Scott Arbough
When FMQB tallied Hall of Fame votes last spring, it was clear from the beginning of the balloting thatKBCO/Denver-Boulder would be inducted as one of Triple A’s best. But it was the station’s heritage and influence in the format and consistent success in its market that garnered it enough votes to be given the Lifetime Achievement Award, even though it was pitted against very deserving competition.
Launched in 1977 as a Boulder, CO radio station that had more in common with its Progressive Rock predecessors than it did its AOR contemporaries, KBCO focused on intelligent presentation of a long list of diverse music at a time when playlists were tightening up and deejays were amping up their delivery. The playlist featured a lot of Colorado-centric artists that didn’t get a lot of airplay elsewhere, and the station developed a passionate and loyal following as well as a special mystique.
Thirty-one years after KBCO’s launch, despite all the changes in the music and radio landscape, it remains one of the legendary stations in Rock radio and a constant Top Ten 12+ in the market and Top Five in its adult target demo, as well as a huge influence on other Triple A stations around the country. FMQB recently talked with KBCO PD Scott Arbough, who has spent a good chunk of his career at the station, about the challenges of staying strong in the market over decades, while being among the best in a format that is constantly changing.
As the PD of KBCO, you’re programming a station that dominates adult listening in the Denver market after more than 30-years on the air. Talk about how you maintain that audience in the face of growing competition – both on the radio and off – and the aging of your longtime, life-long listeners.
Well, KBCO has more competition now than it ever has had. There are three Triple A radio stations in Denver now where there used to just be one. So, it’s a harder position to hold. Paul Marszalekpointed out at the Triple A convention a couple years back that music released in the ’60s is closer to World War II than it is to music that’s being released now. So when you put it in that perspective, you start to realize that a lot of the old heritage music that is even ’70s-based has started to fall off in importance to people that are in the radio listening demo. The basic answer would be that the station has just continued to take on a more contemporary feel, even in the gold music that it probably had only five-years ago. It’s a little less Classic Rock based. I still feel that it’s an important flavor for the radio station, so we continue to incorporate it, but it’s become a more well-thought-out process as far as which of those tracks we keep and how often those songs are played.
With a station that spent so many years positioning itself as “Boulder radio,” how did you make the connection with Denver’s population to achieve the presence you have there?
People who live in Denver see Boulder as sort of a fantasy land. People don’t understand that Boulder’s just another town. There’s an aura that people in Denver appreciate even though they like to make fun of it. It still is something that’s special and different. So the station image of being from Boulder just helps to further support the uniqueness of the radio station.
Much of what is historically unique about KBCO is the station’s benchmark promotions. Talk about how you keep events and promotions interesting and fresh for your audience.
The radio station has branched out and tried to reach out to a broader base. KBCO has always tried to connect itself to things like skiing, backpacking, mountain biking, rock climbing, walking and hiking and just being outside. That hasn’t changed.
But everything has its natural evolution, like our annual Kinetics event. After 28-years, the last couple of years there just wasn’t any interest from the people. So putting that on hiatus is good thing for us. It helped establish the image of the radio station, but that was started back in the day when the radio station didn’t have an image. The image of KBCO is well established now, so we move onto bigger things. The Mile High Music Festival was a two-day festival (in August) with Tom Petty, John Mayer, Dave Matthews and Steve Winwood. It’s the first time there’s ever been a festival in Colorado that is of this magnitude, 100,000 people. So that’s where we are now promotionally.
We see ourselves as the radio station that can benefit promotionally by going to the places that people already are and already have interest in. We’re involved in all the mountain bike races; all the music festivals; every show at Red Rocks. We even broadcast from the Democratic National Convention in Denver. We try to embrace whatever particular thing is of the day, rather than hold onto what is the past.
Rather than to try to be what KBCO was, or try to hold onto an old promotion that we used to do, it’s more important that we try to understand where we’re going and find out what the hot promotional opportunities are today, because you get your calendar so full of all of those things that you’ve traditionally done year-after-year-after-year, that you don’t have any room for the new things. And if there’s no room for the new things, you’re just going to become an old, stale promotional machine. So we’re always open to finding the new things and, in doing so, we have to let some of the old ones fall away.
Back when you started at KBCO, being interactive meant that you had an All Request hour at Noon. How has technology impacted the station’s relationship with its audience?
Obviously the Web site is more and more an important tool, and it’s something that’s happened quickly. When Dave Benson left the radio station in 2000, we really didn’t even have a Web site. Now we encourage people to get the information that they need in more depth at our Web site. We encourage them to be involved in getting any information about anything, especially things otherthan just radio.
However, the Number One thing that we do is deliver music, and therefore the Number One purpose of our Web site is to deliver music, which is why we’re very passionate about the KBCO HD2 Studio C Channel, which won the NAB Award last year for the Best Side Channel.
Having content that is a real music option on your Web site is as important as anything, so we have the New Music Channel that is one of the top performing New Music Channels that SBR(Creative) does. The Number One reason that people visit our Web site is to listen either to our terrestrial station or one of our side channels – and it’s by multiple times more than any other reason. The secondary reason is that they come to find out about concerts, and the rest of it pretty much pales in comparison.
We also believe that text messaging is something that would be a great tool that has not been as great a success for us as some our younger-targeted counterparts. For some reason people in our demo don’t really like text messaging, but over the last 12 months we’ve seen more of it and our text message list continues to increase.
When you think about the future, how can KBCO stay a powerful force in the market?
Relationship building with the audience is the most important thing that any radio station can do, and that comes through various things. It has to do with personality. It has to do with music. It has to do with lifestyle. It has to do with technology. It’s all of the things combined. You’ve got to be able to be something that is seen as more than just a radio station. You have to be something that is a part of a person’s day-to-day experience. You really do need to create an image.
People today have the opportunity to never listen to radio. Most cars come with iPod docks so you can plug in. Yet radio still continues to survive because radio can give you the new music that you want to add to your iPod, and do that one thing that the iPod can’t, which is to be a unique presence in your life. If a station does that right, the station becomes a part of what you are and what you do in your day-to-day experience.
*** QB Content by Jack Barton ***
