WRR, DALLAS, HAS A RATINGS SURGE, BUT WILL THEY CONTINUE TO CARRY CITY COUNCIL MEETINGS

Mike Oakes

Mike Oakes, Program Director and Interim General Manager at WRR-FM [link], is the talk of the Classical music radio world for the amazing job he is doing taking the station to its highest ratings ever. 

According to Nielsen Audio PPM ratings WRR has tripled it’s AQH Share since Oakes joined the station in late 2014.

However: there is one roadblock Oakes hopes will be resolved soon: WRR has been required to carry Dallas City Counsel meetings live every other Tuesday evening, preempting Classical music for several hours.

WRR’s carriage of City Council meetings has been required since 1978 when the Council passed a resolution forcing the station to do so. WRR is licensed to the City of Dallas and what Council says is the final word.

It wasn't hard to find a seat at

this Dallas Council meeting in 2016.

Last week, Robert Wilonsky, a popular columnist for the Dallas News published a column [link] about WRR’s predicament. Even though almost everyone involved knows that there are other better and cheaper ways to share the live meetings with listeners, several Council members want to keep the meetings on WRR.

Live broadcasts of government meetings were once standard for both commercial and noncommercial radio. But, as time has gone by, virtually all such broadcasts have moved to cable access TV and online streaming. The only exception we know of is at KCRW. KCRW still carries Santa Monica Council meetings via tape delay later in the evening.

In his Dallas News column, Wilonsky quoted Nielsen PPM stats provided by the station to show the impact the Council broadcasts have on WRR’s audience. In the October ratings, WRR had 11,300 Average Quarter Hour (AQH) listeners (Monday-Sunday, 6am – 7pm). 

But, on Tuesday evenings when Council meetings are broadcast on WRR the number of AQH listeners falls to only 1,900.

According to Wilonsky, a representative of the Dallas Office of Cultural Affairs (which oversees WRR) told him that a resolution will be offered soon to stop the 1978 mandate and allow the station skip airing the meetings.

Past efforts to let WRR end carriage of the Council meetings have been opposed by civil rights and neighborhood groups who have said that the broadcasts increase the public’s “right to know” what the Council is doing.

Oakes told Spark News that a Council decision is expected within 60 days.

WRR’S RECENT GROWTH REFLECTS COMMON SENSE, THE DESIRE TO ENTERTAIN & A CALM VOICE IN THE STORM

Nothing about the Council meetings flap should take the attention away from WRR’s steady progress recently. The chart on the left shows the dramatic increase in WRR’s AQH and estimated weekly listeners since Mike Oaks joined the station in 2014.

Oakes came to WRR after spending more than a decade at Albright & O’Malley & Brenner as a research partner. The company is a leader in developing strategies for Country and Adult Contemporary music stations.He kindly agreed to answer key questions in an e-interview with Spark News:

Question: WRR’s AQH up from 0.8 to 3.1 since you’ve been there. What is the secret sauce?

Oakes: Most of our growth in 2017/2018 has been TSL-based. But that is built upon what we achieved in Cume growth during 2015/2016, which was really Phase 1 of rebuilding the station’s audience after my arrival here in late 2014.  Cume was barely over 200,000 back then.  

If there’s a secret sauce, it’s to give the product a big dose of common sense.  Treat your radio station like a radio station, not a museum.  Not to knock museums, because I love them!  But I don’t visit one every day.  Radio stations are living, breathing creations that your listeners interact with daily.  And they need to sound like it.  We approach it the way most successful mainstream stations do:  we exist in the now and must be relevant today, but happen to play music of a certain style or era.

Question: Some Classical music stations are perceived as “stiff” and overly pedantic. In what ways has the presentation changed since you arrived?

Oakes: we changed the presentation from “educate” to “entertain.”  Talk segments are crisper, more concise now.  [We are now] more conversational.  We trimmed the spot load back to an average of 2 breaks per hour.  Over time we have recruited on-air talents that complement one another stylistically, creating a WRR “stationality” that delivers a consistent sound across dayparts.  I believe this is a key factor in the TSL growth.

Oh yes, and there’s the music.   Instead of focusing on the “rules of the format” (whatever those are), we focused on the audience (since they’re the ones doing the listening) and tried to create a music mix that’s entertaining, engaging, popular, and easy to listen to.  Fewer commercial breaks meant we could play more complete works during daytime hours.  We started playing longer works at night, with even fewer interruptions.

Question: Some programmers believe that listening to Classical music rises when bad news is being reported over and over. Though there is no research that proves this is true, has the news of the day benefited WRR?

Oakes: Possibly. It hasn’t hurt that the news cycle gets louder and louder.  WRR is a calm in the storm.

KERA CONTINUES TO CLIMB IN THE DALLAS OCTOBER NIELSEN PPM RATINGS

NPR News/Talk station KERA keeps growing in AQH Share and the number of estimated weekly listeners.

KERA has risen far above its record 2016 election results. The noncom station is now the top radio news/talk station in the Dallas-Fort Worth market. The legendary News station WBAP finished second (AQH: 2.8, Cume: 359,300). News/Talk KRLD-AM finished a distant third (AQH: 2.2, Cume: 226,500.