GET MORE NEWS & UPDATES @ INSIDERADIO.COM >> FRANK SAXE [email protected] >> PAUL HEINE [email protected] (800) 275-2840 Friday, March 22, 2013 THE MOST TRUSTED NEWS IN RADIO Hyper-niche formats give listeners new reasons to dust off their old AM radio. Classical in Los Angeles, bluegrass in southeastern Virginia, and a free-form format in the Washington suburbs. These specialized niche formats are helping breathe new life into a beleaguered AM dial. Apart from the small number of big, lucrative spoken word brands found in most cities, operators say it will take more unique destination formats like these to keep the AM band alive. The latest hyper-niche AM started in an engineer’s basement. That’s where Hubbard Broadcasting-Washington’s Dave Kolesar rigged up an automated internet station to stream music from his oversized music collection. Hearing it, SVP/general manager Joel Oxley was impressed enough that in December 2011 he put it on the HD3 channel of news WTOP-FM (103.5). Spanning music from the ‘40s to today, “The Gamut” lived up to its name and generated more reaction than any of the cluster’s other HD side channels. That’s why the eclectic format with 10,000 songs in active rotation now also airs on 820 AM in Frederick, VA and on all of the cluster’s HD side channels. Few stations on any band segue from the Clancy Brothers to Wilson Pickett to Robert Palmer and that’s the point. “The Gamut is so unusual that it might be amenable for AM in the sense that people will seek it out,” Kolesar says. “Destination formats tend to be a good fit for disadvantaged signals.” At the opposite end of Virginia, New River Interactive Media’s WNRV, Narrows-Pearisburg (990) plays to the rich musical heritage of the Blue Ridge Mountains as the area’s only 24/7 Bluegrass station. Across the country in L.A., Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters’ “K-Mozart” KMZT (1260) is building a small but fiercely loyal following on AM serving a market largely forgotten by commercial FM operators: classical music. “People will tune to AM if they can get content they can’t get anywhere else,” president Saul Levine says. “They just want to hear the music we’re presenting.” Beyond engineering fixes, content seen playing a role in saving AM. With a growing majority of listeners tuning exclusively to FM, broadcasters are grappling with what to do with AM frequencies. As news and sports formats migrate to FM, AM operators are challenged to develop new destination formats that will fill specialized niches, from foreign language spoken word formats to music genres ignored by FM. “The AM band is not dying but there are AM stations that are dying,” CBS Radio SVP of programming Chris Oliviero says. “It’s not the band that’s killing them, it’s the product.” More experimentation is needed to create unique formats, broadcasters say, similar to how FM signals were handed over to renegade disc jockeys and programmers in the mid-to-late ‘60s, spawning underground radio that ultimately helped transform what was then an FM wasteland. “AM is still a good distribution model that’s in pretty much every car in America,” Hubbard Broadcasting SVP Joel Oxley says. “But we’ve got to be bold and try some new ideas.” It will also take investment in equipment upgrades. “AM radio can be saved,” Mount Wilson FM Broadcasters president Saul Levine says. “The primary problem is a lack of interest on the part of operators to secure independent programming and the lack of investment in improving facilities with state of the art equipment.” Both L.A.’s KMZT and Washington’s “The Gamut” WTOP-HD3 use AM as part of a cross-platform play. KMZT’s online stream promotes the AM station for easier in-car listening. The AM markets its higher fidelity availability online and on HD. Likewise, “The Gamut” encourages listeners to experience the station in better sound quality by buying a HD Radio. Smartphone manufacturers disconnect radio’s entry into the Windows Phone. In a >> setback for the radio industry’s effort to make FM standard in mobile phones, Microsoft has news INSIDE removed a radio tuner as a base feature from its latest model. The Windows Phone 8 has >>Genachowski preps instead begun showcasing Pandora, offering handset buyers an advertising-free version of the music app through the end of the year. Microsoft says an FM tuner is now an “optional an FCC departure MORE NEWS >> INSIDERADIO.COM PAGE 1 NEWS Friday, March 22, 2013 component” of the Windows Phone hardware specs, which allows handset manufacturers including Nokia and Huawei to decide whether or not to include broadcast radio. “None of the new devices announced to date include an FM tuner,” a spokeswoman confirms. The company declined to say what motivated the