How CBS soaps helped kick an AM country radio station's butt

In the early 1980's I was programming a successful AM country station in Richmond VA. Suddenly, WTVR-FM, owned by Roy Parks, who also owned WTVR/AM and WTVR/TV, popped into a Drake-Chenault formatted stereo country format. The FM stereo signal was a problem because this was a time when FM in Richmond was just coming into its own. Content suddenly became less of an issue because of the stereo and the novelty of FM.

But their first book (and this was in the days when Arbitron ratings came out four times a year in the biggest markets, covering 13 weeks with no intermediate supplements; in Richmond, if I remember correctly, we had only Spring and Fall books and had to live with the results for six months) was huge.

I mean, it was impossibly huge! The FM's previous format had been Beautiful Music and had garnered a decent share but nothing an active, community-involved station couldn't top, even with automated country music instead of Mantovani and 101 Strings. Or so I thought.

Then, after puzzling this out I realized that Parks, who had used his TV station well to promote the new FM format actually had two FM signals in the market, with the same calls.

One played country music and the other played the audio from what were then immensely popular soaps, network newscasts and prime-time shows on his Channel 6 TV station. An awful lot of diary respondents, we discovered, were crediting WTVR-FM when they should have written in WTVR-TV because they listened to the TV audio on their FM radios at work and in their cars.

In retrospect, I probably could have scheduled soap updates on my little AM to at least salvage something. But I didn't.

And there's yet another reason I moved to St. Louis!

Somebody, please: remind me again how much better the old days were?

On a related note, from Tom Taylor:

FCC orders this Channel 6 digital TV station to quit broadcasting on analog FM.

Nice, try, WRGB in the Albany, NY market – you’re struggling, as so many Channel 6’s are, with authorized power levels that aren’t adequate since the DTV switchover in June. And you liked having that “bonus” audience you got from in-car listening to your audio, just below the usual FM band. Thought you’d just keep doing that, right? FCC says “wrong” and WRGB, Schenectady general manager Robert Furlong tells viewers (and listeners) “we do not have FCC authorization to transmit an analog signal.” Many – not all – radios in cars, trucks and SUVs can tune down below 88.1 to pick up the audio of a favorite TV soap opera or maybe Oprah. But the Commission says “digital is digital.” Freedom Broadcasting-owned WRGB says it’s “reviewing our options.”

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