Seattle's Movin' 92.5

[radiofan]

Friday, December 8, 2006

92.5's new format is winning lots of fans with its listener 'comfort zone'

By ATHIMA CHANSANCHAI
P-I REPORTER

These are the things that make you go hmm:


A local radio station trades in its easy-listening format and creates a new variation called "Movin" rhythmic AC.


The staple of Movin 92.5 FM's KQMV: It "Makes You Feel Good" playing songs that haven't seen the light of a commute since the early '90s and late '80s, songs like "Gonna Make You Sweat," "Back to Life" and "No Diggity."


After its debut in May, ratings take off -- straight to the top 5. KQMV rapidly ascends from the depths to No. 2 for women 18-44 in the Seattle region.


Soon, the format starts popping in other major markets, such as Los Angeles, Dallas and San Francisco, with mixed results. But in Seattle, the station wins fans, particularly women for whom the station acts as a soundtrack to mainstream memories of middle and high school and college.

Music critics hate this format. There's probably a good reason a lot of the music hasn't been in rotation for more than a decade (sometimes, two). But it is the stuff of college dance parties, middle/high school sleepovers, long bus rides to and from school, carpools, pool parties, talent shows, lip-sync contests and road trips.

It is the music you used to dance the cabbage patch to, the music of the running man. It's Hammer don't hurt 'em, it's conjuring up the memory of drumming prodigy Sheila E.

in the video to "The Glamorous Life," it's being the first generation to jump to House of Pain and it's Miss Jackson, if you're nasty. It's never letting actor Mark Wahlberg forget he used to be Marky Mark.

"It's music you almost forgot about," said Netashe David, 28, of Renton, who attended 92.5's free concert last month featuring an old school triple threat: Tone Loc, Sir Mix-A-Lot and Boyz II Men. "Some of the newer songs remind me of junior high and high school and when I used to request them to be played on the radio to my friends and the secretly admired."



But mostly, it makes her feel profanity-free good.

At the concert, her younger sister, Sara David, 26, took to the stage with about 20 other women, who danced to "Baby Got Back." For her, the station gives a satisfying mix of music, especially the old school.

Jenna Van Rijn, of Mukilteo, 28, who also was at the concert, thinks it's great so many songs are fun. "When I want to listen to music on the radio, I'm always looking for upbeat and fun. The music really affects me. If I was to throw together a mix tape, it would be very similar to what they play."

While radio consultant Alan Burns & Associates has gotten the lion's share of the credit for creating the format, each radio station tailors the playlist. In Seattle, it was 92.5's program director, Lisa Adams, who put together the music that makes so many people feel so good.

In the first hour of programming -- "the best hour of my life," she said -- the station cranked out Heavy D. and Boyz, Chaka Khan, Madonna and OutKast. That list is now framed on one of the station's walls.

"In my 18 years in radio, I've never seen a format take off like this did," said Adams, who is leaving 92.5 to direct a similar Movin station in Portland. "I started hearing it in people's cars during the summer, when they had their windows rolled down on the Alaskan (Way) Viaduct. I realized, 'Hey! That's my station!' "

Movin 92.5 is one of Bellevue-based Sandusky Radio's five local stations; AM 880, AM 1150 (talk radio), WARM 106.9 FM and 98.9 FM Smooth Jazz are the others.

Adams and general manager Marc S. Kaye said holes existed in Seattle's saturated radio market, which represented a very metropolitan, very hip city in a region where country music and contemporary Christian do as well -- if not better -- than rock and alternative/progressive formats.

"It's an impossible city to put a label on," Kaye said. But KISS and KUBE had moved away from Top 40, said Adams, as their audiences skewed younger. That means those stations started leaving behind a body of music that included pop perennials such as Prince and Madonna, but also one-hit wonders like"Rhythm Is a Dancer" and "Groove Is in the Heart."

What KQMV has done, Kaye said, is to create "a comfort zone for the audience. Radio is like a favorite pair of jeans. The worst day in your life is when you have to replace it." So even when new music is played, it's selected to not alienate listeners.

The playlist has a sort of logic to it. People who liked Salt-N-Pepa, Bell Biv Devoe and Lisa Lisa & the Cult Jam in the '80s probably liked the Stereo MC's, Brandy, Rob Base & DJ E-Z Rock in the '90s and are more likely to embrace Nelly Furtado, Justin Timberlake and Beyonc? now.

There are people out there who think the Movin movement should cool it now.

"I think this is a safer version of jammin' oldies," said Alan Jacobson, associate editor at the Miami-based Hispanic Market Weekly and former management marketing and sales editor at the Radio & Records trade publication. "These are people who don't understand how to market to affluent Latinas and affluent African Americans. It gives advertisers a total blanket package. It can target a 32-year-old Latina with children but also 40-year-old white soccer mom and also 30-year-old black mom."

For Jacobson, it's a format not driven by the music, but by a market under pressure from the Internet, television, satellite radio and other competitors.

"I really strongly feel this is another example of radio being lazy and not being local enough," Jacobson said. "Once again, they're trying to be all things to all people and what that does is it doesn't bring enough of any one people."

In Los Angeles, the Movin format bumped off the area's only country music station, a move that didn't make those fans feel good at all. When the format replaced a country music format, fans roared. In L.A., where the FM dial is saturated with similar-sounding -- and better, in Jacobson's opinion -- music, Movin doesn't work. But that has as much to do with the population makeup of those cities as well. In cities like L.A. and Dallas -- which have much more significant Hispanic populations used to culturally relevant playlists -- the Movin format has not struck the same kind of nerve it has in Seattle.

"It is a great radio station to Seattle," Jacobson said. "With no disrespect to Seattle, it was one of least ethnically diverse ones on the market until a few years ago. It was always a little slow on the R&B side, always a little more white and poppy as opposed to R&B and funky."

No doubt, 92.5 probably could use some adjustment. It probably could stand to lose the Timex Social Club's "Rumors," which it uses for every salacious tidbit that comes down from the celebrity world (which is something like every commercial break).

Others are willing to give the new Movin format the benefit of the doubt.

"It's far too early to be too critical," said Joel Denver, president and publisher of the L.A.-based online trade publication, All Access Music Group. "It's a new hybrid. It maintains some currents, but it's a kind of a blending of a classic-hits station and 20 to 25 percent current, geared to adults and familiarity. What's cool about it is its ease of listenability."

P-I reporter Athima Chansanchai can be reached at 206-448-8041 or athimachansanchai@seattlepi.com.


The Seattle P-I