We noticed that immediately after the latest Arbitron rankings were released a couple of weeks ago, that the New York Chill radio station, WQCD 101.9FM, immediately went into plan B to hopefully increase their audience share and to boost ratings down the road. It was bad news for WQCD as their ratings dropped dramatically from a 3.4 in the Fall Arbitron to a 2.6 for the Winter Arbitron survey. Plan B of course means adding much more "familiar" tracks into rotation such as What’s Love Got To Do With It by Tina Turner, Sweet Thing and Ain’t Nobody by Rufus and Chaka Khan, Through The Fire by Chaka Khan, Careless Whisper by George Michael, The Closer I Get To You by Roberta Flack and Donny Hathaway, Forget-Me-Nots by Patrice Rushen, Lowdown by Boz Scaggs, I Can’t Go For That by Daryl Hall and John Oates, Cruisin' by Smokey Robinson, Higher Love by Steve Winwood, Unbreak My Heart and Another Sad Love Song by Toni Braxton, and Rise by Herb Alpert. We will continue to monitor WQCD to see how they decide to counter their (hopefully) short-term ratings decline. Let’s hope that the New York market fully embraces this smooth jazz and chill hybrid format so that it can spread to other radio stations around the country. If you are interested in viewing the full WQCD playlist, you can check our archives from January 2005, where we posted their entire 400-plus-song playlist (at that time).
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