In early June, the nation’s capital will be the home of Canada’s first all-blues format radio station, DAWG FM, located at 101.9 FM and owned by Torres Media.
‘The primary demographic is adult 25-to-54, and it’s fairly evenly split between male and female, and there’s a secondary demographic of young females 18 to 24,’ station president Frank Torres tells MiC.
Advertising and sponsorship opportunities for the new station include feature event sponsorships and traditional advertising, he says.
‘There are feature sponsorships, features within feature sponsor events, and there is a summer event that we’re doing that will have a title sponsor as well,’ says Torres, also a principal of SkyWords Traffic Network, which provides real-time traffic reports to radio and television stations and websites from coast-to-coast.
Torres said the decision to go all-blues is one that reflected market research.
‘We looked at the Ottawa market for which types of music formats were under-represented or not served, ‘ Torres tells MiC. ‘Ottawa’s a huge, huge blues town with one of the largest blues festivals – Bluesfest – but there are no blues stations whatsoever.
‘So we did some market research, and it came back very positive for the market to sustain an all-blues station.’
Torres also says he’s been very encouraged by the response of advertisers to this previously untested format.
‘It’s somewhat overwhelming,’ says Torres. ‘We have a lot of advertisers that have said basically that the music scene on FM radio in Ottawa is not all what it’s cracked up to be, so they shy away from it. We’ve had a lot of people tell us this is what will bring them back to radio.
‘It’s one of these, ‘if you build it, they will come,’ scenarios, but we’ve actually signed a significant number of deals already.’
There will also be a heavy promotional push in and around the station’s launch, says Torres, although he declined to comment on what advertisers were currently on board.
‘We have a whole bunch of your standard live-to-airs and event types of promotions that we’ll be running throughout the summer,’ he reveals. The station currently has a website in place, and an active Facebook brand page as well.
Although the DAWG may have a lot to prove, Torres insists his organization is up to the challenge.
‘It’s a full-service radio station, and our background is marketing, so we’re going to change the rules on how you market radio stations in Ottawa.’
