Format

WOBM is a soft rock music station with a focus on Ocean County. They focus on soft

rock artists such as Billy Joel, the Bee Gees, John Mayer and more. A fuller list will be included

in the playlist section of this report. Although they are mainly a music station they have some

talk including Delilah, a nationally syndicated talk show about relationships that features music

as well. They also have a morning talk show called The Ocean County Breakfast Show with

Shawn Michaels and Sue Moll. I will expand on this and other programming in the appropriate

sections.

Ownership
WOBM is owned by Millennium Radio Group. They are part of a group which contains

11 other radio stations. These stations are New Jersey 101.5, 94.3 the Point, 105.7 the Hawk,

1160 WOBM AM, Fox Sports 1030 AM, 96.9 WFPG, 107.3 WPUR, SOJO 104.9, NJ 101.5’s

other station in South Jersey 97.3, and ESPN Radio 1450 AM. I think that being part of a larger

group is beneficial to WOBM and radio stations in general. I feel this way because if a radio

station is without a group the radio station would see higher costs and need more people working

at the station. With WOBM being part of a group they can save costs in some places.

History
WOBM went on the air March 1, 1968 and is a part of the Millennium Radio Group.

They have remained pretty similar to what they were then. They even have one guy, Bob Levy,

who has been doing his talk show, Topic A, with WOBM since it was signed on.

Technical Facilities
WOBM has an antenna height of 149 feet above ground level. They also have an

effective radiated power of 1.4. According to Steve Ardolina with WOBM’s signal strength they

are able to go out “30 miles from Toms River” in all directions. These numbers are similar to
what I feel is their big competitor WJRZ, which I will go into more detail in the competition

section. Attached to this report is a coverage map for WOBM. Looking at this map one could

see that some of the signal goes out into the ocean. This is not very beneficial because besides

boats that might be in the range; they are going to be losing out on listeners and effectively

limiting their range to less than their power is. To the best of my knowledge there is nothing

they can do about it, which is unfortunate because there location has rendered some of their

signal basically useless. The signal extending out onto the beaches and oceans does have one

useful aspect to it. With their signal reaching the beach area, many people on the beach can

listen to this station easily. Since WOBM brands itself as “Ocean County’s Home Station”,they

are focused on the area. This is a benefit because when tourists come to the beach they might

need to know the area’s weather or traffic patternsand WOBM can give it to them. Their location

has this benefit but overall I think that their location is a weakness. With about half of their

signal going out to beaches and oceans they really lose a lot of range and potential listeners.

There listenership would also dip in the winter when there is no beach activity. However if they

had a different location for their main antenna it would be possible for them to still hit the beach

area as well as get more listeners inland. Steve Ardolina also realizes that this is a problem as

well stating that the stations greatest liability is the stations “on-air signal” and is trying to find

ways to get around this problem.

Target Audience
According to Steve Ardolina, the program director, their target audience is “Adults 25-54, with a

focus on women in that demographic.” I feel that this demographic is generally represented

pretty well. I also feel that while they say their target audience is 25-54, I think 25 is pretty

generous. It seems to me that their real audience is probably a little older, more in the 30-54

range. They tend to play a lot of classic soft rock like Billy Joel, Pat Benatar, Rod Stewart,
Bryan Adams and Sheryl Crow which shows a definite focus on the older crowd. Most of the

artists they playgenerally fit the older end of the demographic that WOBM is going for. For the

younger listeners, they do feature some more current soft rock artists like John Mayer, Carrie

Underwood and Coldplay. So, I think they do a good job hitting their demographic but they do

make some curious decisions for their audience. For example they have played some Miley

Cyrus on WOBM when I was listening. To the best of my knowledge, Miley Cyrus’ music is

generally focused towards young teenagers and people even younger. I’d guess their reasoning

for playing her is that they are trying to make use of her insane popularity right now. But, I still

feel it is a questionable decision because nearly every other artist does generally play towards

their 25-54 demographic. It seems strange that they would play her because it seems to focus on

a totally different demographic. I don’t know any older people who like Miley Cyrus so playing

her could even alienate some of their viewers or have them change their station temporarily.

