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Easy Rock is gone

S

sdskees

Just had it on 105.1. They're now calling themselves GHL. Greatest Hits Louisville, a classic hits format. Seems to go from late 60s to 80s. The audio sounds terrible right now though. They're playing 10,000 hits in a row right now supposedly. I'm surprised they didn't hold out until after Christmas music.
 
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A few observations so far about "Greatest Hits Louisville," or as I'd almost like to call it, Louie Version 3.0:

Listening so far, they honestly don't sound a whole lot different than they did as Easy Rock. If I didn't hear them giving their new name or one of the occasional "harder" songs, you'd be hard pressed to even know that they changed their formats. In fact, I listened a little bit this morning and didn't realize that a new format was on the air until I listened again later in the day.

If they're truly playing 10,000 songs in a row, that should get them through about the end of the month. Then what? I don't think they'll just keep doing the same thing they are right now with commercials added in. Alpha seems to be committed to putting effort into their stations. They'll need personalities on air... so who? And, will Christmas come to this station anyway? By the time they're finished with their 10,000 songs, it will be time for stations to play Christmas music, but it would seem foolish to do that with a newly established format.

Finally, what is going on with the audio quality? They sound awful... as they tend to from time-to-time (and it has been noted by others).
 
Alpha is a new owner so they have to try their hand at "fixing it" but you can't fix it and it won't matter what they do with it. In 6 months it will be all but forgotten.

The Owensboro people had it as their only Louisville station. These people knew what they were doing. And they couldn't make it work.
Blue Chip tried.
Radio One gave it a go.

Mainline tried a couple of versions, and a signal "upgrade". :D They promoted the heck out of it. But if you can't pick up the station with clear reception you're not going to listen. And there are HUGE areas of Louisville where you can't do that.

You get near an FM transmitter site and your radio desensitizes. Stations that are strong enough come in anyway. Fringe stations just go away. 105.1 is a fringe station and it just goes away. Downtown due to 103.9 and, ironically, 102.3. Northeast- Snyder and I-71 area- due to 103.1. It's completely unlistenable in this area. I'll bet the Snyder and Taylorsville Road area is almost as bad.

Dixie Highway doesn't come in well because of terrain.

Has this station ever done better than 18th?
 
I listened to 105.1 some today but it's not that great.It is hard to tell at times that a change was made. And the audio is still terrible.It sounds distorted. It's been that way for a while.It sounds OK online. One thing I didn't hear today were any black artists although in some of their liners were snippets of Celebration,Good Times and others.
I like the new WDRB Classic Hits better.Much better variety on there.
 
greg.hahn said:
Alpha is a new owner so they have to try their hand at "fixing it" but you can't fix it and it won't matter what they do with it. In 6 months it will be all but forgotten.

The Owensboro people had it as their only Louisville station. These people knew what they were doing. And they couldn't make it work.
Blue Chip tried.
Radio One gave it a go.

Mainline tried a couple of versions, and a signal "upgrade". :D They promoted the heck out of it. But if you can't pick up the station with clear reception you're not going to listen. And there are HUGE areas of Louisville where you can't do that.

You get near an FM transmitter site and your radio desensitizes. Stations that are strong enough come in anyway. Fringe stations just go away. 105.1 is a fringe station and it just goes away. Downtown due to 103.9 and, ironically, 102.3. Northeast- Snyder and I-71 area- due to 103.1. It's completely unlistenable in this area. I'll bet the Snyder and Taylorsville Road area is almost as bad.

Dixie Highway doesn't come in well because of terrain.

Has this station ever done better than 18th?
Click to expand...

As part of the "Owensboro People" let me chime in. There was goal going back to the original owners, The Steele family, to branch out to Louisville or suburban Chicago. The owners at the time, a cable company that knew nothing about radio, bought into the idea and the 105.1 allocation was pursued.

