Michigan Radio & TV Buzzboard

I might get tossed through a window here but.... I'll pose the question anyway.

Obviously, there has been talk of how much longer Alt is going to last. Obviously a WWJ Simulcast is the most speculated rumored format or a return to some kind AC or CHR format.

So I'll throw this log on the fire, what about classic country? Meaning stuff from the 80s,90s, and 2000s. Throw a little Johnny Cash in too. This is stuff 99.5fm obviously doesn't play or it's very little. Could 98.7 work as a flanker station for WYCD along with warding off a competitor? or would it cannibalize 99.5fm?

Bad idea or good idea? Discuss

As Dana Carvey (portraying George H.W. Bush) once said,

"Not. Gon. Do it. Wouldn't be prudent"

MWmetalhead wrote: ↑Sun Sep 17, 2023 12:07 pm Bad idea. Classic country to succeed generally needs to be 90s & 00s focused. WYCD plays material from that era where & when it makes sense to do so.

WYCD is a top 5 biller among FM stations in the market, and that was before P-U Country 93.1 went away. Why risk cannibalizing that?

In places like Austin, Dallas and Nashville, doubling up on Country makes sense because there are more country music FM listening shares to divide, and I believe in all three instances, acquisitions resulted in two country stations falling into the hands of a common owner. Because in all three cases both stations were successful, there was no reason to "blow up" one of the two stations.

There is the interesting case of Hubbard in Cincinnati with B105 and 97.3 The Wolf, but 97.3 is a trash signal that almost always finishes 15th place or below.

Old man story alert...

Back in the 70's, when we had 4 country stations going strong, there were still a lot of people who moved here from the south, to work for the car companies. That migration was put into reverse a long time ago. Not to mention the fact that the music has changed.

In 1975, the 4 stations were:

1130 WCXI "Country 11"

1340 WEXL

1500 WDEE "The Big D"

93.9 CKLW-FM "FM 94"


WCXI had a 24 hour newsroom and a sports director. WDEE did a full hour of news at the start of morning drive, and continued throughout the day. Both pulled better numbers than CKLW-FM.

A lot of format shuffling around 1980 opened the door for WWWW to flip to Country. WCXI decided it would be better to dump Tower 92 WTWR, in favor of WCXI-FM. They didn't simulcast. The AM stuck with full service. The FM side was music intensive. Each had a separate staff and sound. Eventually, this forced CKLW out of the Country music business.

The only Country station in Ann Arbor back then was WSDS.

Also likely wouldn’t happen because 98.7 and 99.5 are both Audacy owned.


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I would like to see it. Not just because I like a lot of classic country (define classic...Cash and Coe? Or Brooks and Jackson?), but also because it's something different. Pop gets library formats. Rock gets library formats. Urban gets library formats. Why not country? Considering its popularity over the last 30 years, why not?

For now, I get Duke FM just enough at home and in my work van (up to a certain point). It works.

Flanker stations going after the competition is foolish enough. Flanking your own station is beyond ridiculous.

Sure, WCXI did it with 92.3, but the circumstances were much different. It was still regrettable to blow up WTWR just to create another version of WCXI on FM.

As for Duke FM, they certainly have the right zip codes covered. My guess would be it's cheap to run, and they're probably not billing as much as they could be. Classic Country is largely a 35-64 format.

Colonel Flagg wrote: ↑Tue Sep 19, 2023 9:45 am Classic Country is largely a 35-64 format.

Wow. Thanks for calling me out, Colonel

I guess I'm in the demo for the format.

Radio is wack compared to the digital format. The sound is horrible nowadays. I blame their HD subchannels for reducing bandwidth on their main signal. Do cars even come with HD audio anymore, unless you buy a fully optioned vehicle? Portable HD radios are basically non-existent for sale. I prefer listening to music in the above CD quality lossless format on Apple, Amazon or TIDAL music. Not all of their music is is 24-bit/192 khz, but the most popular and many of the classics are remastered. It's like hearing the stuff CSX has played for years for the first time. TIDAL has original audio direct from the studio that has zero compression loss, but you have to pay extra for that.

Colonel Flagg wrote: ↑Sun Sep 17, 2023 1:52 pm

MWmetalhead wrote: ↑Sun Sep 17, 2023 12:07 pm Bad idea. Classic country to succeed generally needs to be 90s & 00s focused. WYCD plays material from that era where & when it makes sense to do so.

WYCD is a top 5 biller among FM stations in the market, and that was before P-U Country 93.1 went away. Why risk cannibalizing that?

In places like Austin, Dallas and Nashville, doubling up on Country makes sense because there are more country music FM listening shares to divide, and I believe in all three instances, acquisitions resulted in two country stations falling into the hands of a common owner. Because in all three cases both stations were successful, there was no reason to "blow up" one of the two stations.