Programming
According to Steve Ardolina “all programming decisions are made by me, the program

director, based on current market conditions, music research, and audience response.” I see the

current market trends reflected a lot in what WOBM. They try to capitalize off of American

Idol’s huge success by playing a lot of artists who were once on American Idol. These artists

include David Archuleta, Jordin Sparks, David Cook, Daughtry and Carrie Underwood. These

artists play to the station’s demographic pretty well. Some of them, Daughtry and David Cook,

have a more rock edge to them but, that could play well to their lower age demographic.

American Idol is very popular with the young audience as well but, unlike Miley Cyrus, the

show is also very popular with WOBM’s target audience. Most of these artists also make music

that is considered soft rock and is very accessible for the target audience. Combined with the
popularity and name recognition these artists get from being on American Idol, this is a very

good programming decision for WOBM. This also goes into their idea that they play music

based on audience response. American Idol is hugely popular, it lead this week with a 14.0

rating on Wednesday, and playing artists that were featured on there is a good strategy. Their

playlist features not only American Idol stars but other artists as well. Their sample playlist

includes:

Chasing Cars Snow Patrol

Home Daughtry
Time of My Life David Cook
Will You Still Love Me? Chicago
We Belong Pat Benatar

These were the most recently played songs at the time of my writing this. As you can see

they have a pretty good variety for their listeners. All of these artists fit into the 25-54 age

groups. With artists like Daughtry and David Cook playing more towards the younger, women

demographic and artists like Pat Benatar and Chicago play to the older demographic. Another

aspect of their programming is The Ocean County Breakfast Showfeaturing Shawn Michaels and

Sue Moll. This show is aimed at working people and mothers which would satisfy a lot of their

demographic. Their demographic of 25-54 is generally the group of people that are working in

today’s society. With the focus on mothers, Sue has a blog called Sue’s Mommy Blog,they also

satisfy a lot of women, which is the gender they focus on. In this show they have segments

called “Idol Chatter” which talks about the most recent happenings on American Idol. I think

this is a really good programming idea because not only is American Idol incredibly popular but,

WOBM also plays a lot of American Idol artists. The “Idol Chatter” sections can be used almost

as promotion for when WOBM plays American Idol artists. Also being such a popular show
they can get a lot of listeners that want to hear what their opinions are on the current singers on

American Idol. I think having this segment is a good idea because American Idol has become so

popular that almost every demographic can be interested in it. This then allows them to connect

with their whole 25-54 demographic. Another aspect is that they have interview segments with

people who are relatively famous. For example, on Wednesday they had an interview with Jamie

Luner from ABC’s All My Children. This plays into their older, women demographic that they

are targeting. I think that these interview segments are also a good idea. This particular segment

reaches out to a very specific audience so, it might not be as interesting as the “Idol Chatter” but

it still has a purpose. While the specificity of this segment may turn off some viewers it is still a

good move because it focuses on what I feel is their core audience. Based on the music they tend

to play it seems that the core of their audience would be older women, so having an interview

with an actress on a show for older women would make sense. However, they don’t focus solely

on women during the morning show. There is also some sports talk and callers talking about

sports which would interest male listeners as well. I think it’s important they do this because if

they didn’t they would risk alienating a lot of male listeners. Another program decision is to

change the format to ‘Jersey Shore Flashback Weekend’ at 3 PM on Friday. This definitely

would alienate the younger crowd who don’t have much to flashback to. This decision is purely

for the older audience, such as maybe even 35-54, which I suspect is closer to their real audience

than 25-54. I feel like this is a good idea because after a long week some people just want to

relax to music that they loved when they were younger. The only downside is that this totally

alienates the younger crowd but, I don’t feel that WOBM ever did an excellent job pandering to

the 25 year olds anyway. Another program is Delilah with Delilah Rene which features talk and

music relating to love and relationship problems.

Dayparting
According to Steve Ardolina, “as a rule, we do not daypart the music on 92.7 WOBM.

