Earl Pitts is famous for saying something makes him so mad he wants to… (fill in the blank).
My favorite is when something irritates him around Christmas he’s so mad that he wants “…to feed a partridge Exlax and sit under a pear tree.”
Anyway what makes me mad…. Cumulus has just bought another FM station in New York city (now WRXP or Nash). And prior to the inevitable switch from Harold Camping to country they feinted with a rotating format every day. Which I think is the equivilant of showing up at a new Olive Garden to be greeted with a Vietnamese menu on Tuesday, Mexican on Wednesday and Eskimo tapas on Thursday before they settle into their Italian menu on Friday.
Regardless of the success of the previous audience, all radio stations have an audience. Why would you blow them away without at least letting them sample your new format. And wouldn’t Cumulus have prefered to have the hundreds of thousands of cume listeners to WRXP vocalizing ‘they went country’? Word of mouth is still the most compelling medium – so next time you change format, just do it and maybe some of those folks will find they like your new format and help spread the word. And even those who curse you will spread the word.
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