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Diock Programming
One solution for economically sound operation by independents
by L B. WILSON, president and general manager, WCKV, Cincinnati
BLOCK PROGRAMMING is onc solution for economically sound operation )\ independent radio stations. It requires ourage, startling departiux, research ind planning, but it will bring audience, jrcstige, and accomplishment.
WCKY bases its observations on ex3erience, facts and figures. Early in 1946, he station dispatched station personnel o Canada and eastern United States to ;tudy block programming in operation.
The emissaries retinned with a bundle )£ ideas and suggestions. Station powvows were held. There was doubt whethr a 50,000-watt independent station, liched in a comfortable, if not conservaive, midwestern radio market, could use jlock programming to mold a sustained istening habit from a compound metro3olitan-urban-rural audience.
Common denominator schedule
A more or less "common denominator" ichedule was pointed at this vast general md potential radio audience. It was fashoned with this stubborn standard of udgment:
"Music and news will be the overall format. There will be less talk and more music. Speed and pace are the guideposts. There loill be no dead air! Everything will be planned . . . planned for the split second."
WCKY built one of the finest record md transcription libraries possible, organized a staff of topnotch record jockeys, ind expanded its news department. On \pril 15, 1946, the barrier was sprung nd WCKY leaped literally into the air >vith streamlined block programming.
The schedule was made up of one-, two-, three and four-hour periods ("block") of programs of one type. News was broadcast every hour for five minlUes, except at the established mealtime and bedtime news-listening periods.
70% audience increase
WCKY crowded the air every second from 6 a.m. to the following 1 a.m., and waited anxiously for mail and Hooperatings. During the first four months of independent block programming, WCKY increased its audience 70 per cent over the same period of the previous year (1945). In a typical month, June, 1946, the monthly mail count had reached 33,894. For January, 1947, the WCKY mail total was 113,809.
A check was made on the nighttime hillbilly-western Jamboree, now a fourhour block. The Jamboree mail showed nearly a tripled interest in WCKY nighttime listening from May (15,932 letters) to September (43,583 letters). This seemed a crucial test in a recognized off-season.
During a similar period, from June to November, WCKY secured for The Southern Fanner, a monthly publication, 130,000 ne^ subscriptions. This, said editor Aubrey Williams, is ". . . the most wonderful story in radio."
Block programming very evidently was reaching the rural audience. W^hat about the luban "fringe," also not usually included in telephone radio surveys?
Listeners were asked: "Should Makebelieve Ballroom be kept on the air?" Hundreds of the 8,455 listeners who an(Continued to page 201)
U N E, 1947
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