95% of the music we play runs 24/7. The rare exception might be an extremely down-

tempo song that might not sound ‘right’ during our ‘Jersey Shore Flashback Weekend’

programming.” I’m kind of disappointed with this answer because I was hoping for more

of a description on how they daypart throughout the day. Specifically the morning drive,

midday, evening drive and night dayparts. Fortunately I have been listening to WOBM a

little bit in order to prepare for this project so, I can at least give my opinion on what I

think there dayparting is. In the mornings they have a more talk oriented show with The

Ocean County Breakfast Showfeaturing Shawn Michaels and Sue Moll. This show

features the more discussion and news than one would normally find on WOBM. I think

one reason for this is that this show takes place during the drive time hours, so having

more news and traffic would prepare someone better for the work day. They also have a

lot of talk show aspects which is pretty common for a morning show. They still play

music but it’s not as frequent as during other times. Also, as the day goes on I feel like

WOBM gets a little more youthful. For example, I had heard a Miley Cyrus song around

3 PM. This is in the mid-day day part and is also when some school kids are getting

driven home. This is a good time to get a little more youthful because with kids in the car

the parents might want something they would like. If WOBM, a station that normally

tailors music to them, changes just slightly to incorporate a song or two for kids then the

parents wouldn’t have to worry about changing the channel. This is a smart idea because

then both the target audience and their children can be satisfied by one station. The only

time this daypart changes is on Fridays at 3 PM when the format changes to ‘Jersey Shore

Flashback Weekend’. Another daypart is the late night show Delilah with Delilah Rene.

This show is a nationally syndicated show that is not exclusive to WOBM. It is merely
 picked up by WOBM. But, being their late night daypart it does focus on more adult

theme like relationship problems. This is a hugely successfulshow that is broadcasted all

the way into parts of Canada. The audience that Delilah goes for is women that are 25-54

which just happens to be the same exact audience that WOBM focuses on. Therefore this

is a great advantage for WOBM to carry this program. I feel like this program does a lot

of good for WOBM. The program not only focuses on WOBM’s most important

audience group but carries a name recognition that would attract people to listen to

WOBM. Carry this program and using it as their late night day part was a good idea by

WOBM.

Air Personalities
I think the air personalities at WOBM fit in extremely well with their target audience. I

don’t think WOBM is a personality driven station but the sections where they do feature on air

personalities predominantly, are done extremely well in my opinion. Steve Ardolina says that

their biggest strength is “the people” and I agree. With their audience being generally older

people that have a family they have personalities that are older and some have families. An

excellent example of this would be The Ocean County Breakfast Show featuring Shawn Michaels

and Sue Moll. Both Shawn and Sue are parents which helps their credibility on the air. An

example that I previously mentioned was Sue Moll having Sue’s Mommy Blog. This helps

members of the audience that are also mothers connect with her. In this blog Sue posts normal

things that mothers would go through. Some of her entries include planting flowers with her

daughter for Earth Day, thinking of healthy snacks, among other things. I think this is a good

aspect because it allows for her listeners to make a more personal connection to her, which in

turn will cause the listeners to stay around longer. The other half of the morning team is Shawn

Michaels and he also has ways to connect with the audience. He has his own blog as well called
Shawn’s Shutterblog. In this blog he posts pictures of various places he’s been, with a focus on

South Jersey. A lot of his posts have to do with locations that he has been to in the Ocean County

area. This is a good idea because he is an on air personality for WOBM, a station that focuses on

WOBM. This will also help to foster a relationship because people who see these pictures could

have also visited these locations and build a connection with Shawn. I don’t think his blog is as

targeted to the audience as Sue’s blog is but, it has certain advantages. His blog is more

accessible to everyone. Also, a lot of people listening to the station and reading the blog have

kids so his blog could serve as a place for vacation ideas. During the most important part of on-

air personalities, actually being on the air, they also do a lot of good in developing a certain

relationship with their listeners. They talk to their listeners about normal things that anyone

could talk about. They will talk about sports, such as the Mets recent streak of losses, American

Idol, such as David Archuleta’s performance last night, and since the weather is nice, what

people plan to do on their weekend. These sorts of topics are very simple but, do a lot to

improve the listener and air personality relationship. Once the listeners call up and talk about

these sorts of questions, it becomes a very free flowing conversation. While these topics aren’t

necessarily geared towards their target audience, they certainly involve their target audience. For

example, Shawn mentioned that he would be working on his yard since it was going to be nice

out and one of the listeners called and said they would be doing the same thing. I think it’s

discussions like this that make WOBM’s on air personalities so good. Shawn and Sue aren’t

confrontational which benefits WOBM because a morning talk show geared towards an older

audience would not benefit from confrontational personalities. Other personalities aren’t very

prominent during their shows but, sometimes when introducing songs they will give a small,

interesting detail which adds a little to the station.

