pdqa - All About Country - Country Music News & Information

Biography

Mike James is the OM and PD for the four Hall Communications Inc. stations in Lakeland, FL: Country WPCV (97 Country), Adult Hits WWRZ (Max 98.3), Talk WLKF, and Adult standards WONN.

WPCV-97Country (www.wpcv.com) leads the Lakeland/Winter Haven, FL market (Arbitron, Adults 12+) with a 12.0 share, which is double the 12+ ratings of its closest competitor. To say that 97 Country dominates this market, located less than 50-miles east of Tampa, is a massive understatement.

In these times of low, single-digit ratings for Country Radio nationwide, it seems appropriate that we ask the leader of this remarkable station how it's done.

Prior to joining Hall Communications in 2004, Mike programmed country stations KCCS/Colorado Springs, WQIK and WROO/Jacksonville, FL and KMDL/Lafayette, LA. He also spent 15-years at WWKA-K92/Orlando where he worked on air and as Director of Marketing and Promotions.

In developing your station's music recipe, how do you utilize the information from the nationally published charts?

We like to use the charts as a tool in the kit, but not as a bible. For new adds, I work closely with my MD, Jeni Taylor, and our consultant, Joe Patrick. Each week the three of us listen to new music, and we then decide what songs would fit best for our local audience and for our local market. We each bring something different to the table relative to how we interpret music, both sonically and demographically. To be honest, it doesn't really matter whether the song has charted yet, or where it might already be on the charts, it's more a question of 'do we believe this is the best song for our audience and our playlist at this moment in time?'
Live, local air personalities have become a luxury in most radio stations today. What sorts of things do you do to take advantage of your live, local dayparts.

Listener interaction is the key in everything we do, both on the air and in the community. We have live and local air personalities on WPCV in all dayparts, including overnights and weekends, so that gives us a tremendous advantage over other stations that are heavily voicetracked or syndicated. We're continually inviting listeners to participate with us, via telephone, Facebook, email and Twitter. .
Give your thoughts on how important an Artist's brand is to the music you add each week.

I think it's critically important that we work with music labels to help build new superstars, and to continue to do everything we can to help promote exising stars. Having said that, we won't give an automatic add for a song just because it's coming from an established artist. The song has to feel like a hit purely on it's own strength, but there's no doubt that if we only have room for one add, and it's between a superstar's new single and a "baby act", there's always that temptation to give it to the superstar.
What do you advise/require of your air personalities when it comes to social media?

We ask our full time jocks to actively maintain their DJ Facebook pages, and they enjoy doing it, so it's not a stretch. Some use Twitter, some don't, and all of them still have regular email and phone interaction with listeners during their daily airshifts.
How can Country Radio best stave off the the advance of the new digital media, such as Pandora and iHeart Radio?

We still believe that "live and local human interaction" is the secret, and that helps us compete effectively against Pandora and other "faceless" forms of new media, which can't engage a listener on the same emotional level as an air personality in a listener's own home town. We have our own free streaming via our websites, and free mobile apps for smartphone listening as well, which I think serves the same purpose as iHeart Radio.