Recently voted by FMQB readers as the 2008 Modern Rock Program Director of the Year, WLUM/Milwaukee’s Jacent Jackson has had quite a year (or two). After joining the station ten Arbitron books ago, FM 102/1 has risen to new ratings heights both 12+ and in male demos across the board.
Jacent Jackson
Recently voted by FMQB readers as the 2008 Modern Rock Program Director of the Year, WLUM/Milwaukee’s Jacent Jackson has had quite a year (or two). After joining the station ten Arbitron books ago, FM 102/1 has risen to new ratings heights both 12+ and in male demos across the board.
We caught up with Jackson after a recent airshift and got to the bottom of things. What’s his secret? Consistency? Passion? Irreverence? All of the above? Read on…
e-QB presents excerpts from the February FMQB magazine Modern Rock Up Close with WLUM “FM 102/1”/Milwaukee PD Jacent Jackson
On the changes that were implemented that really prompted the ratings explosion…
I walked into ’LUM and had a 2.0 12+, and a 3.9 share with Adults 18-34 — that was good for ninth in the market. That was pretty average for the station. It had been in that neighborhood for years. There were two things at the beginning really helped us take off. The first was when I went to lunch with my General Manager, Bill Hurwitz, on one of my first days at the radio station. Bill essentially said to me: the station is broken and you can’t make it any worse, so do what you need to do to fix it and I’ll back you one-hundred-percent.
That’s rare…
That is all a programmer’s really asking for. You don’t get that everyday. It gives you the confidence to go in and do what you need to do. As far as getting ’LUM off the ground, for the first six weeks I asked a lot of questions. Then we changed the brand name and the imaging and the music on the first day of the Summer book that July. My feeling is if you’re going to have a radio station that works, you have to know who you are then you have to go be that, you have to take a genre of music and make yourself synonymous with it, and you need to be consistently entertaining in-between. If you can do those things you will have a successful radio station. My first few weeks were actually spent talking to people who were working in the building and researching the history of the station and the market.
What conclusions did you come to?…
Well first, WLUM was an upside down radio station. It had 10-plus years of pretty dismal ratings, and the sales department had done everything they could to make it profitable. As a result there was a lot of strange wheeling and dealing, and in that situation your hands could end up becoming tied doing promotions or weird things that you didn’t set out to do. This situation can really make life difficult. I believe the most important thing I did walking in the door at ’LUM was to sort out the promotional inventory on the station. You will need enough promotional inventory to execute your agenda, while leaving enough inventory for your sales department to accomplish their goals.
On making an independent-minded radio station a ratings success in a blue collar town…
It was the strongest option in terms of what fit the radio station, and would be the most difficult option for a competing station to mimic. In looking at the flavors of music that we could really work with, one of them was indie-flavored Rock. I use that term incredibly loosely. I describe The Killers as an Indie Rock outfit – I don’t know if anybody else would. That kind of music has solid appeal in the market, and the lane was wide open….We’re independently-owned and not faking it, so there’s a story to tell there. There is not a consultant, or a corporate head of programming, or a corporate head of anything. I’ve had dinner with the guys who own the radio station. Combine that story with this genre of indie-flavored music that is appealing to your audience anyway, that’s something you can image with. Put this together with some compatible gold and you have a radio station. You put those things together and you can actually go out and say something and then be it and then do it really well.
His thoughts on where Alternative radio stands today…
I was talking to somebody about this the other day, and we were saying it’s no secret… the format doesn’t have a lot of consensus as to what kind of music it plays. And it doesn’t seem to have a consensus in the values it wants to put forth either, from what radio I’ve heard. That’s awful. I’d much rather see it stand for something. If it doesn’t stand for anything it becomes meaningless. I mean, we’re in Milwaukee, and you wouldn’t expect a station set up like this to do really well, but it does.
Proof that it can work…
Yeah, that the format is not dead. Anybody that’s said the Alternative format is dead is out of their mind. It’s a little bit tricky to program, but it’s far from dead. It’s really about your market. What’s the hole and then go do that. My belief personally is that our stations should have some irreverence to them, and they should seem like a bunch of like-minded weirdoes on a frequency, and they should have kind of an underdog spirit. You would think Alternative stations would all have something like that going on with them, but some of them don’t. You either have stations that in their music and positioning come across like an Active Rock light, or you have stations that come across in their music and positioning as kind of insular and exclusive, and I don’t think either approach in the long run is all that valuable.
Just find your voice and then go do that, whatever that is. Your music mix can include whatever. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re presenting it in the right way. If we want a cohesive format again, let’s get the values right. The music will likely follow.
** QB Content by Mike Bacon **
Also in the February Issue:
“Magick”-Making With Ryan Adams
Ryan Adams has never been one to keep his opinions to himself. From his time with alt-country act Whiskeytown to his diverse solo career, and now with The Cardinals and his pending retirement, Adams has always been outspoken and an interesting interview.