Everything was against success. The allocation was pigeon holed and Shepherdsville was too far from Louisville to serve the market with a city grade. The cable company gave us a blank check for start up. WEHR had the best of everything but the money ended there beyond salaries and operation. There was zero budget for promotions. The cable company mentality figured they build the plant it should make money. This was when cable companies had monopolies on certain networks prior to the small dish revolution. Their mentality was promotion was unnecessary. Great concept when the only source of ESPN in 1992 but a competitive market like Louisville money was needed. However the signal had so many issues. Any form of skip wiped it out. One day WUBE Cincinnati overtook the air monitor.

The Shepherdsville COL required a studio within the city grade, that landed a storefront location of Fern Valley Road. The property owner refused to allow a structure for an STL so we were doing T1 in 1993. We were an affiliate of a secondary CBS network but weren't allowed to have a satellite dish. CBS no longer provided spot via tape so the inventory was recorded in Owensboro and Fed Ex the reel to Louisville.

Finally after a year, maybe a year and a half of only getting a mention in Arbitron but never showing up, WEHR became a ghost ship as the project was scrapped. It was decided to keep the station on the air rather than go dark. So a staff member was kept on payroll to babysit the automation and keep office hours per FCC regulation. It finally sold a couple of years later. There were some talented people associated with WEHR, but little signal and no support meant there was no way to win.

Somehow 105.1 upgraded to a full Class A but beyond its time as WLRS it has had few listeners even notice.
 
I wonder what all of this means for the programming that was on 105.1... particularly Tommy Lee, the only on-air host that they even had (and also the Easy Rock programming director). He was shifted over from The Max (where he'd probably still be today) to take over at 105.1. And Delilah, even if it is a syndicated show, it can't seem to catch a break locally (although that seems to be the case for a lot of cities). Maybe Delilah should go back to 106.9. From what I understand Cox simply didn't feel like her show fit in with their idea for 106.9. It seems like the national version of her show is a lot more like the current 106.9 playlist than the 105.1 playlist, not to mention that Cox has nothing to do with 106.9 anymore. Then again, she could still sort of fit in at 105.1. Of course, I know some people just hate Delilah and would much rather she not be on local radio at all...
 
I just don't get this. Given their coverage area, it almost looks like they're trying to compete with WAKY with this format change. Does that make any sense?

I always thought 105.1 would make a nice signal partner with Louie 104.3, but that obviously didn't happen.
 
It's not as bad as it could have been I suppose. One of the other former Main Line stations in Dayton switched to Christmas music today... in the middle of October... and to top it off, it is on track to be revived as "Hank FM." I'm glad that they at least at the decency to recognize that we have a gluttony of country music on our dial here (three actual local stations, but plenty more that have a strong enough signal for most tuners to pick up without much difficulty). That was my fear, that they would force even more country upon us. I'd call their current format a hybrid between Louie FM and (ironically) Easy Rock.
 
This afternoon I heard "I Will" by The Beatles on 105.1 That was a surprise being that the song was never a hit and was only a track on The White Album.I love The Beatles but I never remember hearing I Will on the radio before.Maybe 105.1 are stretching things to get the 10,000 songs in a row.Has anyone else heard any unusual songs on there?
BTW I could enjoy the station a lot better if the audio didn't sound like crap.
 
When lrs was on 105.1 it did simulcast with 104.3 for awhile. I still remember lrs getting 4 shares in spring of 2005. Never a well programmed station but they had a good on air lineup. Mcgregor was awesome in the mornings. Remember the vibrator olympics. Mornings were good until they put lex and terry on just awful. I say go back to a rock station.
 
I'm not sure what else they could do with that station at this point. Taking on both 107.7 and WAKY seems like a bad idea. Since around 2007 they've been New Rock, New and classic rock, FM talk, Easy Rock, and now this. I agree with the earlier poster who said that the WDRB classic hits had a better mix.
 
I haven't heard anything too deep aside from something from The Doors (can't remember what it was now) that was outside of the usual "radio friendly" list of hits from The Doors. I noticed today that they're sounding a little less like Easy Rock than they were in the first two days, but they still aren't playing a lot of stuff that is too hard (about the closest they've gotten to this is "Wanted Dead or Alive" by Bon Jovi and "Separate Ways" by Journey).