Ratings and Audience research
The ratings for WOBM are fairly weak. In the Spring 08 ratings WOBM had a rating of

3.5 and in the Fall 08 ratings they had a 2.6. This plays into my idea mentioned in the technical

facilities section that the ratings would drop in the Fall and Winter ratings because less people

would be in the beach area. Unfortunately, there is nothing WOBM can really do about the

location of their broadcasts. They are trying to change that by going online, which I will discuss

in the future section. I had originally thought that some of their ratings problems occur from

their soft rock format. However one station, WWZY had ratings of 5.3 and 6.0 in the Spring 08

ratings and Fall 08 ratings. So, now I feel that their location hurts them as well as the fact that

there are other soft rock/adult contemporary stations in the area competing with them.

According to Steve Ardolina “periodically, we do music research. This involves gathering a

group of people who fit our target demographic and playing music ‘Hooks’ for them. We then

gauge their reaction to these songs electronically & build our music playlist based on their

responses.” From my experience with NJ 101.5 this seems to be the standard practice of music

research.

News
The news WOBM choosesto run is pretty good at hitting home with their listeners. I

think their news sections work out pretty well. For example their main news story was about

Governor Corzine’s idea to have a worker furlough and the outrage surrounding it. This is

becoming a pretty big deal in New Jersey and I thought it was a good idea to run that as their

main story. This is also important for the audience that is primarily listening to WOBM. Their

target age group, 25-54, has the possibility to be the actual people who are in danger of being

furloughed. Other news segments were relating to the Ocean County and Toms River area.
Examples of these news segments were the story of a man who recently died after hitting a

telephone pole, an arrest for growing and distributing marijuana, and an increase in the amount

of law enforcement in the area. These news pieces are a little more specified to the area that

WOBM focuses on. Also their target age group would also be interested in learning about the

deaths and arrests that are happening in their own community. These news pieces don’t have

much focus on New Jersey in general but, I don’t see that as a big deal because WOBM doesn’t

have the range to get all of New Jersey, so they focus on their core audience.

Advertisers
One ad that stood out to me was this ad for a product called ‘Hydroxatone’. This ad

featured some of the worst dialogue ever seen in a radio commercial. It also featured a very

thinly veiled message that many husbands would not be totally satisfied with their wives or find

them very attractive anymore unless they took this product. This product is also narrated by

these men, wishing their wives would use Hydroxatone.With all of this said it is still hard to

pinpoint whether this ad is right for WOBM. The product itself, an anti-aging compound, would

be attractive to an older, women focused audience but, the actual way the product is pitched

ultimately undermines everything. This product is perfect for an aging group especially in

today’s society where trying to look young is a desire that quite a few people have. An ad

targeting the self-esteem of women and trying to get them to buy this product or face an

unsatisfied husband is a truly terrible way to go about it. Marketing the product to a

demographic of aging women, then proceeding to insult the attractiveness of these women unless

they buy this product could be considered a poor business model at best. I feel that the product

itself could be useful and if people can look past the ad and focus on the actual potential of this

anti-aging product it could be successful. I feel like a good amount of people would not be

moved by this ad so much that it would turn them away from the product if they were going to
buy it. However, I can’t imagine anyone being convinced to buy the product solely from this

advertisement. I could also see some women being turned away from this product if they were

on the fence about it. Overall the idea of marketing an anti-aging product to this demographic

was smart but the execution was horrible. WOBM also feature more sensible commercials like

car insurance from Essurance. This commercial is sold like anyone would expect a normal

commercial to be sold. It doesn’t throw thinly veiled insults at the possible consumer and gives

good information about the product. This commercial is targeted to the correct audience and

executed well. This commercial is selling car insurance, which is very important. I feel that this

commercial has some added effectiveness because a lot of people listen to the radio in their car

