Mega 98.3...  #1  Station in Argentina! From Worst to First in 5 weeks. In June, 2000, IBOPE Argentina, S. A.  released the ratings for the month of May in Buenos Aires (population:15,000,000) and the #1 station in persons 20-54 is Mega 98.3 with a 15.03 share. In April, the station had less than a 2 share. Mega made its debut on April 24, 2000 at 1 PM, only 6 and a half days before the May IBOPE survey began! In the three-month averages for May-July, Mega had a 17 share, #1 by a wide margin in this huge market with over 30 licensed radio stations and as many as 50 quasi-official "local stations" and outright pirate operations. (The #2 station managed a low 11 share) Displacing all other stations, Mega made the strongest and fastest debut in the history of Argentine radio. After two years, it remains firmly #1 Mega is now #1 in 20-54 in every significant daypart

Mega shares this building in the Palermo section of Buenos Aires with Radio 10, the city's #1 AM station. Here we can see the Radio 10 AM studio which faces the street so listeners can drive by and watch the popular announcers do their talk shows. Radio 10 is Argentina's most powerful AM commercial station, with 100,000 watts on 710 AM. In about 2 years on the air, it has achieved total dominance among a field of over 10 AM talk stations thanks to the guidance of founder and morning host Daniel Hadad.

 

At entrance to Mega and Radio 10 studios in Buenos Aires.

 

Andy Bloom, General Manager, and David Gleason, Consultant, Votionis, S.A., celebrate the inauguration of Mega 98.3 at 1 PM on Monday, April 24, 2000.  Mega was the first 100% "Rock en Español" station in the world, and features only songs by Argentina's many rock artists, covering 33 years of Rock Nacional.

 

Click on Guitar Player to listen to Mega.

 

Press Comments Mega went on the air April 24th of 2000. It was an instant success. Here are some interesting comments form the local press, including what leading daily Clarín said about Mega on July 28, 2000. "The Sun of National Rock Shines Again" "With the success of Mega FM and the comeback of Sui Generis, national rock again becomes a musical emblem. Nostalgia takes over again, like in the time of the Malvinas War and during the boom years of "Tango Feroz." It's just that now, our native rock has become the new folk music that unites the family and where anything goes, whether an early rock 'n roll song or a ballad. What's behind the unanimous success of Mega and to what extent can the myths and the dinosaurs return to the battle? An American company discovered that Argentines like national rock! First was the Malvinas War, when music in English was prohibited. Then the Tango Feroz boom brought back the mythical Cave. Now FM Mega has made national rock in a new form of folk music for the year 2000. Incredible!! It's certainly happened to you: you get on a bus, and you hear "Imágines Paganas" and then you hear "La Balsa." You get off and the sound of "Sin Documentos" continues from the radio in a newspaper stand, and at the laundry, it's the Enanitos Verdes' turn, and you hear it echoed from several taxis waiting for the light to turn green. In Buenos Aires, Argentine Rock is part of the weather, (surrounding us) like air. One thing is responsible: the new FM Mega 98.3 which, since April 23, has not stopped broadcasting national rock, nothing but national rock, 24 hours a day. Its three slogans tell us clearly what this is all about: "Pure National Rock," "More Music, Less Talk, " and "The first Station in Your Language." It's a fact that Mega is now rated first in the group of listeners between 20 and 50 years of age, and second in the 12-20 target. If any musical phenomenon is remembered form this year, otherwise devoid of surprises, it's the canonization of the so-called National Rock as another banner to be stored in the case that displays the flags of the Tango and our Folkloric music. Messages (you hear on the) radio like, "I love the station. I'm listening with my father and I'd like you to play the new La Renga song again." all talk about a year 200 kind of rock that is easy to listen to and has no generational split on the horizon. "The project is to make the Mega brand so identified with national rock that it is like the way Gillette is identified with razor blades," says Guillermo Figueroa, the Program Director of the FM station. Last Sunday, in the Viva supplement (In Clarín), Alejandro Lerner pointed out the fundamental paradox in this boom of nationalism: "it had to be an American company that came, did a market analysis and said that they had to play Argentine music." The company is called Emmis (Truth in Hebrew) and is an international multimedia company that has stations in the US since the 70's and now has moved into Hungary and Argentina by buying the package of Radio 10 and FM News (Today Mega). So, Mega programs more than 1,000 songs over and over, the same songs that were selected by 100 persons. In a previous test, over 67% of the public indicated national rock as their favorite style among 16 possible options, among which were also tango, Latin music and tropical. According to Maximiliano Ré, Music Director of Mega, the idea is to have each hour be a parade of all kinds and styles that exist in national rock. Even if La Renga back-to back with César Banana Puerredon (sound) on the sweet and sour side. The case of (rock band) La Renga is typical: the group prereleased to Mega its new single "La vida, Las Mismas Calles" from its long and much awaited new record. "The company decided it, and since it's a station that only plays national rock, it seemed good to us." explained Si Gaby, the manager of the group. You'd have to take into account that the station is rabidly number one and does not work with the traditional record company arrangements. "Our policy is not to be held prisoner to the record company deals, because we don't like announcers who say bitchy things about the music they have to play, like the ones on Rock & Pop, for example." The competition, of course, is listening: Metro, recently acquired by Rock & Pop, expects a future filled with local rock and FM Supernova just inaugurated a daily strip program dedicated to local music.

