From the big 89, the beat goes on.
89 WLS.
One beautiful day.
Good morning.
8 .35.
Bella's most music time.
Clark Webber's show for Tuesday morning and Brooke Benton's next.
People like to tell you what you can't do.
5 .22.
Mallory Battery.
I'll go live and wait.
They may be right, but who's to say? You know you've got your own song to sing.
Do your own thing.
Do your own thing today.
Being free means you can be your own self.
And that means doing things your way.
Don't be afraid to be a stranger.
I don't want to be a puppet tied to a string.
Do your own thing.
Do your own thing today.
From WLS, 13 souvenir years ago today.
1955, nearly a generation ago.
For pop music and its audience, the end of one era and the beginning of another.
A song from the fifties, a souvenir.
In 1956, a new form of music burst on the scene.
They called it rock and roll and labeled it for kids.
Hardly anyone listened.
But Presley moved Dylan and Dylan moved the Beatles.
Hey Jude, don't make it bad.
And the Beatles sparked a whole new revolution in sound.
The music became more appealing and the new audience responded.
They were sophisticated, affluent.
Suddenly they were the audience all advertisers wanted to reach.
And representing a broader and older demographic, WLS developed a new strategy to reach an even greater numbers that growing market and programming, which was to play such a key role, belonged to John Rook.
John Rook came to WLS as operations director with a highly sophisticated approach to programming, a scientific precision and control never before attempted in the Chicago market, one that would deliver the target audience advertisers wanted.
First thing on Rook's mind, analyze the sound of WLS and perfect it to reach in greater numbers, the 18 to 49 age spectrum.
Rook's answer, the now famous WLS more music format, more music, more audience, Mass Appeal Radio.
One way Rook controlled the sound was to listen, even in the morning on the way to the office, take Clark Webber's show.
There you go, Mom.
WLS souvenir year, 1955.
If you were sweet 16 back then, you wonder where in the heck the time has gone.
So I monitor constantly the competitors as well as the lessons, and I dictate into a tape recorder the things that I find wrong.
And I can always tell when a song is being played out of category or when an engineer misses a cue.
I listen for things you'd never even notice.
But if those things that make the difference in our sound and why more and more people buy it, I guess I'm a perfectionist.
And we're never perfect.
At the station, there are always questions.
How about the oldies? I really, John, I find between like eight and 10 o 'clock.
I am really uptight when it comes to some of what are you running an hour now? You're running like three, four, four, four, sometimes five.
And you figure if we're going to hold between what, 55 and 60.
A souvenir song chosen from the right year, played at the right time, attracts an older audience that identifies with older songs.
Rook and Weber program the show with this in mind.
On 1960, then I dropped back to like about a 57 and then through there and then I finally figured with what sincerely is 1955.
Well, the Moir sisters.
Yeah, great.
Yeah, great.
Yeah.
The ID in front of it, in the intro in front of it, telling him 13 years ago and then you following it relating to the the gal out there.
Well, you figure 50, she's got a couple of kids, right? She's no longer the beautiful teenager she was.
And when she heard that, she thought she was.
Yeah, I'm here.
This market is the vital market, 18 to 49, and all with discretionary income to spend.
WLS is where you find it.
68 degrees under sunny skies in Chicago.
Things are running smoothly in space, and that apparently includes the noses of the astronauts.
WLS News talked with Doug Ward at Mission Control in Houston about a cold shared by the three astronauts.
I reported that under Wally Schirra appeared to be holding his own and that Don Ively.
WLS News is both immediate and human.
Succinct local and national coverage.
In the morning, it's attracting the businessman as he drives to work and the housewife still at home.
And the news, how you get into it, out of it, and what you say is another important facet of programming strategy.
We programmed to deliver that audience in the morning and our ratings prove it works.
89 WLS 1966 was a souvenir year.
In show business, there's always a producer and a director.
Television, motion pictures, even with a hit record.
I was operations director at L .S.
John Rook has become, in a sense, our producer and our director.
All of us have worked closely with John to perfect this format.
We've simplified the sound, we've reduced the conversation, we've shortened and combined the call letters and the jingles.
And we've sort of redefined the role of an on the air personality.
John has an uncanny sense about an audience and the way to reach each and every listener.
I think the thing that stands out most is the fact that he has an innate ability to detect irritation in a program.
And that's something that's a gift, because, boy, many of us just don't have that.
He he can project himself into the role of a listener.
And yet he can maintain his equilibrium as a program director.
Now, as a result of this, he's able to spot those things, take them out, remove the irritation factor.
And in other words, he removes the dross and then sits there with nothing but pure gold.
And it's really paid off.
The payoff for the WLS tighter programming strategy is higher ratings across the board.
As the format improves, the numbers climb, whether it's teens, young adults or adults.
Demographics show that our mass appeal radio does pay off from Clark Webber mornings to Art Roberts, who communicates with and entertains the housewife from 10 until two.
Award winning Larry Lujak, the leader on all rating services in the important afternoon drive time period and the night, the more youthful market where WLS maintains a consistent lead, spotlighting Chuck Buell, Chris Stevens and Jerry K.
With WLS's strong position in the Chicago radio market established and growing every day, the responsibility for selling WLS, the product falls to general sales manager Bob Williams.
It's good for us, but we got to make sure it's good for the advertiser, too.
Otherwise, it doesn't make sense.
Williams works with his research team, Bill Rice and Ed Dutie, to maximize the sales effort of the entire staff.
The newest tool in sales strategy is BRI, Brand Rating Index, the syndicated marketing service that matches people to levels of consumption in more than 300 product categories, isolating the heavy users, who they are and where to reach them.
Now, what does your information on a BRI show? Is their marketing strategy correct? Are they aiming for the correct demographic? Not entirely.
They're getting part of the demographic they should be getting, but they're not getting all of it.
So what are they doing? Are they aiming for an older audience in their radio buy? All right.
Now, does it make sense for us to suggest they cancel what they're doing and invest their money with us? No, not at all.
I think what it needs to do, it should be, I think, a two station buy in this case.
They've got a good station that's delivering one end of the demographic group.
That's great.
Look, at no time do we want to go out based on the BRI information we have and make a recommendation that somebody bring all of his dollars to us because we destroy the credibility.
Well, we would establish a credibility gap between us and the agency and the client.
It's got to be good for the client as well as for us.
Well, it's a dangerous thing to try to tell an advertising department or a client himself that their marketing strategy is wrong.
But hopefully, based on the kind of information that we can provide through the BRI, the time buyer the account executive, the advertising manager, we'll know that what we are trying to do is to provide helpful and meaningful information.
And that's the name of the game.
More music, sophisticated programming strategy, in -depth marketing research through BRI to ensure you the most effective radio buy and the format that delivers the largest audience in Chicago radio.
Mass Appeal Radio, that's WLS, the leader in Chicago.
Now carving out a broader view of the world of radio.
The WLS is a high -end radio market share with expertise and results.
The ratings reflect the strategy WLS delivers.
And that's the name of the game.
