Emmis also said it soon would shift the long-running news-talk shows of WIBC-AM (1070) to the FM dial and flip the format of that AM station to sports talk as the city’s only ESPN affiliate. Some listeners criticized Emmis for pulling the plug on WNOU. Others praised the company for expanding WIBC’s reach.
“It really came down to a business decision, not a content decision,” said Tom Severino, vice president and Indianapolis market manager for Emmis. The broadcaster has had a hard time selling advertisers on the format of WNOU, commonly known as RadioNow. The attention of the station’s target audience, 12- to 24-year-olds, is much too fragmented, Severino said.
Instead, Emmis is hoping to leverage the venerable brand name of WIBC and attract even more listeners to its news talk programming on the FM dial. “Not many people under the age of 40 grew up with AM radios,” Severino said. “More people are listening to FM than AM.
” On Jan. 7, WNOU-FM (93.1) will stop decking the halls and become WIBC-FM (93.
1). All of WIBC’s on-air news personalities will go to the FM dial, including morning news anchor Sherry Fisher and host Terri Stacy. Stacy’s longtime co-host, Jeff Pigeon, left WIBC last month.
Severino said his departure wasn’t related to Monday’s announcements. Longtime traffic reporter Big John Gillis left the station in May. WIBC has had its ups and downs since it was founded in 1938.
Recently, for example, it’s been unable to stem the loss of female listeners. However, WIBC has been a fixture of Indianapolis’ top four AM stations for a long time, according to Arbitron ratings. “There really isn’t a station in Indianapolis that can compete with what WIBC does,” said Rick Cummings, president of Emmis Radio.
Still, some changes are likely. Neither Cummings nor Severino would say what those might be, other than programming will become more “contemporary.” WIBC-FM will have to keep up with an audience that’s younger than WIBC-AM’s typical fan base.
Emmis hopes to target 40-year-olds, instead of the 52-year-olds it goes after now. To do that, WIBC might approach news talk in new ways, such as adding more entertainment news and features instead of hard news. “You can almost do an ‘Entertainment Tonight’ and reach that (target) age group,” said Dave Van Dyke, president and chief executive of Bridge Ratings, an audience research firm.
Meanwhile, WIBC’s new all-sports, all-the-time format on the AM dial will work to attract men. “We felt that the time was coming that we needed to split off the sports,” Cummings said. The change will maximize WIBC’s broadcasting agreements with the Indianapolis Colts, the Indiana Pacers, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, the IRL and Indiana University football.
The station also will air national sports programming, care of an affiliate agreement with ESPN. Indianapolis’ current ESPN affiliate station, WXLW-AM (950), will lose that deal. Raven Broadcasting, which owns the station, didn’t return a call for comment.
Lastly, WNOU, the loser in this game of Emmis musical chairs, will continue with only music on the Web and as an HD Radio side channel. To hear the 93.1 side channel, you’ll need an HD Radio receiver, but not many people own one.
Orbital, the former 93.1 side channel that played dance music, did well, Severino said, and may be assigned as a side channel to another Emmis station. “RadioNow was a good radio station, but it wasn’t about the content,” he said.
“It has not been as economically viable in the last three years, and we didn’t see it getting any better.” This isn’t the first time Emmis has flipped formats at a radio station to boost ratings and advertising. A few months ago, the company changed KMVN-FM (93.
9) in Los Angeles to rhythmic pop. Retraining listeners has been tough. In the second quarter alone, Emmis’ radio revenue in Los Angeles fell 12.
5 percent compared with a market drop of just 3 percent. Analysts from Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs reiterated that problem Monday, helping to drive the company’s stock price down 6.9 percent, or 38 cents, to close at $5.
13. “Let’s hope that it’s not quite that hard,” Cummings said of the format flip for WIBC. “There are always challenges and always things that you don’t anticipate.
” At the very least, Emmis isn’t likely to be alone for long when it comes to putting talk radio on the FM dial. “It truly is the future for the format,” Van Dyke said. “Music radio is really in the throes of competition from Internet radio and MP3s.
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