and when they hear this ad it might remind them that they need better car insurance. The ad also

gives out the information that would make it easy for someone to remember. For example, the

spell out essurance to make sure the listener gets it. I feel that this ad expertly gets WOBM’s

target audience. The 25-54 age groups WOBM tries to target would be the people that are

usually in the market for car insurance. Also, these people are going to be driving in their cars to

work and could easily hear this ad and have the ability to purchase the car insurance for

themselves. If this ad was marketed to a younger audience it wouldn’t be as effective because

some of the young people driving the cars might not even be paying for the car insurance. The

audience that WOBM attracts is perfect for a car insurance advertisement. Overall I feel that

WOBM’s advertising targets the right audience. The only problem is that at times these ad’s

tactics can be questionable.

Promotions and Contests

WOBM promotes itself both on and off the air. Their on air promotions for themselves

include branding themselves as “Ocean County’s Hometown Station” and promoting their later

programs. I saw this done when I was listening to their morning show The Ocean County
Breakfast Show. During this show they were promoting their late night personality, Delilah, as a

great place for relaxation and love songs. They also promoted their Friday 3 PM ‘Jersey Shore

Flashback Weekend’ where they would play older songs. These types of promotions are

designed to help keep their audience around or to have them tune in at these times to hear what is

going to happen at these times. They also serve as a reminder and strengthen their station as a

whole by talking about how relaxing and personable Delilah is, for example. Their off-air

promotions consist of promoting the station when some on air personalities visit certain places.

For example Shawn Michaels and Sue Moll went to a St. Patrick’s Day parade in Seaside

Heights and brought a car with the WOBM logo to the parade. This is designed to expand their

listenership because if they get their name out there more people will be willing to give them a

listen and may become more permanent listeners.

WOBM runs a lot of contests to promote themselves and local businesseson their

morning show. These promotions are the ‘Morning Coffee Contest’ which runs at 6:15 and 8:15

AM. In the first ‘Morning Coffee Contest’ the prize is an office bagel platter to the winner. The

prize isn’t much but it fits in with not only the target audience but the time its run as well. The

contest is run early in the morning when a lot of people are getting ready to go to work so the

prize of bagels for your whole office is pretty nice. This contest would fall on deaf ears for some

of the listeners that either work at a place that doesn’t have an office environment or stay at

home to tend with kids. With the demographic that WOBM has it is very possible that there are

men or women that are staying home to take care of their children. Since WOBM is has a focus

towards women that increases the likelihood that an important part of their demographic might

not care for this contest. On the other had there is a large percentage of their demographic that

would be interested in this contest. There are many men and women who work in offices that

listen to WOBM. The age demographic of 25-54 would be considered by many to be the main
working class of America. Therefore this contest would be a good one because many of these

people would work in offices and a free bagel platter would be a very nice incentive to listen and

call in to WOBM. The 8:15 variety of their ‘Morning Coffee Contest’ features a $50 gift card to

The Bra & Girdle Factory. I feel that this contest is significantly worse than the office bagel

platter. This contest if focused on only a very specific section of their audience, women. Men

would have no desire to participate in this contest other than to give their prize to the wife,

girlfriend or other significant female other. This would limit the interest in this contest

significantly. Another problem with this contest is the specific nature of the prize. With the

bagel contest it provides something that would benefit the workplace and many people in it. A

gift card that allows someone to go out and buy bras and girdles is very limiting. In order for

women to want to participate in this contest they would also need to want a new bra or girdle. I

feel like this would be another factor that limits the interest and participation in this contest. I

feel like the bagel platter contest would be able to capture their target audience’s attention much

better than this one. Another contest they run is called ‘Dinner & a Movie” where the prize is a

family four pack of tickets to the movies ‘State of Play’ and ‘17 Again’ plus a $50 gift card to