shift. The Windows Phone Store is still offering apps to accommodate people who own the Windows Phone 7 and can access the built-in tuner. But it also warns users of the latest model they won’t work on their handset. Microsoft Phone 8 users can still access broadcast radio, but they’ll have to tap into a webcast to do so. TuneIn has updated its app to work on the new model, although it doesn’t include a feature offered on the previous version which let users toggle between online and over-the-air broadcasts to preserve battery life and cut down on data costs. Meanwhile, Clear Channel is developing a new version of the iHeartRadio app. Microsoft’s decision isn’t likely to have much of an impact on radio listening since comScore says Windows phones make up just 3% of the smartphone market — and most of that currently comes from Windows Phone 7s that included FM as standard equipment. Microsoft’s move comes as the radio industry has secured a deal with Sprint to rollout FM into at least 30 million Android- powered smartphones over the next three years. Pandora creates parental controls for Windows Phone. Pandora has been developing its app for Windows 8 phones for the past six months and it includes some novel features not available on other smartphones. When the app is launched inside Microsoft’s “Kids Corner” feature, it only allows family-friendly content so that any songs served by Pandora will filter out explicit content during that session, airing edited versions of songs. A Microsoft pitch video featuring a mother positions the feature as allowing parents to hand their smartphone to their kids “without worrying about them adding a new four-letter word to their vocabulary.” Users can also pin their favorite Pandora stations directly to the start screen on their phone, a feature not including on the app’s Android and iPhone versions. Reports: Julius Genachowski ready to exit the FCC. The question on the lips of Washington players hasn’t been if Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski would step down, but when. The answer has apparently arrived with multiple reports saying Genachowski will confirm today he’ll leave the agency. There’s been no confirmation from the FCC however. Genachowski’s departure had been expected since President Obama won re-election last November. In recent decades the unofficial protocol has typically led whoever was leading the FCC to step aside after a first term. Genachowski has demurred when asked about leaving several times in recent months. Earlier this week he told reporters there was “no news to report” about his plans, saying the spotlight should be on Republican commissioner Robert McDowell, who said Wednesday he would leave the FCC “in a few weeks.” Genachowski has led the Commission since June 2009, winning the appointment after working on the Obama campaign in 2008. The two men have known one another since law school. While Genachowski’s tenure was less contentious than that of his predecessor, Genachowski Kevin Martin, the FCC did come under fire from Congress on issues such as regulation of the internet. Depending on how soon he’ll exit, it’s possible Genachowski will leave the FCC before a vote is taken on the pending media ownership proceeding. Free Press president Craig Aaron says he’s happy Genachowski pushed to put broadcast political files online. Acknowledging there were “high hopes” about his tenure, Aaron mostly thinks Genachowski “squandered” many opportunities. That includes proposing similar media ownership rule changes as Martin floated in 2007. “Instead of acting as the people’s champion, he’s cratered to corporate interests,” Aaron says. Upstart translator brand Powers-up urban battle in Jacksonville. In what may be an industry first, an HD-fed translator has catapulted to No. 1 among 18-34 year-olds in Jacksonville in two months. Cox Media Group’s urban “Power 106.1” launched in early January using the translator W291CI and relaying an HD2 channel from classic hits sister “96.9 The Eagle” WJGL. “Power” posted a 3.4 in the demo in January before exploding to an 11.9 in February, tied for first place with heritage CHR sister “The Big Ape” WAPE (95.1). The start-up edged past Clear Channel’s perennial urban leader “The Beat” WJBT, MORE NEWS >> INSIDERADIO.COM PAGE 2 NEWS Friday, March 22, 2013 helping WAPE pull into the top spot in 6+ Against a competitor with an all-talk morning show (Premiere’s Steve Harvey) and a mix of hip-hop and R&B, “Power” positioned itself as the market’s “Tru Hip-Hop station” with a clean and tight presentation. “We felt a narrowly focused hip-hop station with a focus on the music, the artists and the listeners would do well,” CMG- Jacksonville VP of programming Todd Shannon says.