KC Confidential

One of Kansas City’s most fleeting, yet wildly profitable radio formats appears to have gone homeless…

For years adult contemporary stations Star 102 and KUDL FM duked it out for the hearts and ears of lovers of 24/7 Christmas music. Star led the way under former main man Jon Zellner. Entercom followed on KUDL, resulting in year after year of Christmas music warfare between the stations.

And while the day after Thanksgiving was good enough to start, competition between the stations resulted in earlier and earlier launch dates for the holiday music format. The idea being that whoever got there first would lock in more listeners.

Four years ago on Halloween day I bade readers both Trick or Treat and Happy Thanksgiving.

"Enjoy those fleeting holiday sentiments while you can, because any second the Christmas Music Elves at KUDL-FM and Star 102 may break out the holiday cheer in the form of 24/7 Santa songs," I warned. "Last year KUDL led off the yule parade the day after Halloween. Star 102 held off for a couple of weeks and paid the price. Both stations fared well, but KUDL was the clear ratings winner."

However, times have changed…

For the first time since the Christmas Music Wars began the warring stations are no more.

Both Star 102 and KUDL are history. Wilks Broadcasting put Star out to pasture last year and ressurected it as an adult alternative station that goes by Alice. Entercom followed, pulling the plug on KUDL this spring, using its FM signal to simulcast NewsRadio KMBZ.

"What’s going to happen to Christmas music," wonders former Entercom head Bob Zuroweste. "Who the hell is gonna do Christmas music?"

Good question. Here are a few of the options…

KUDL’s out, unless Entercom decides to slap Santa suits on Mike Shanin and Scott Parks and have ’em wail away like Captain Kirk. So cross that off the list of possibilities.

Alice could happen, but the station’s still trying to carve out its new identity and a couple of months of Jingle Bell Rock might be a bit much for its theoretically hipper listeners. Unless, of course, Cumulus competitor Jack FM decides to enter the fray. Then they’d both totally make sense.

And clearly there’s a ton of dough on the table for the station that pulls off the Christmas coup.

Another candidate; 94.9 KCMO, the station formerly known as "Oldies."

"Why wouldn’t they do it?" asks one radio insider. "It’s an older demo and they could sell the shit out of it."

Another possibility?

"I’ve heard that KFKF is gonna do it," the insider says.

And of course, there’s always KUDL’s successor, The Point 99.7 FM.

While The Point is looking for younger listeners, it doubtless could benefit from the Christmas music sweet spot of women listeners ages 35 to 54.

So here’s the bottom line, Christmas music lovers:

"There’s a huge listenership for Christmas music," Zuroweste says. "One out of five people in Kansas City listened to Christmas music on the radio last year and here we are today and we don’t even know who’s going to play it. If I was going to to be playing Christmas music, I’d be out selling it right now. We used to start selling it on KUDL in August."

One thing’s for sure; whichever station decides to go Xmas will telegraph its holiday punch once it unleashes its sales staff. Then we’ll find out which if any station follows.

Let the caroling begin…

It’s time now for KC’s top crowd counter Gary Evert to weigh in on the Kauffman Center‘s haltingly high attendence figure…

That after people no less illustrious than one of the Star‘s most respected (now laid off) entertainment writers and the tech who helped produce the event scoffed at the notion of 55,000 bouncing in and out of the PAC’s rainy Sunday afternoon public opening.

To be fair, anonymous commenters have supported the PAC guesstimate, suggesting anecdotally that a count might have been made. However that flies in the face of the reported fact that the "estimate of 55,000 was based on the assumption that the building could only accommodate 5,000 at a time. If that number ‘turned over’ 10 times, then total attendance would be 50,000."

In other words, by the PAC’s own accounting of things, it was a guesstimate not an actual count.

Worse yet, the guesstimate was provided to the newspaper in "midafternoon" for an event that only started at 11 a.m. and ended around 6 p.m. And later Kauffman honcho Jane Chu upped her guess by another 5,000.

So the PAC was already claiming 50,000 attendees not much more than halfway into the event. Refuting a suggestion the people might have been counted as they entered The Little K.