Fusiello’s Butcher & Deli. I feel like this contest is better than the bra and girdle contest by a lot

and is about on the same level as the office bagel platter. This contest would attract people

because the prize is much better than the previous two contests. This contest is definitely aimed

towards listeners that have families. I feel that that would be most of their listeners because it is

my opinion that WOBM’s core listenership is closer to 30-54 than 25-54. A lot of people in the

age group of 30-54 have a family so even though basically limiting this contest to families would

seem restricting; I feel that it is really not. This contest also features two movies that offer a

different experience for each group. The movie ‘State of Play’ is darker and would not really be

the best choice to take younger children to see. This would normally be seen as a problem but
the second movie ’17 Again’ is geared much more to a younger audience. Starring Zac Efron,

the star of other movies such as High School Musical, this movie is something that the younger

kids would want to see. So, no matter age the children of the WOBM listeners are this package

includes a movie for them. I think this is a good idea because it captures the greatest number of

potential listeners. According to our textbook, Media Programming, these contests can be an

important part of promoting the station because “they can build the station’s share of audience if

they are constructed to extend a listener’s time spent with the station.”

Personnel
WOBM has about 25 people working for it. These people include their 10 on air

personalities, their 4 news anchors and other people who answer phones and work for

production. I feel like that is a healthy number of people for a radio station. These people aren’t

in there with each other all the time, some on-air personalities are only there for weekends, so it

keeps WOBM running smooth.

Salaries
The average yearly salary for someone entering the field hoping to be a radio show host

would be $31,868. The average hourly wage would then be $9.70. I couldn’t get an answer

from WOBM so these numbers are simply averages from the website www.payscale.com. I’m

kind of disappointed that these numbers are low. This just shows that some sacrifices need to be

made in order to succeed in this industry. One of these sacrifices would be accepting relatively

low pay in order to get your foot in the door.

Competition
WOBM has some competition in Ocean County area as far as other radio stations go. I

think that there main competition is a station called WJRZ 101.1. This station broadcasts in the
Monmouth-Ocean County area and overlaps with WOBM’s Toms River-Ocean County focus.

On the two attached coverage maps it is pretty obvious that they share the same areas of

coverage. The only difference is that WOBM reaches a little more north into Brick Township

while WJRZ reaches a little south of Brick Township. There antenna statistics are relatively

similar as well. For WOBM they have an effective radiated power of 1.4 while WJZR has and

effective radiated power of 1.7. WOBM’s antenna is 149 meters above ground level while

WJRZ’s antenna is 143 meters above ground level. These antennas are both relatively similar

which gives them a good opportunity to compete with each other. They also play similar music

as each other. WJRZ is classified as an oldies/classic hits while WOBM is soft rock/soft adult

contemporary. These two genres are very close to each other and have many overlapping artists.

These artists include the likes of Bruce Springsteen and Eric Clapton. These radio stations

would therefore compete for a lot of advertisers as well. Since both of them are rather similar in

music and location it would be expected that they both focus on women who are 25-54. I

suspect that much like WOBM, WJRZ’s real audience is probably a little older than 25-54 and in

this case maybe even a little older than WOBM’s audience. For the most recent fall ratings

WOBM-FM is ahead of WJRZ 2.6 to 1.9. Neither of these numbers are very impressive to tell

the truth. Both these numbers are a rather steep drop from their Spring 08 numbers where WJRZ

was ahead of WOBM-FM 4.1 to 3.5. These numbers were a little better but it appears that both

of these radio stations suffered in the Fall 08 ratings. Despite the drop off WOBM secured the

lead on WJRZ which will grant them a lot more advertising opportunities than WJRZ. Also, in

these bad economic times it is possible that advertisers would only pick one of these stations, and

they would pick WOBM because of their higher ratings. Situations like these show how

important ratings can be in the competition between similar stations like WOBM and WJRZ.

Greatest Asset
 Their greatest asset according to Steve Ardolina is “people. 92.7 WOBM is lucky to have

a successful morning show, which "Connects" to the audience and our community. WOBM has

built its' legacy on serving the communities of Toms River & Ocean County, and our morning

show & news department are an extension of that.” I can agree that the people are one of their

greatest assets. I think, like Mr. Ardolina said, that their morning crew is their absolute biggest

advantage. Shawn and Sue are not only on the radio, they are out in the community and they

both run blogs that can relate to the community and the all important target demographic. I feel

like another advantage is their location. The location can also be seen as a liability, but being

focused on Ocean County has some advantages. I had previously mentioned in this paper that

their location allows them to get the specific news of that area out to tourists and they see a

ratings boost during heavy tourist times. This has too many liabilities to be a huge advantage but

there are some positives.

