[Maya53]

Heads up!

Just listened to the live stream of WLTE(Lite FM) from Minneapolis/St. Paul out of curiosity and they are now using ReelWorld after years of using JAM. The package they are now using is ReelOne's WLTW package, although there is a possibility that they might be airing their new custom. I was surprised when they played their new cut after Rod Stewart's “Do You Think I'm Sexy?”.

You can listen to their stream here.

[ratnobMember]

As with all CBS stations we can't listen to them in the UK because of some ludicrous piece of legislation, so I can't make a meaningful comment on the station's sound.

However, at the risk of being very repetitive very repetitive very repetitive: ReelWorld resings, in my humble opinion, make big stations sound smaller and small stations sound a bit bigger. The jingles rarely add personality to a station; rather, they are a means to an end. They identify the station name, and that's it.

But that's just a passing comment – let's not have dozens of posts on why JAM is better than RW, or vice versa. Life's too short.

Thanks, Maya53, for tipping us off about the change.

[mbMember]

My gripe is that in the late 90's early 2000's Reelworld were doing fantastic jingles – The clyde 1 package was amazing there were countless packages which were, and still are fantastic sounding. At some point the creativity seemed to dry up and Reelworld one stopped stations buying packages. WMAL is awsome, KASE 101 fab – I understand why people want Reelworld stuff but the last couple of years its not great – Maybe it's the clients theres not many brains in radio nowadays.

[bobgreenradioMember]

so; theres simply a new “king” of the heap. and in a few years some other group will out do reelworld.
the jingle business has pretty simple rules, yet, some guys over produce until its like moms boiled green…well, they started out green, peas. boiled to death!
plus a ton of stuff is mixed so crappy lately too….

[jkubiak]

Good god this is old news! They switched to RW1 AC in October 2010, and ran Jam Christmas jingles from Nov-Dec. I am a huge fan of ReelWorld and their jingles, but these DO NOT sound good on WLTE in my opinion.

[MarcMannetje]

@ Michael I am afraid I have to agree Michael. There isn't less brain in radio, there's ia new majority in radio: moneymakers.

Investing in a long term relationship with your listeners and in creativity has another value these days then a hard return on investment within the year. Bartering, resings, they all seem a quick and cheap way 'to do the same and thus make more money'. But radio is an emotional medium, listeners will go to another station more quickly, they will not bond with your advertisers that fast anymore – in the end, cheap will turn out to be very expensive..

[mjb1124Member]

Seems like a bunch of CBS-owned AC stations are switching from JAM to ReelWorld. WWFS New York, WCFS Chicago, WLTE Minneapolis, and KEZK St. Louis have all made the switch, as far as I know. Somehow I don't think it's a coincidence that all this happened after Jim Ryan (formerly of Clear Channel) became their SVP of AC programming. (He's also the PD of the former two stations, but not the latter two.) At least WEAT-FM (Sunny 104.3) in West Palm Beach, Florida was still using JAM's Keyframes when I was down there last week.

That said, I'm through complaining. I'm not the target audience of these stations, and RW obviously must be doing something right in order to be so dominant. I'm sure some children of the PAMS era felt the same way about JAM in the late 70's/80's as a lot of us do about RW now. I will continue to root for JAM and be glad when a station picks them up, but I've accepted that as times change, so do the jingles. I do agree that even RW themselves had better material in their early days, but I guess the needs of the clients have changed.

[Bryan Simmons]

They do a barter arrangement. Essentially you get the jingles super cheap, like free, in exchange for Reel World getting to sell spots on that station. They get some inventory and the station gets jingles. I do believe that JAM will work a bartered deal as well, but Reel World seems to be very aggressive at getting stations to sign on. I DO NOT believe that RW One sounds good on soft AC's. The package sounds like an almost generic CHR package from the 80's, not AC.

[LenGroat]

Bryan ~ many thanks for the information. I'm sure it will help devotees understand why this station is prepared to use inferior identification.

For a long while British radio looked to American radio for ideas, style, idents, and just the 'fun' elements ~ that is no longer the case.

I watched some old vids on YouTube of you, and Mark and Kim, and must copmpliment you on your many years of maintaining a quality sound and style. I know you were briefly also on KBIG and I was fortunate to buy some of their first JAM package for Trent FM and GEM AM in the 90s ~ more superb JAM creativity.

Best wishes

Len

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