WPST is a legendary radio station. In a recent poll of an FMQB radio advisory board, the station was elected to the FMQB Hall of Fame as one of the top five Secondary CHR’s of all time. A big part of PST’s history is its signature music mix. Positioned between two large metro markets in New York and Philly, the station has always managed to fashion its own unique music position, which barely draws any influence from the surrounding larger markets.
It is with this music position that the station has been able to create a signature sound that is uniquely PST. Entrusting the music to just anyone doesn’t cut it. PST has its standards. Matt Sneed, who’s been with Nassau Broadcasting since 1998 and PST since 2002, has been the station’s APD/MD for the past two years and has earned his PST stripes in helping guide the station to its current phase of music positioning. The station has recently adopted a more variety approach to its mix, placing more emphasis on gold during at-work hours, while maintaining a younger edge at nights.
WPST is among a unique group of Top 40’s with a 30+ year heritage. What are the challenges of programming a CHR with such a deep history?
Staying true to who we were and who we are is somewhat of a challenge. To move with the times and the trends, but not too much that you become foreign to your listeners. I’ve always felt that PST has done a great job of rolling with the times and transitioning ever so slightly at the perfect time to keep true to our original premise of balance between yesterday and today. I’ve never worked for a station with such a strong brand as PST. You turn us on in the Trenton area and you know exactly what you’re going to get. It’s part of the beauty of our consistency, branding power and success over the years.
The station has been in a transition process over the past year shifting to more of a CHR/Hot AC hybrid. How would you classify PST’s current music position?
We’ve recently shifted to a more variety-type format. During the work day there are more gold-based songs and we’ve somewhat slowed our currents down. It seems to have worked very well so far and feels like it was a good move to make. The station is more familiar, and when you turn us on you know what your going to get, more so now than ever. Every time you turn us on you are going to know the song that’s on the radio. It’s not to say that we don’t play new music, because we do but for the most part it the music is utterly familiar.
Is this move at the expense of young listenership?
We’re basically two different stations during the daytime and at night. The at-work listening is basically a Hot AC approach. We play eighties and mid-nineties stuff during the day, mixed with currents. But then past 7p.m. we become a much younger skewing music mix leaning Rock which has always worked well here. We’re basically a Rock leaning Top 40 at night. We’re early on stuff like the new Panic At The Disco and things of that nature. We are also much younger in our personality presentation.
(PD) Dave McKay and I feel like we know our listeners very well musically. That’s not to say we don’t get surprised, because we certainly do. But for the most part we know them very, very well, especially Dave who has been the PD here for over ten years. Our core demo group is women 18-39. We run a huge gamut of music variety during the work day and it’s really working for us. It’s not like this is an unsuccessful experience. It’s working. At-work listening has always been a huge priority for PST.
Was this a compulsory or natural evolution along the heritage continuum?
It’s more of a natural evolution. We’ve always kind of leaned more adult. The Rhythmic stuff for whatever reason, just does not work here. It never has. And that’s not to say we haven’t given it a shot because we have and it just never seems to come through. So we never really went through that pronounced Hip-Hop phase. We always rode the fringe of it and reacted on the right records at the right time. It’s an easy progression for us to drift further away from the Rhythmic stuff. In order for a Rhythm record to get on PST now it would have to be exclusively a night record, and have to be absolutely huge or as Dave McKay and I describe, a cultural phenomenon. The Rock and straight ahead Pop stuff is what has worked for PST for years.
What are the pros and cons of being geographically located between two major markets?
We’ve always geared ourselves toward Philly, even though we’re only 75 miles from New York. All of our outside-the-market marketing is done toward the Philly market. We don’t focus on New York all that much. One of the pros is the sheer volume of people we reach. You look at market size and see that we’re #138, but our cume is close to a million people. We get into so many additional markets with Philly being the main one that our cume mushrooms. We had thought for a long time that our total cume was between 500-600,000 people, and then when PPM came to Philly, we realized that’s our cume in Philadelphia alone! When you take into account the areas in New York we penetrate and the Jersey shore, we calculate our cume to be close to a million.
The disadvantage label-wise is we (at times) get overlooked for station shows. The labels see New York and Philadelphia, and somehow aren’t taking us seriously enough. It’s tough because we’re caught in the middle of these two huge metros. We constantly have to prove ourselves for support. There are labels that understand our brand and reach better, but there are also reps that you still have to explain over and over to, and it gets frustrating at times.
What tools are most important to you when evaluating new music?
Number one is our gut. That’s very important to us. We look at both the Top 40 and Hot AC charts. But what’s really going to get a new song on PST is movement of the songs that are currently in rotation, and what makes them move is our research. We rarely put new music into research before its time. We like to warm it up and get it familiar for valid testing. We try not to play new music that’s too aggressive. In the past six months there have been a few Rock leaning songs that were huge hits at Top 40 that we felt were somewhat too aggressive for workday listening; “Paralyzer” being one of them. We obviously played it during the workday after we saw how huge it was getting. But we did feel it was a little edgy at first so we weren’t on it as early as we could’ve been. Three Days Grace is another one. It’s still rising, but we felt it too may have been a little too edgy for workdays.