 

LUNA.COM A Buenos Aires website published this report.  Las canciones que sabemos todos La FM Mega, que pasa sólo rock argentino, es la más escuchada. Las discográficas editan CDs de Sumo o Virus y a fin de año Sui Generis tocará en River. Más que una moda, una música que se quedó en el corazón de varias generaciones desde que Spinetta fue descubierto por la mítica revista nacional Expreso Imaginario. Tócala de nuevo, Sam.” La célebre frase que nunca dijo Humphrey Bogart en el film Casablanca bien podría convertirse en el emblema de la FM Mega 98.3, la radio que desde abril pasa sólo los temas del rock nacional, está primera en audiencia y provoca, una vez más, el renacimiento de la música que desde La balsa en el ‘67 no para de reinventarse. Si en 1982 la guerra de Malvinas, con su prohibición de la música en inglés, y en el ‘93 la película Tango feroz (ver recuadro) dispararon la fiebre por el rock en castellano, parece que en 2000 otro fenómeno vuelve a lanzar el neorrockerismo local, para noticia de los empresarios sorprendidos de que a los argentinos les gustan Charly García o Los abuelos de la nada. “La radio es producto de un estudio de mercado”, afirma Guillermo Figueroa, director de programación de Emmis, la multinacional norteamericana que compró Radio 10 y FM News, desde el 24 de abril rebautizada Mega. Detrás de un éxito sólo hay una encuesta: el 60 por ciento de las personas de entre 15 y 50 años que fueron consultadas sobre distintos estilos musicales eligió al rock nacional como su preferido. “En función de esto se armó Mega, con 14 temas, 2 cortes comerciales y casi 30 minutos corridos de música por hora, durante las 24 horas”, explica Figueroa. Las canciones se seleccionan, también, por encuestas efectuadas cada dos meses. La gente vota luego de escuchar el hook (gancho) de unos 2.000 temas desde los ‘60 hasta ahora. A esta lista se suman, además, los pedidos telefónicos. Los temas que mejor miden son De mí, de Charly García, y Cuando pase el temblor, de Soda Stéreo, y entre los más viejos, La balsa y El extraño de pelo largo, datos indicadores de que la audiencia más fiel de la radio oscila entre los 25 y los 45 años, sin diferencias sociales: “Nos llaman desde los countries de Pilar, de San Isidro, de Mataderos y de Avellaneda. La gente quiere escuchar una música con la que se identifica y su contenido sigue siendo válido”, analiza Figueroa.