KMOJ, MINNEAPOLIS LAUNCHES SECOND STATION TO REACH YOUNGER LISTENERS

KMOJ, the CPB-supported African-American community station serving the Twin Cities has launched The Ice, a music format concentrating on hip-hop and rap. The Ice is on KMOJ’s HD2 channel and streaming online at kmojfm.com.

The weekly newspaper City Pages recently published a feature story about The Ice [link]. 

In that story, reporter Keith Harris, traces the difficulty over the years for the hip-hop/rap format to be successful in the market. There has been no hip-hop station in Minneapolis since 2010 and KMOJ is looking to fill the void.

 

KMOJ has aired all types of African-American music, including rap, for over three decades. Now it appears the generation gap is too wide to keep everything on one station. The introduction of The Ice will allow KMOJ’s main channel to concentrate on R&B oldies, mainstream urban contemporary tunes and their excellent community news programs.

According to Mediabase, KMOJ plays tunes by Bruno Mars, Ariana Grande, Calvin Harris, Kanye West and Dr. Dre. Mediabase does not have a playlist yet for The Ice but a quick listen to it indicates a much, much younger and more aggressive sound.

KMOJ has been losing listeners in recent Nielsen Audio ratings. As you can see in the chart on the left, KMOJ’s estimated weekly listeners dropped by 30% between September 2016 and September 2017.

Also in the Twin Cities the big story continues to be success of Jazz music KBEM. 

KCMP – The Current – added new weekly listeners to both its on-air signal and audio stream.

Both NPR News/Talk stations in Seattle-Tacoma, KUOW and KNKX, added estimated weekly listeners in the past year. 

Then there is the mystery of Classical music KING.  The heritage station lost almost 76,000 weekly listeners between September 2016 and September 2017, a drop of 28%.

In Denver-Boulder, perhaps the best Triple A market in the nation, Colorado Public Radio’s OpenAir KVOQ had 25% more estimated weekly listeners in the past year, but still trails 105.5 The Colorado Sound. 

How well does Triple A do in Denver? Commercial KBCO is back as the top station in the market with a 6.6% AQH share.

The number of estimated weekly listeners to NPR News/Talk KOPB keeps rising, up 8% between September 2016 and September 2017. 

Meanwhile Classical KQAC was down by 17% in the past year. This is not as big of a drop as KING in Seattle but still it is a notable change.