6-26-2014
By John Ostlund
In light of the big announcement from Entercom in Seattle that it would be reducing spot loads at one of its stations, I wanted to share our story with Radio Ink readers. It's a story of: been there, done that, reaping the rewards. K-Jewel 99.3 was launched in 1994 as an Adult Standards format. It was an exclusive sound, with unique features and steady promotional support, and within 18 months was Top-5, 12+. For 20 years the station enjoyed revenues that exceeded market share. By 2008, demographic conditions changed, which led to the rebranding and launch of ?Jewel FM? on April 26.
For years, listeners have been telling radio stations what they want, but as an industry we continued to do just the opposite. Which explains why terrestrial radio is becoming less relevant with a growing segment of the audience. Listeners want fewer commercials, but radio airs a dozen spots in a single break. Listeners want more music, but stations play nine songs an hour. They want authentic and new music but what they hear is non-stop hyperbole and the same 300 songs over and over.?
The objective of Jewel FM was to be enterprisingly original and do striking things that would help the station own the five most important attributes listeners are interested in. These are the ingredients we came up with:
-- More music: 55 minutes every hour.
-- Fewer commercials: Five minutes per hour.
-- Shorter breaks: Never longer than 60 seconds.
-- No unnecessary chatter: Never utter an unimportant word.
-- New Music: Play four new artist/songs each hour.
The Jewel FM music library currently contains over 800 songs, including Bruno Mars, John Mayer, Maroon 5, and other pop/folk/rock singer/songwriters, although the station adds 8-10 songs each week. Jewel FM also plays dozens of new artists not heard on local radio such as Andrew Duhon, Ben Harper, Lenka, Joshua Radin, and many others.
The process of selecting music and fine tuning every aspect of how we present content was much easier because our General Manager Layne Ryan is an audiophile with a better feel for the format than me. If it wasn?t for Layne, we would not sound like we do. Cutting commercial content by 70 percent was the most obvious and risky move. The reduction required a significant increase in the average cost of each commercial, something the advertising community has been receptive to.
Months before making changes, we presented our ideas to several local agencies. The funny thing was that media buyers immediately recognized the value of being the only commercial in a break. Our increase in rate was actually less than the increase in value perceived by the buyers ? that was the moment we knew we were onto something. Jewel FM has retained 95 percent of our advertisers after the rate adjustment and music change and is projecting an increase in revenue in 2014 over 2013.
John Ostlund is a partner with One Putt Broadcasting which owns Jewel FM, KYNO, 940/790 ESPN in Fresno, CA. He can be reached at John Ostlund jostlund@kjwl.com
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