WKQI Q95.5, December 1997 with Danny Bonaduce

[Mega Hertz]

https://youtu.be/kCisVHDp1tY?si=O26Q0YAn8BODKNDR

Enjoy! Roy Stephens is the jock.

[48125er]

I said this before and about the other aircheck from 1998

Q95.5 sounds like a rural top 40 station not one in a top 15 market, think of 96.9 in Port Huron or 95.3 in Mt Pleasant.

They Played probably only 50% TOPS of the top 40 at that time, back when Hip hop took a good chunk of it, I Imagine WJLB had no problem raking in ratings at this time.

[matt1]

Still waiting for the unreleased Partridge Family & the late David Cassidy "Missing Pieces" recordings from 1970 - 1974 which they did on TV BUT NOT on any Bell Records albums!! NOT getting the bootlegs from eBay either!!! Danny did NOT sang on the 1973 Lion/MGM solo album whatsoever!!

[BKRPDM]

I said this before and about the other aircheck from 1998

Q95.5 sounds like a rural top 40 station not one in a top 15 market, think of 96.9 in Port Huron or 95.3 in Mt Pleasant.

They Played probably only 50% TOPS of the top 40 at that time, back when Hip hop took a good chunk of it, I Imagine WJLB had no problem raking in ratings at this time.

Of course Q95.5 was more Hot AC at the time. WDRQ was covering the other (Hip Hop/R&B) side of the Top 40 charts at the time.

[MWmetalhead]

95.5 was a truly awful station music wise in the late 90s. Total puke garbage.

[thekman]

How were its ratings back then?

[Deleted User 16093]

I recall 95.5 being like a Hot AC station back in the mid 90s. Where I lived at the time, WCLV from Cleveland would interfere all the time. So they could be playing Martin Page's " In The house of stone and light" and every so often an opera piece would overlap.

[Mega Hertz]

How were its ratings back then?

Not all that great from what I recall. They were generally 13-15 in the beauty pageant numbers. I believe they had a standing of #14 just before the tweak to Channel. The irony is, I think they billed more than DRQ at the time. I would have dig around to find out for sure, though.

[Mega Hertz]

Top 40 wars: WKQI vs. WDRQ
Edit
Danny Bonaduce kept WKQI's morning ratings high, but after he departed in January 1998, the station began to falter. ABC/Disney-owned rhythmic-based rival WDRQ took advantage of WKQI's weak spots by moving to a more mainstream Top 40 format with a hotter, more energetic presentation than WKQI. WDRQ also gained an advantage on WKQI, which remained a fairly conservative station musically, by emphasizing the then-hot teen-pop movement and stars like Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, Spice Girls, and *NSYNC. By the summer of 2000, WKQI had sunk to fourteenth place in the ratings, while WDRQ had charged into the top ten (though WKQI still outbilled WDRQ by a fair margin).

Clear Channel Communications took control of the station in 2000 when it merged with AMFM. In February of that year, Clear Channel formed a new morning show called Mojo In The Morning and began to target a younger audience demographic. WDRQ continued to win the CHR battle against WKQI for a few more years.

[MWmetalhead]

95.5 was a very good biller even during its soft ratings phase in the late 90s because female 25 to 54 numbers remained good, it still had reputational equity from the Dick Purtan era (even though he was no longer there), and had WNIC (and its monster ratings) as a sister station.

95.5 billed about $13 million a year at the time. 100.3 was at or north of $20 million. WDRQ was around $8 million (I believe their best year was $11 million in either 2001 or 2002.)