Chris Williams
Chris Williams is a twelve-year programming vet in Georgia. Needless to say, he knows his stomping grounds well, and has put his expertise to good use at several prominent peach state rock outlets.
Fast forward to 2008, and Williams is at the helm of a recently reconfigured Atlanta Rock mainstay, WKLS. Segueing from 96 Rock to the more experimental Active Rocker, Project 9-6-1, Williams is hoping to blaze new territory in the market while creating a new culture and brand amidst some new and formidable competition.
We recently caught up with Williams and got up-to-date on his newest radio project, taking a glance inside a Rock station re-tooled for 21st Century terrestrial radio.
e-QB presents excerpts from the FMQB March Magazine Rock Up Close featuring WKLS “Project 9-6-1″/Atlanta PD Chris Williams
On how was Project 9-6-1 received after its debut… There definitely was some pushback from the guys who had been with 96 Rock from 1974. The biggest complaint that we got was in changing the name, which was necessary in order for us to build a coalition of 96 Rock guys and 105.3 The Buzz guys… All of the complaints were about memories of 96 Rock from a decade or longer ago. None of the complaints were “you blew up the station that was my favorite yesterday.” So that was kind of telling. While there was certainly this affection for the name and there was a loyalty to the brand name, it was based in memories, it was based in nostalgia and hindsight; it was not based in passionate, active listening in the present day… We kept the calls. We thought there was value in the calls, and we thought there was value in the heritage of this being the Rock frequency in Atlanta. There just was a different flavor of Rock, and under a new brand that we hope we can build for this new generation of Rock fans.
On the music of Project 9-6-1… ’90s Rock is certainly the massive part of what we are. Shooting for those 30-year-old guys, that’s the heart and soul of what Project 96.1 is built around and then we radiate out from there…The station has been built more around the texture of the music… We definitely dabble. It’s more than just the black and white of the tests, there definitely is more of an art form that goes into it. We’ve got the nucleus of that ’90s Rock stuff. We’ve got a lot of great ’80s Rock stuff that makes sense: Van Halen, Guns n’ Roses, and Motley Crue, etc., makes complete sense for who this Rock fan is. Then we can go back a little bit older. There are a couple of Black Sabbath, Jimi Hendrix, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin songs that make complete sense from the fashion of what it is we’re trying to build. A line that we use a lot on the radio station is: Rock anthems live here. That’s what we’re striving for.
On the experimental nature of Project 9-6-1… Our hope is to be unpredictable. Our hope is to be able to try things out, to try new ways to entertain, and new ways to fail at entertaining. When we recognize that we’ve made a mistake here at entertaining in a certain way, then you’ve got to kill it. And then when you find ways that you’ve succeeded, then you incorporate it in. One good example is that we play Charlie Daniels Band “Devil Went Down To Georgia.” How does that make any sense in the world? And another one that makes an appearance on a regular basis on my show is Jerry Reed’s “East Bound And Down.” How do those make any sense at all? They don’t really, but I can tell you that in the fabric of what we’re doing, for some reason those songs do work within the project.
On the competitive Rock landscape in Atlanta radio… We had five Rock stations of different flavors in the mix. We’re down The Buzz and we’re down 99X, so we now have: Project 9-6-1, Rock 100.5, the River and Dave. So we’re actually one fewer Rock station in the marketplace than we were two years ago. It’s still very, very crowded, still very competitive. The Regular Guys have a heritage morning show that did well over here at 96.1, so I’m sure that they’re going to find their audience at Rock 100.5, and they’ll do just fine. The radio station is a much older leaning radio station. Their core is in the ’70s, so I would age them 15 years or more older than us. I don’t know that I’m really competing for guys who are Rolling Stones fans. That, to me, is a pretty big benchmark artist. Once you’re the Rolling Stones, and once you hear the Eagles and bands like that, that’s a very, very different guy than the guy who wants to hear Metallica, Shinedown and Disturbed. We try to balance and use all our resources, whether they be our Web site, clients, audience, whether it’s our streaming, whether it’s our on-air terrestrial audience or our HD2 audience, so that listeners walk away with something they are hearing that creates an experience that can be uniquely theirs. That really is something that requires all hands on deck…We’re in our infancy. We’re probably barely crawling in what we really should be doing as an 21st Century entertainment medium. We certainly have weeks and weeks to go before I think that we will be mature in what it is that we’re doing. Right now, we’re just kind of trying everything… just trying to see if we can find that silver bullet, trying to find something new to do. It’s tough going into this idea of trying to be a 21st Century radio station. It means that we have to unlearn a lot of things that we have always done, and that leaves a vacuum. Once you stop a habit you’ve got to fill it with something.
**QB Content by Mike Bacon**
Also in the March Issue:
Up Close: WCPR/Biloxi APD Maynard
Maynard got into radio back in 1990 when he attended National Broadcasting School in Seattle and interned at Triple A station KEZX. He got his first official gig in Richmond at a small AM station doing overnights, then went to WQZK/Keyser, WV where he rose to MD and APD. From there Maynard continued the nomadic radio life across different states and formats, going to Triple A WVOD/Manteo, NC and also doing weekends at WAFX/Norfolk. He even spent some time doing mornings at a Country station. Finally, after a seven-year run at Classic Rocker WFYV/Jacksonville, he joined WCPR/Biloxi in April 2005 and has been carving out an Active Rock niche on the Gulf Coast ever since.