Greatest Liability
“Like any radio station, our liability is actually our on-air signal, which limits us to a

coverage area of approximately 30 miles from Toms River (In all directions). However, in this

world of "New Media", those obstacles are being overcome with things like Internet & Mobile

Streaming. Currently, you can listen to 92.7 WOBM on our website (wobm.com) and on the I-

Phone and I-Pod touch. (More mobile devices will be added in the coming months), which

extends our reach worldwide,” Steve Ardolina on the liability of WOBM. I agree with him that

the liability is their signal strength. This goes hand in hand with what I feel is another major

liability, the location of their radio station. Even though I listed it as an advantage, I feel that the

station’s location is their biggest liability. They lose a lot of their signal into the sea which

accounts in some part for their weaker ratings. The station also recognizes this as a liability

which has caused them to go and look for ways to get their signal out to more people. Part of
their technological advancements is simply because it is a logical thing to do in order to compete.

But, doing this will help WOBM more than it will help inland stations because there entrance

into the online world will help soften the blow of their poor positioning.

Future
From Mr. Ardolina’s answer to the liability question it appears that he feels that at least

part of radio’s future will see it getting helped by the internet. With WOBM using online

streaming and the ability to listen to the radio on your iPhone they appear to believe that the futer

of radio will involve internet. Also, to get the word out about WOBM they have a Facebook

group. I would agree that at least part of radio’s future is going to be on the internet. The whole

world has been becoming so much smaller with the help of the internet; radio could definitely

use this effect to help them. With the internet it is possible for radio to expand beyond the signal

and reach people that it has never reached before. However, with the local quality that radio and

a station like WOBM have, I don’t think radio can truly harness all of the internet’s power. For

example, not many people in California would be interested to hear about the news that is

important to Ocean County, New Jersey. If people in California wanted to listen to soft rock they

would pick one of their own local stations. I feel that problems like this will always plague radio

and will ultimately keep it confined to what it is currently. I actually think that a station like

WOBM is in more trouble than a talk station like NJ 101.5. I think talk is more secure because

of the uniqueness of the on-air personalities can’t be easily replaced. There are so many ways to

listen to music in today’s society, iPod’s in cars, CD’s, music on cell phones, etc, that WOBM

has some issues on the horizon. Their ratings were already dropping which is why I feel like

they should try to hit the cutting edge of technology. Even thought Twitter might be a little too

young for their age group I feel like WOBM should open a Twitter account. A lot of business

type people use Twitter and it could help WOBM in the long run. They could even use Twitter
for contests, upcoming songs and other promotional things just for the fans that are interested in

Twitter. Once again, they run the risk of getting too young but, I know quite a few middle-aged

people who use Twitter and lots of corporations are using Twitter so it would be a good risk for

WOBM and any other radio station. In conclusion, I feel that the internet will play a big part in

radio’s future.

Works Cited and Other Notes

http://www.wobm.com/dj-shawn-sue.html -the WOBM morning show.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WOBM-FM - basic information

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WJRZ-FM - basic information

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?list=0&facid=31078 – WJRZ station statistics

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/FMTV-service-area?x=FM1202602.html – WJRZ coverage map.

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?list=0&facid=59508 – WOBM station statistics

http://www.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/FMTV-service-area?x=FM122900.html – WOBM coverage map

http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Radio_Show_Host/Hourly_Rate - average pay rate.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delilah_Rene - basic information

http://www1.arbitron.com/tlr/public/report.do - ratings for WOBM and WJRZ

http://www.hydroxatone.com – Hydroxatone research

http://tvlistings.zap2it.com/ratings/weekly.html - American Idol rating info

www.facebook.com – looked up WOBM’s facebook information

Eastman, Susan Tyler and Douglass A. Ferguson. Media Programming: Strategies & Practices.

2009. Pg 364

Steve Ardolina is the program director for WOBM. He is the one who responded to my e-mail

questions. The business number for WOBM, that I used, is (732) 269-0927. His e-mail is

steve.ardolina@mrgnj.com. All quotes came from his e-mail responses.