Monitor Profile: Gary Fisher And Paul Kelly Make Waves In Mainstream At Wayv Atlantic City

WAYV Atlantic City, N.J., owner/GM Gary Fisher and PD Paul Kelly have two reasons to celebrate. Not only did WAYV recently become a top 40 reporter when BDS expanded into the Monmouth/Ocean Counties, N.J., market, but Fisher and Kelly's decision to veer from a broad adult top 40 back to a mainstream sound has paid off with a two-share jump in the fall Arbitrons.
"We wanted to do anything to make our ratings go back up; that was bottom line," Kelly says. "We already started working with Mike Donovan [of Vallie/Richards Consulting], so we knew we wanted to take a mainstream top 40 position. We did almost everything you can do without blowing up the station and starting over. After tasting 7 shares [as an adult top 40], then getting knocked off our perch, we were dying to do whatever it took to get back up there."
Musically, that meant forgoing the station's previous heavy reliance on '80s gold for a heavily dayparted, musically active sound. "We have a tight list of currents that are so strong; we're comfortable playing them around the clock. What changes are the songs that flank them. Our core of currents is like the beef in the stew. The dayparted [records] are the spice, be they in middays or nights. We tend to feature a lot of the '80s titles that helped make WAYV great years ago on our "Flashback Friday.' We think it's more powerful to present [those songs] vertically, all in one day, as a special feature. The rest of the week, we have a very tight list of gold and recurrents," says Kelly.
Here's an afternoon-drive sample hour: "N Sync, "Bye Bye Bye"; Sugar Ray, "Someday"; Haddaway, "What Is Love"; Kid Rock, "Only God Knows Why"; Santana Featuring The Product G&B, "Maria Maria"; Del Amitri, "Roll To Me"; Celine Dion, "That's The Way It Is"; Third Eye Blind, "Never Let You Go"; La Bouche, "Sweet Dreams"; Macy Gray, "I Try"; Smash mouth, "All Star"; Jessica Simpson Featuring Nick Lachey, "Where You Are"; Savage Garden, "I Want You"; and Pearl Jam, "Last Kiss."
WAYV's mainstreaming took place after it found itself flanked on the adult side by modern AC WKOE. Now rhythmic top 40 WZBZ Cape May, N.J., is simulcasting in Atlantic City. "Until recently, we had just about the whole catalog of pop music to ourselves," Fisher says. "Now we have dance top 40 and modern AC competition, which hurts our exclusivity, but they're not full-market signals. Our job is to [act as if] we're up against tough, full-market competition where we're hopefully going to give them a good fight."
Fisher thinks WAYV's success parallels a return by listeners to "formats that are as basic as the air you breathe. I believe that the stations with the simple, easy-to-understand formats, such as mainstream top 40, mainstream AC, R&B, and country, will predominate for years to come. Their position is easy for the listener to understand, whereas the hybrid formats-modern AC, classic hits, R&B oldies-aren't as easy to understand, as they seem to be suffering here and across the country."
Besides the music change, Fisher credits the Mike and Diane morning show, which he recruited from WBBO Monmouth/Ocean Counties, and big-bucks contesting as reasons for the upturn. "Since a lot of TV viewership is from Philadelphia via cable, and the one local TV station is owned by the competition, we decided to use every other open area of marketing, especially the $100,000 Birthday Game," Fisher says. "With Atlantic City's big casino and gaming influence, the people here are very sensitized by big-money games of chance. It has created a tremendous impact. We also do a very expansive bus-back and transit campaign, which moves our calls throughout the market. We also do telemarketing. This three-pronged approach gets the word out that WAYV is a fun radio station again.
"You might think that people who live in Atlantic City and Las Vegas would be jaded [to cash contesting]," Fisher adds. "On the other hand, that's why people are drawn to make their lives here, because of the lure of big-money giveaways. Plus, the Birthday Game is pretty easy to play. Everyone who plays walks away with at least $100 or $1,000, not to mention having the chance of winning $100,000. We had no big winner [when we ran the contest] last fall, but we're running the game again, and we hope to have one this spring."
In recent Monitor features, some PDs have contended that the Birthday Game is only effective if there's a big-money winner and that not having one can turn listeners off to those contests in the future. "I don't agree, because we have so many winners," Fisher responds. "We've had hundreds of $100 winners and upward of 20 winners of $1,000 over the last couple of years. Once you get past the casino and tourism factors, this is a middle-class market, and putting $1,000 in a listener's pocket is still special down here."
In some ways, Atlantic City is like Las Vegas, where a large number of third-shift gaming-industry workers makes the overnight daypart almost as important as the daytime shifts. "I wouldn't say WAYV is a pure 24-hour daypart station, but I've been very encouraged that overnights aren't perceived by clients and listeners as throwaway dayparts," Fisher says. "This town never sleeps, which helps us keep overnights as something more valuable than a graveyard shift. Another interesting managerial challenge in this market is [the fact that] the population in our market quadruples from May to September, when people vacation here to pour into the casinos and the Jersey shore. Advertisers know that our market is grotesquely seasonal; it's all we [can] do to maintain discipline with respect to over-spotting.
"One of the things we learned during our ratings drop was the need to stay disciplined on spot load," adds Fisher. "We've been able to stick to 14 spots an hour during morning drive and 10 units an hour the rest of the day. However, we can double or, in some cases, triple our rates during peak season due to the influx of tourists from New York and Philadelphia."
Kelly, who was upped from APD to PD after Tommy Frank became PD at WWHT (Hot 107.9) Syracuse, N.Y., is cognizant of the pitfalls in corporate radio after seeing Frank lose that gig despite increased ratings. "I can certainly be happy spending my days at this company," he says. "A lot of people have different career goals. Some want to be in the biggest markets, working for the biggest companies. I just want to do winning radio. As long as I can make a good living doing this, I'll be thrilled to death, because as far as our listeners are concerned, this is a major-market station, and that's the way we look at it every day."