January 8, 2018, Issue 583
Inside Hubbard’s Seattle Flip
Hubbard/Seattle VP/MM Marc Kaye’s radio story is not atypical and includes stints with Susquehanna, Gannett and Sandusky in which he’s “gone from New York to Tampa to Houston to Seattle to Tampa to LA to Tampa to Seattle.” Now the 43-year radio vet who oversees the five-station Seattle cluster has jumped into Country with last month’s flip of KVRQ (Breaking News 12/4/17). CA: Prior to the Entercom/CBS Radio deal, was there any thought to taking one in the cluster Country? MK: I don’t think there ever was, only Marc Kaye because once [KKWF] The Wolf signed on to compete with KMPS, there wasn’t room. When we look at a very over-radioed market to begin with, being the third Country in wasn’t something to take on. Being second is a whole different ballgame and within an hour or so of Entercom dropping the format, we had ours on. How were you able to move so quickly? We played a lot of what-if games, one of which was, “What if Entercom decides to only keep one Country station now that they have two?” Would we react? The answer was, yeah, we could definitely do that. So we built a plan for that scenario and for a couple of others as well. We knew Entercom would be two stations over the [market ownership] limit and would put them in a trust. Then they made the deal with iHeartMedia, so we knew there would be even more changes. iHeart wouldn’t be keeping its two south-sound limited signals, but the full market signals they got from Entercom. So we guessed what might happen if they do something. The first to make a move was Entercom as iHeart didn’t close until Dec. 19. As you planned for these scenarios, what did you think was most likely? I thought Entercom would keep both Country stations. Protect the franchise, since I was almost certain nobody would want to jump in and be third. I got that 100% wrong. (continued on page 6)
Allen’s Town: Stoney Creek’s Jimmie Allen at KEEY/ Minneapolis during his first week of radio tour. Pictured (l-r) are the label’s Stan Marczewski and Byron Kennedy, the station’s Levi Jessen, Allen, the station’s Gregg Swedberg and Kia Becht and the label’s Jon Loba.
Record Business Turns A Corner
After last week’s issue showed a 2% uptick in PPM market ratings for 2017, Country Aircheck surveyed some record business pros for a report on that side of the industry. “We’ve turned the corner,” says UMG/Nashville Chairman/CEO Mike Dungan. “Last year I was saying we might be, now we are.” Specifically, the country business was up 6% last year, while the overall music business grew 12.5%. “So yes, our piece of the pie is down to 8% of the overall music business, but it’s because we lag behind in streaming.” Country accounted for 6% of overall Mike Dungan streaming, up from 5% in 2016 an 4% the year
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