There is the interesting case of Hubbard in Cincinnati with B105 and 97.3 The Wolf, but 97.3 is a trash signal that almost always finishes 15th place or below.

Old man story alert...

Back in the 70's, when we had 4 country stations going strong, there were still a lot of people who moved here from the south, to work for the car companies. That migration was put into reverse a long time ago. Not to mention the fact that the music has changed.

In 1975, the 4 stations were:

1130 WCXI "Country 11"

1340 WEXL

1500 WDEE "The Big D"

93.9 CKLW-FM "FM 94"


WCXI had a 24 hour newsroom and a sports director. WDEE did a full hour of news at the start of morning drive, and continued throughout the day. Both pulled better numbers than CKLW-FM.

A lot of format shuffling around 1980 opened the door for WWWW to flip to Country. WCXI decided it would be better to dump Tower 92 WTWR, in favor of WCXI-FM. They didn't simulcast. The AM stuck with full service. The FM side was music intensive. Each had a separate staff and sound. Eventually, this forced CKLW out of the Country music business.

The only Country station in Ann Arbor back then was WSDS.

WCAR-AM 1130 didn't become WCXI until 1979 - shortly before WDEE died and was replaced by WCZY-AM. Their ratings rise over the rest of that year was quite dramatic - they went from a .9 in fall '78 (as AC-format WCAR) to a 2.6 in spring '79, to a 5.6 in fall '79 with WDEE out of the way. (By comparison, CKLW-FM had a 1.2, but they tended to super-serve Windsor rather than court Detroit listeners.) They'd hover around the mid 4's to mid 5's for the next year, until W4 Country's debut in early '81 took the air out of WCXI's sails. W4 also took out CKLW-FM, which switched to a Big Band/Nostalgia format as CKJY later in 1981. Also, If I'm not mistaken, WEXL had already switched to religion by 1975.

WCAR-FM did do an automated (Great American Country from Drake-Chenault) Country format around 1977 (I believe toward the end of Hy Levinson's ownership and before Golden West took over), but that never had an impact.

The first FM in the market to feature Country on a regular basis was apparently 102.7 WBRB-FM, which did block-programmed Country in the mid-'60s when it wasn't simulcasting with AM 1430. The first to do a full-time Country format was, interestingly, on 93.1, as WDEE-FM circa 1970, using an automated format from International Good Music out of Bellingham, WA. That lasted until Storer sold them off in '71 and they became WDRQ.

Washtenaw County actually had two AM Country stations during the '70s. The other one was 1290 WNRS, and that was arguably the only one that could really be considered an "Ann Arbor" station, since WSDS focused on western Wayne County in those days. Later on (mid-'80s), 1050 WPAG experimented with a "cosmopolitan" country format (mixing in some compatible AC/AOR from the likes of Bob Seger, Bruce Hornsby etc.). It failed.

MWmetalhead wrote: ↑Wed Sep 20, 2023 7:44 pm Excellent info!

That format you described on AM 1050 was also briefly attempted on WCUZ-FM in Grand Rapids, positioned as "Country Plus."

As I recall, WCUZ-FM was rattled a bit by the success of 95.7 W-Light.

Similar to Ann Arbor, its longevity was brief; WCUZ-FM would soon return to a 100 percent country music format.

I should probably do the 'ol cut and paste like our buddy Chris, instead of trying to remember exactly what happened and when.

Cheers.

Flip 98.7 to WWJ’s FM counterpart and be done with it… I listened to WBBM in Chicago’s FM variant today while I was there and it sounded great…

MWmetalhead wrote: ↑Wed Sep 20, 2023 7:44 pm Excellent info!

That format you described on AM 1050 was also briefly attempted on WCUZ-FM in Grand Rapids, positioned as "Country Plus."

As I recall, WCUZ-FM was rattled a bit by the success of 95.7 W-Light.

Similar to Ann Arbor, its longevity was brief; WCUZ-FM would soon return to a 100 percent country music format.

I never knew that. I assume WCUZ-AM stayed "pure" country? WMUS must have been able to make a few inroads in GR during that time.
Looking at the fall '86 Ann Arbor ratings - which would have been during the time WPAG did the "cosmo" country format - AM 1050 was a complete no-show. In fact, it seems A2 in general was not fond of country music at that time, since W4 had a 3.2 and WCXI, a 1.2 (WCXI-FM had already flipped away from Country by then). Among local stations, WIQB was tops with a 9.1 (second only to WJR's 16.3 overall), followed by WNRS' oldies format (5.4), WAAM (3.9) and WPAG-FM (2.9). WSDS also did not show, but I wonder if they ever even subscribed.
WDEE also had a habit of mixing in some AC/MOR crossover, to cement its mass appeal. Unlike the other examples we've discussed, it worked - certainly not hurt by the fact that performers like Olivia Newton-John, John Denver, Crystal Gayle and Glen Campbell enjoyed massive popularity with both pop and country audiences.