For 55,000 to have come, the PAC would have had to turn its capacity 16 times in seven hours (nearly twice an hour)

Evert didn’t make it to the event, but applied logic and his well-documented experience at counting the Plaza Lights crowds and bulbs.

"My thought would be that it was probably overstated," he says of the PAC’s magic number.

The odds of it being correct: "Astronomically small," Evert says. "But I mean, it made a nice number."

Rather than merely dismissing Chu’s estimate, Evert points to the stats.

"That’s nearly 8,000 people an hour," he says. "And given that there was entertainment, etc. if the average length of the stay was 20 minutes – and I think that’s low – you would have to turn that over at a rate of 2,600 people every 20 minutes. So they had to turn their entire capacity over every 40 minutes and that would be like 5th Avenue on New Year’s Eve."

The logistics of such a feat…

"Just the sheer number of people would slow down the efficiency with which they could turn the crowd," Evert explains. "The logistics of handling a crowd of that size in such a complex space seems like a statistical impossibility."

As for why the PAC would embrace such an optimistic figure in the first place, "In my experience no crowd has ever been underestimated," Evert quips.

Photographs courtesy of Reggie Banks, Sr. and Blackberry Castle Photography

Longtime KCC readers know I’ve been an admirer and staunch defender of Groupon from the get-go…

When some of you guys zeroed in on the discounting – saying it cheapens the seller’s products – I pointed to the marketing benefits. I quoted local restaurant and nightclub owners that had done well with Groupon and vowed to continue to party with the daily dealmaker.

People like Jardine’s owner Beena Raja (who’s on her third last name in the past year). Jardine’s, like others, turned its back on the local newspaper’s trusty-but-rusty Star Dining Card and found nirvana instead in Groupon’s mass email blasts.

"Let me tell you, Groupon has a solid clentele, they are up to 350,000 people locally now," Raja told me last March. "And these people are no Star Card people – these are people who will spend money and I’ve seen it. They’re younger, hipper, they know how to tip and they make reservations. I have nothing but positive things to say about Groupon."

That was then…

Today Groupon’s email list for KC today is reportedly nearly 700,000 strong but Raja’s washing her hands of it.

"I’ve changed my mind," she says. "I don’t think I’ll do it again."

Here’s why…

"The first Groupon I did was about 1,600 deals and the second one I did was 1,100, I believe," Raja says. "But this last time the type of people we got were not the same as the first time. They didn’t tip the servers. They were always complaining and trying to match their checks to the penny and not spend any more than the Groupon was for. And they were arguing about the policy and telling us we must honor it. We had a lot of complaints."

Part of the problem being restaurants like Jardine’s mostly benefit when customers come in stay and enjoy the jazz.

Unfortunately, that often wasn’t the case.

"They would come in and want their food to go instead of staying, enjoying the music and having a drink," Raja says. "You know, the whole ambiance we’re trying to sell. I think the quality (of Groupon) is gone. It’s more about the quantity now."

Therein lies the problem…

When Groupon first hit KC, early adopters were younger, hipper, Web wise sorts. The kind of clientel smaller boutiques like Jardine’s are totally out to reach. But as it grew from 50,000 to 100,000 to 400,000 and to its now gargantuan proportions, the hipness factor appears to have been dilluted by the cheapskate factor.

"They’re not cool and hip anymore," Raja says. "They used to be cool and hip. Just the whole attitude and the dynamics of the people who buy Groupons has changed. They just came in and yakked away during shows. And a lot of the first Groupon people were my regulars who I didn’t have to discount, so I wasn’t really gaining any new customers.

"The other people who came in didn’t care about jazz or anything. They just wanted the food and if I’d box it up for them, they’d take it with them. They’re not going to come back. Maybe 10 percent will come back. I mean, that’s a lot of money to give away to get just 10 percent back."

The $64 million question: How happy will the KC Symphony be when a buncha yahoos and hoo hahs show up – cellphones blaring away – mostly because they saved 51 percent on tickets to its Christmas Festival?