Which records did you champion early and wound up being big hits for the station?
Over the past year, the biggest one was Dashboard Confessional “Stolen.” It was absolutely huge for us. We just recently took it out. It’s a very female friendly record, which makes it a perfect PST record. Currently the one that’s huge for us, which a lot of Top 40’s aren’t playing, is Carrie Underwood “So Small.” It’s doing extremely well. Another one we still believe in, that looks like it stalled at Top 40, is the Maroon 5 “Won’t Go Home Without You.” We love that record. It’s a perfect PST record. John Mayer “Dreaming With A Broken Heart” is testing very well for us. It’s one of the things I like most about PST, our ability to play records like these that totally suit our audience. Just because everyone else isn’t playing it, doesn’t mean we can’t. Usually when we go out on a record it typically comes home for us. It’s unique to PST. You can’t do that at many other places.
What cross/new media components (of an artist or song) have leverage with you?
Definitely Americam Idol. You can’t ignore it. Daughtry has been monstrous for us this past year and a half; same goes for Carrie Underwood. American Idol is basically breaking them in for us. They come to us with built–in bases. When we start playing them, they’re already familiar. Even theKatherine McPhee’s and Bo Bice’s of the world, they had hits for us. There’s less value in music placement in TV ads. The sizzle kind of fades once the ad stops running.
Where do you feel Pop music is today and what is the ‘go-to’ genre you see the format relying on more these days?
Just looking at this week’s chart, it’s still a very Rhythmic world out there, which isn’t good for us. It’s why we pull from both the Top 40 and Hot AC charts. It’s why we balance our music out with currents that we have a strong gut feel for. It’s good to see an artist like Sara Bareilles do so well. Epic brought her by here before she broke and she just wailed on the piano in our conference room and it was awesome. You could see that she’s a true musician. That’s means a lot to us.
What are the most effective uses of your web presence?
We drive listeners to our web site big-time. We just revamped our site, and at this point you can get lost for hours on wpst.com! There’s so much music oriented interactivity. We have a feature calledNow Hear This for new music, and It serves as a research tool. It’s a pre-produced promo that runs throughout the day on the air with a clip of a song, and then we’ll direct the listener to our web site…’if you want to hear more of this song on PST go to our web site and tell us.’ They can then hear the entire song and vote on whether they want us to put it into rotation or not. This has been a really effective tool for us over the past year influencing us on new music decisions. We’ll do this with records that we’re on the verge of adding. Records like Ingrid Michaelson, which is such a curious sounding record, but we’re not really sure about. We’ll throw that on there and see how the listeners react. We started to have the artist voice the promo spot themselves, where the artist is prompting the listeners to go to our site.
Are there any other unique cross media initiatives of interest?
We recently started something called PST Mobile where listeners get weather reports, breaking entertainment news and concert announcements sent directly to their cell phone. We’re looking into alerting people via text when we are about to play one of their favorite songs. You’ll sign up and list your favorite songs and if they are coming up within a four hour period, we’re going to send you a text with the specific time that song will play.
There are many stations nationally that keep an eye on PST’s music mix. Which stations influence you the most?
We watch stations that we feel are like-formatted. WKRQ/Cincinnati immediately comes to mind. WBMX/Boston is another one. They’re a great station. Locally we look at B104/Allentown and WKRZ/Wilkes Barre. Even though we kind of look at these stations, we really do our own thing. Just because someone’s playing something ten times a day doesn’t necessarily mean we’re going to put it in. It always goes back to gut as far as new music. It plays real big here.
What is the most misunderstood concept (by label reps) about WPST?
The number one misunderstood thing about PST with labels is our size and the number of people we reach. As I mentioned earlier, overall we reach one million people and I still think there are reps that simply don’t understand how large of an audience we really have. And that gets frustrating. And with the high amount of turnover with label reps, it seems like we have to explain this time and time again.
If you can change a few things about the record/radio relationship, what would they be?
At this point I think people have realized that Dave and I are two pretty low-key guys. All you have to do is talk to us. The whole sales pitch aspect to it doesn’t work well here. Obviously we need to see the information and we want to hear the facts, but it’s all in the presentation. Just talk to us, we’re all friends and we’ve all known each other for years.
Another source of frustration, and I can understand the label’s point of view on this, but when we go out on a record on our own and we don’t get recognition for it. We’re out on a lot of records now that no one else is playing and it frustrates me that label’s don’t seem to care because it’s not one of their weekly priorities. I know they have their own agendas, but at least acknowledge the support we’re giving you on one of your records. Sometimes they don’t care if we’re having phenomenal success and that gets frustrating. We’re going to try to help the label as much as possible, but we have to do what’s right for us. Sticking to their timetable is not always possible.
** QB Content by Fred Deane **
