MODERN ROCK: WSWD/Cincinnati PD Tommy BoDean

Alternative Music has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the city of Cincinnati. It’s seen stations and trends come and go and never fully lock-on with any huge ratings results. Several owners, call letters, frequencies and monikers later, Alternative has returned to Cincy. After almost a year of building and cultivating, 94.9 The Sound has wrapped itself around the 18-34 and 25-49-year-old audience with a delicate balance of old, new and listener requested sounds. We recently caught up with former WKFS and WMVX OM Tommy BoDean, who now steers the ship at the new Alt outlet, and got up to snuff on how the station has progressed in ’07.

Alternative Music has had an on-again, off-again relationship with the city of Cincinnati. It’s seen stations and trends come and go and never fully lock-on with any huge ratings results. Several owners, call letters, frequencies and monikers later, Alternative has returned to Cincy.
After almost a year of building and cultivating, 94.9 The Sound has wrapped itself around the 18-34 and 25-49-year-old audience with a delicate balance of old, new and listener requested sounds.
We recently caught up with former WKFS and WMVX OM Tommy BoDean, who now steers the ship at the new Alt outlet, and got up to snuff on how the station has progressed in ’07.

eQB presents excerpts from the FMQB September Magazine Modern Rock Up Close featuring WSWD/Cincinnati PD Tommy BoDean

On re-introducing the market to alternative radio…
It’s a different breed of Rock station that we were on the front end of, playlist and presentation, and we definitely saw a hole for it in our market. There’s an audience for it if it’s packaged correctly and if you play the right records.  That’s basically how the format came together, just a need from the market to hear the music.  Then the packaging has been simplified and put in a less clutter, more listener-driven atmosphere to  give it back to the listener and involve the audience in a lot of the things we do… user generated content is awesome, and I know it’s kind of the buzzword right now to do it, but it really, really does add an element of depth and listener involvement to your marketing.  We’re all here to protect the brand, but you can get some really creative, even twisted ideas from listeners.

On the evolution of the airstaff…
Right now I’m almost fully staffed. I’m still looking for a morning guy ’cause I’m definitely not the person I want to keep in there.  But it has been nice… I’ve been able to take my time, find the right people for the radio station.  It wasn’t one of those situations where I came in January, and they’re like: Alright, a new station, I want it staffed by March.  It’s working.  Our first couple books have been great, and we had limited on-air talent.  We’ve just seen the dayparts grow where there was talent, and the dayparts where we didn’t have talent, mornings and nights, were the two places that we could grow the most.  Now it’s awesome.  Clayton is my midday host; 10a-3p and Lisa Biello3p-7p, and  I don’t know if it’s a one-of-a-kind position, if not, it’s one of the first.  Lisa is not  afternoon drive/music director or imaging, she’s afternoon drive and Web Content Editor.  She’s not the nuts and bolts of building it. We’ve got the team that does design.  She’s the actual person that makes sure the content on the Web site is branded to the station and she does all the digging for the content, which is something that a lot of radio stations don’t have yet, but will. I have added those two positions to the already incredible but small staff of Julie Evans APD/Promotions and myself.

On the support from the company and consultants…
The company… and it was an awkward situation with the company because it obviously was CBS, then it was Entercom for a heartbeat.  When it was Entercom it was when the idea kind of happened.  Then it went to Bonneville, which we are today. Bonneville has received it with open arms.  They look at it as a fresh, new direction for a Rock station.  They’re not a company that’s known to have a lot of Rock stations or “Alternative” stations.  We’ve been able to straddle that line and give them a little bit younger ended station than what they’re used to having, but making numbers 25 – 54 will be the goal and we’re well on our way to doing that.  So I have a feeling this format is just stepping in front of Classic Rock by a couple years, maybe eight years, but we’re taking that play off the table and we’ll eventually grow into that 25+ station.
The company is the best company I’ve worked for.  I’ve worked for a couple, but Bonneville has stepped up.  They completely understand what it takes to get a station off the ground from a marketing and promotions standpoint, and they understand that it takes some to get some.  They’ve given me the weapons and the tools that I need to really put on a formidable station in the market that already has a great Rock station.
Dave Beasing and Jacobs Media are part of the programming team. This is my first opportunity working with a consultant.  Dave is great.  He definitely has his fingers out there in the right places.  He knows the hot trends and the format, and understands that we’re doing things a little bit differently and gets it, and understands that we need to in order to survive.  He was also the consult in the 97.3 days, so he understands the pain of a pure Alternative station not getting off the ground, and also understands how, if we do it a little bit differently, we can really make some noise – so he’s been an asset.

On Alternative radio…
You’ve got to look at it market by market.  I don’t think you can make a blanket statement because there are some great Alternative stations that do it differently and have been around since the ’90s and they’re very successful.  With us, the market’s always struggled to have Alternative take off and get going.  We think that we’ve got the right mix of old and new to grab both sides of the audience.  My comment, when I first came into the job, about what I thought Alternative radio was doing wrong, was really giving away artists.  That was probably the biggest thing I saw, There is a line where you have to let those artists go to Top 40, at least for a little while.  But, you still need to take ownership of the ones that work for your radio station… I do think that Alternative could do itself a favor by looking and not judging so harshly and not listening to that real vocal minority, but becoming a radio station that can appeal to a broader base.  That benefits everyone.  But, with that said, there are some great radio stations that are on the newer side of things, on the more eclectic side of things that do very well.  So, it’s a balance of the market and what you’ve got going on in your market. 

On the station’s future…
We are trying to get up and running and add depth and breadth to the station. We see focusing on community involvement and local music as a key to our success. They’re kind of tied together, but community involvement is going to be our mission.  That’s going to be the number one area that we’re going to focus on, whether it’s getting involved with the local Park Board and helping them rake in volunteers, or becoming part of our Give Back Cincinnati situation which is an organized charity that does a lot of good locally. Giving those opportunities to the audience will be something that we’re going to hang our hat on.  It’s our mission to make sure people can volunteer easily and be involved.  We’re at a time and place where everybody wants to, and we need to service that. With the amount of young professionals that are in the work place right now, it’s a homerun to have a 25 – 34 targeted radio station trying to get the audience involved, because they’re the ones looking for something to do.

On adjusting to a programming a new format…
I’ve worked at a Rock-leaning Top 40, but I’ve never jumped into this world, so the biggest difference for me coming from the world of Top 40 was the volume of music. I could narrow it down to three to five records that I was really looking at in a week, and then could pick one to two off of that.  At this format, there are at least 30 songs every week that are in front of me and it takes a skilled team of people to figure out which ones are the best for the brand; which ones are going to make it.  It’s a lot harder trying to narrow down which records are hits as opposed to which ones are just great records because there’s so much more product. To me that was the biggest difference.  The amount of phone calls, just the amount of music that’s out there for this format is mind blowing — and it’s all good.  There’s so much good stuff that you really have to keep blinders on for what your brand is and what your radio station is, and how you want it to feel each day. You have to walk a fine line.

**QB Content by Mike Bacon**