Having played a crucial role in developing 91X (XTRA-FM) into a heritage station in San Diego through the ‘80s and early ‘90s, Kevin Stapleford has returned to the place where he cut his radio teeth as a teenager and matured into a format pioneer. After stints as a consultant and Alternative Editor of Radio & Records, the prospect of re-birthing his radio birthplace was dropped on his lap, and he couldn’t resist the challenge.
e-OB presents excerpts from this week’s FMQB hard copy Modern Rock Up Close interview with Finest City Broadcasting VP/Programming Kevin Stapleford
On what led Kevin back to radio…That’s easy—I was given the chance to help build a brand new company in my hometown. Mike Glickenhaus, who I had worked with at my previous stint here when he was GM, called me up over a year ago. I had heard that Clear Channel may divest some of its stations and one of them would be 91X. He talked me into meeting him for coffee one day and told me his vision was sort of like going back to how it was back in the day when you had smaller, locally-focused radio companies that did their best to super-serve their markets.
On the uniqueness of the ownership transition… It’s insane. You’re dealing with a company that’s operating stations out of Mexico , which means that the Mexican equivalent to the FCC is involved, so you don’t just have one government body to deal with, you have two. That made the whole transition more complex.
On his mission statement when he took over the stations…Both 91X and [Hip Hop] XHTZ (Z90), were in difficult situations and being beaten by inter-format competitors. Our marching orders were, “Let’s get in there, and let’s stop the bleeding.” For us, our first real report card won’t be until the Winter book because we haven’t done all of our research or marketing. Our teams are just now being put into place. It was weird being in a situation where we were working with the old regime, knowing that we had to bring in a lot of new blood. We were also working within a company that was eventually going to be your competitor.
On where the Modern Rock format is today…The problem this format has had the last ten years is that it collectively spent way too much time worrying about being a format. Not to sound too much like an old-timer, but in my day, you had stations like 91X, WHFS/Washington, D.C., Live 105/San Francisco and KROQ/ Los Angeles ; and later you had 99X/Atlanta and The End in Seattle . They were all pretty different stations. And yes, we could all get together and talk about some of the same things, but these were stations tailor-made for each market. At some point — whether it was the post-Nirvana explosion or whatever — suddenly every market needed to have an Alternative station. That’s when it became a formula. Maybe it worked for a while, but when you’re operating only on a formula, you’ll eventually run out of gas, and it did. When I was here before, we never used the word “Alternative.” The brand name was not “Alternative,” the brand was 91X. Somewhere along the way, that changed here. The brand became “Alternative” and 91X just became another Alternative station, which meant it lost that special glow.
On 91X’s target demo and the strategic thinking behind the approach… Yes, we’re an Alternative station if you must classify us, fine. In terms of demographics — and it sounds insane to say, but we want to target 18-54-year-olds. In San Diego , trying to target 18-24 alone you’re not going to get the buys you want. This town used to have the lowest diary returns among Males 18-24 in the country. We can’t count on that demo to carry us. There are so many things to do here, plus you’ve got tons of military and college kids — so you never know who’s coming and going.
On the music position of the station… Because we’re a heritage radio station, it would be foolish for us to only aim at kids. In terms of the music, we want to play the stuff that’s considered the “bright shiny new thing” and the critical favorites, but we also want to make sure that we not only play the vintage 91X artists, but we get credit for playing them. You can have all the research in the world, but you’re still not going to make everyone happy with every song. It’s a matter of putting together a musical package that’s backed up by a powerful stationality.
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