this particular Tempts song took on as part of the soundtrack of “The Big Chill.”
• Stephen Stills, “Love the One You’re With”
• Scott McKenzie, “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)”
• Steve Miller Band, “Take the Money and Run”
• Paul & Linda McCartney, “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”
• Byrds, “Mr. Tambourine Man”
• Albert Hammond, “It Never Rains in Southern California”
• Eagles, “Desperado”
• Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”
• Troggs, “Wild Thing”
• Doors, “Riders on the Storm”
• Al Green, “Let’s Stay Together”
• King Harvest, “Dancing in the Moonlight”
• Gerry & the Pacemakers, “Don’t Let the Sun Catch You Crying”
• Eddie Money, “Baby Hold On”
• Hollies, “Bus Stop”