My contenders for worst stations? In no particular order....
CIDR-FM:
93.9 The River started out as canada's first adult album alternative station but over time it grew to become a hybrid of AAA and alt-rock... and as we all saw, that began eroding the ratings of sister CIMX 89X (which had enough of its own problems after its big talent left). but in the past year or so it's been trying to move towards a hybrid format of AAA and Modern Adult Contemporary, presumably to steal some listeners from 96.7 CHYR (Hot AC/Contemporary Hits Radio) and 96.3 WDVD (also Hot AC)... I used to enjoy listening to 93.9 The River, but they began losing my interest when they started importing a lot of alt-rock stuff from 89x. I liked their indie rock-leaning hits that they had to chuck to make room for the alt-rock songs (which i'm not that into). They completely lost me when they began importing Modern AC and Hot AC songs, since I could just as easily get them on 96.3 or 96.7... why duplicate what's already available on stations that do it better? Come on, Bell... you were STARTING to learn your lesson by semi-fixing 89X... is there a facepalm emoji on this board?
WDTW-FM:
106.7 seems to be cursed due to owner incompetence. W4 Country was great... Alice was okay... The Drive was okay but withered and died, so it was replaced with Fox Country... that limped along for a few years before getting replaced with The Beat. That was an alright format and did well.... should've stuck around, in my opinion... but I fucking LOVED what replaced it: 106.7 THE D! hair metal, hard rock, classic rock hits.... oh my god, yes! it was like Alice 3.0 and i was addicted to it... it was retooled a bit to add newer artists but i still listened. Once they did their brief stint with Variety Hits, though... I knew something was up. their Variety Hits format had potential, but it's iHeartMedia, so I knew they'd find SOME way to fuck it up. Now we have.... this. Whatever the hell "Alt 106.7" is supposed to be. It's like an alternative rock station programmed by someone that never heard alt rock before (or hates the format). This won't be around too long. I predict a September 2019 retooling or reformatting to something else. Come on, Classic Gold dance hits (1975-2005)!
WDRQ-FM:
93.1 had a good thing going with Doug FM. it was cheap, simple to run, had a VAST library of music from 1965 to the current-day (2010 at the time of the format's end), and proved Variety Hits could sustain two stations in Detroit (the other being WOMC-FM) and still be successful. Bring back Doug and all will be forgiven! Hell, there's even an opening for an Alice or The D style of classic rock station to give WCSX someone to compete with, too! Or, if you want to stick with country... put Nash Icon on there, since that's your country-western and classics format.
Then Cume-u-Less got the bright idea to start up a country music empire with "Nash FM" and "Nash Icon" and "Nash Magazine". Yeah, unless you have a partnership with The Grand Ole Opry, Luken Communications (owners of Heartland TV) or Jim Owens Entertainment (owners of "The Nashville Network" branding and some programs), I can practically guarantee failure. Those are the biggest properties in country music, and if you plan to compete AGAINST them *and* the top-dog in the market (99.5 WYCD), without any compelling programs or LOCAL HOSTS, you will not do better than a 2 rating. I guess maybe they're happy replacing a good-income automated station with a crap-income automated station... would explain their chronic financial issues...
WFDF-AM:
I'm genuinely amazed that this station is still somehow on the air. I'll give Kevin Adell props for somehow making money off this station with few listeners.
WCAR-AM 1090 and WDFN-AM 1130:
I can't tell which is worse-off... they're trying to go up against the tag-team duo that is WXYT-FM 97.1 The Ticket and WXYT-AM 1270 for news-talk. Those two rule the roost and these are like two fleas on a giant elephant's ass. They're less than "also-ran"s...