Raja’s bottom line: "You have to know what works for you and what doesn’t. And right now Groupon definitely doesn’t work for me."

Why ruin a totally cool event with fraudulent crowd counts?

Simply said, there’s no effing way the new, 3.400 seat Kauffman Performing Arts Center hosted 55,000 people at its open house Sunday.

I mean, think about it.

That’s nearly double the size of the Plaza Lighting Ceremony. More people than attend sold out Royals games, which have acres of parking and dozens of police and staff to manage and control the traffic and crowds.

All of that said, here’s what the Star’s Robert Truseell reported:

"Nobody can know with certainty how many people actually walked through the center Sunday, but an estimate of 55,000 was based on the assumption that the building could only accommodate 5,000 at a time. If that number ‘turned over’ 10 times, then total attendance would be 50,000, which was the official estimate by midafternoon. Later, (Kauffman CEO Jane Chu) upped the figure to 55,000."

Hold it right there…

A woman with "bachelors and masters degrees in piano performance, music education, and piano pedagogy"  is suddenly a considered expert in crowd counting? A statistician, if you will.

Even though by her own explanation she didn’t even attempt to count the crowd – undoubtedly because she was a little busy helping oversee an extremely large event with several entertainers on multiple stages.

Instead, Chu ventured a guess and the Star "reported" it.

Now here’s how the story gets retold "around the campfire."

Even though Trussell’s reporting on Chu’s estimate was bogus, he did at least attempt to cover his ass somewhat by saying up front in the story that the number was only "thousands," before later laying out Chu’s whacky "estimate."

That unfortunately didn’t prevent St. Louis Dispatch classical music critic Sarah Bryan Miller from re-reporting Chu’s estimate while incorrectly attributing it to Trussell.

"According to an article by Robert Trussell in today’s Kansas City Star, an estimated 55,000 people came downtown to the Kauffman on a rainy day, some waiting as long as 90 minutes to get in," Miller writes.

See how the game is played – how history sometimes get miswritten?

Now I’m going to give you a crowd estimate by someone in the entertainment biz in Kansas City with a ton of experience both working at and producing large events at area venues. An individual who spent the entire day Sunday at the PAC on the payroll helping produce the event:

"It was a very impressive crowd, no doubt. But realistically, I would say the size of the crowd was closer to 20,000 people, not 55,000 – no way. If they really wanted to know the crowd size, why didn’t they just count the people at the door. There were only three entrances, it would have been easy."

Amen.

I will add, you can bet what’s left of the remaining value of your Chiefs season tix, they’ll be counting people at those turnstiles for the paid events.

OK Cliffy, you asked for it, now you’re gonna get it…

 I’m not talking Craig Glazer. I’m not gonna punch anybody’s lights out, Just making good on my pledge to publish the pic I took several years back of Watson’s Girl Jennifer Eichler and then Star editor Mark Zieman.

It was taken when the owners of Watson’s (now Family Leisure) strode through town calling on advertisers – the Star being one – and I hijacked the Watson’s Girl for a photo shoot. The Star photographer who got to do the honors still worships at my altar for bestowing on him the savory task.

Far less thrilled was Zieman, who posed uncomfortably (and looking a little pudgy) when I led Jennifer to his office while giving her a tour of the newsroom and asked them to pose. Yes, it was my idea alone. Nothing sinister, mind you. I’d have done the same thing had she been standing by that statue of Superman in Metropolis, Illinois.

I digress…

I’ll tell you this much, Zieman was none too pleased about his 15 minutes of fame with the hot tub / above ground swimming pool hottie. He made a point of dressing me down later, advising me of his distaste for impromtu photo shoots.

Must say, I was a little surprised.

Do you know how many red-bloooded American boys would have dropped to their knees and thanked their lucky stars for a chance to lay hands on the Watson’s Girl back then? Countless. Or in the words of Mastercard, priceless!

Of course, that was long before Jennifer married, had kids, divorced and went slutty with her online podcasts this summer.

Anyway, here it is. Go ahead and nail it to your locker door or whatever – no need to thank me. Except for Cliffy, you owe me, dude.