What’s Up at the Loop (Part 2)
Dave Logan helped put WLUP FM on the air: Back in 1979, as an afternoon jock and production manager, he created the new aural logo when WSDM (“smack dab in the middle”) became a new beast called the Loop. Logan was with the station through its early 80s heyday, when its “kick-ass rock ‘n’ roll” format rolled up some of the highest ratings ever achieved by a rock radio station. Then the two went their separate ways: the Loop wound up reinventing itself as a powerful, personality-driven “album-oriented” rocker–one that seemed unassailable ratingswise as recently as last year–while Logan hooked up with radio consultant Lee Abrams, progenitor of the rigid but extraordinarily successful “Superstars” AOR format. (The basic idea: play Boston, Journey, and Huey Lewis records until entire communities committed mass suicide. Even Abrams now concedes he was just about single-handedly responsible for just about ruining American rock ‘n’ roll radio in the 1980s.) Now, ironically enough, Logan’s back at the Loop–brought in to rescue the station’s sagging Arbitrons.
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As we noted last week, the Loop has lost its control of rock radio listeners in Chicago; indeed, caught in the pincerlike grip of the Blaze’s appeal to hard-rock hellions and WXRT’s wholesale pillaging of the more sophisticated adult demographic, the Loop is running a poor third. What’s Dave Logan going to do?
On the other hand, there’s no reason to think that the Loop will actually become a good radio station, and lacking that it might be tough to pull away listeners won over by ‘XRT’s superior programming and DJs and remarkably sophisticated promotional campaign. WXRT has its problems, but when you tune from it to the Loop and the first thing you hear is a commercial like, “Guys, if you’re searching for the best-looking ladies in the Chicagoland area, you’ll find them at Bogey’s, 555 E. Dundee Road in Palatine,” well, it’s enough to make you tune right back. The Loop isn’t in trouble, of course: with Steve Dahl in the mornings, and draws like Jonathon Brandmeier and Howard Stern at its AM sister, the company’s going to make money for the foreseeable future, and given enough promotional support Logan may be able to boost the ratings a few notches no matter what. But to get back on top, Logan has to answer one big question: Why should people who care about music listen to a station that’s never cared about them?