Taking on 107.7 and WAKY may seem like a bad idea, but they pretty much had to take on somebody. They don't quite sound like 107.7 (I'd still call 107.7 "classic rock with a few non-rock hits thrown in"), and I've always felt like WAKY has a bit of an image issue with listeners who either were too young or didn't live in the area when the original WAKY was on the air. I certainly do not remember the original WAKY, and even though I've occasionally listened to the current and enjoyed some of what I've heard, I probably turn it on about once every few months since their whole retro imaging just seems outdated and unfamiliar. Honestly, if it was something that I had been around to experience when the real WAKY was on, I think that the retro imaging would be fun, but since I'm too young to be a baby boomer, I feel like I'm listening to the "old folks station" when I turn it on, even if I do like the music being played. 107.7 and 105.1 (at least so far) tend to not give me that feeling.

Anybody think we'll hear any actual on-air personalities on here once the stunting is done? That seems to be what Alpha is all about, putting real people on the air. Though it is possible (given the history of 105.1) that they'll make an exception to "real people on the air" here. This seems like the perfect station for Rocky and Troy as they move in to every Louisville radio station once in a while (heck, Rocky was even on 105.1 when it was "everything that rocks" LRS)... although it seems Rocky Knight is doing an hour every morning right now on 1570 AM, which I'm sure nobody even realizes exists.
 
Hi sdskees. Gotta give you props for telling me about the all Christmas station in Dayton. To early for Christmas music yes but I was curious what it would sound like. Very different not your usual Christmas tunes. A few of the usual tunes but a whole lot of different stuff I never heard thrown in like George straight Christmas cookies glee hannukah. A lot of country but also most wonderful time of the year andy Williams. Props to alpha))) If alpha goes all santa on 105.1 with a similar mix it would be nice. I get so tired of the same 20 Christmas songs every year by the same artists. So much great Christmas music out there that never sees the light of day very sad.
 
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I'm guessing that they'll finish their 10,000 songs around November 9th or 10th, assuming that they average about 4 minutes per song. I don't think they'll do Christmas music this year. They're too new to already be rocking the boat like that. 106.9 and 100.5 will go that way (and if there is really a Santa, he'll make "My 100.5" go away for good), I bet, but I think 105.1 is going to sit it out this year even though their stunting will be done around at just the right time to do this. I still think it would have made more sense for them to launch "GHL" after doing Christmas music though, because I have a feeling Christmas music would give 105.1 more listeners than this will.

Also, they're now officially identifying as "WGHL" on air. It looks like that went into effect Thursday according to the FCC. "WESI" always reminded me of "Weezie" on The Jeffersons. But speaking of the call letters, has anybody noticed that Main Line/Alpha still continues to renew the domain name wlrs.com every time that comes up, and it still directs to the website of whatever is at 105.1, even now?
 
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sdskees said:
Anybody think we'll hear any actual on-air personalities on here once the stunting is done? That seems to be what Alpha is all about, putting real people on the air. Though it is possible (given the history of 105.1) that they'll make an exception to "real people on the air" here. This seems like the perfect station for Rocky and Troy as they move in to every Louisville radio station once in a while (heck, Rocky was even on 105.1 when it was "everything that rocks" LRS)... although it seems Rocky Knight is doing an hour every morning right now on 1570 AM, which I'm sure nobody even realizes exists.
Click to expand...


Rocky and Troy are a great team, and would give instant recognition and attraction to the station, but would it help? Remember they were also on 104.3- a station with a similarly bad signal. Not only Rocky and Troy, but they had Joe Fedele, Future Bob, Delilah. They had a sharp station vehicle and did appearances all over the place. They put up billboards. The station sounded great, both technically and formatically.

What did that get them? They actually went down- from 22nd place to 24th place, or something like that. You add the good talent to increase ratings and increase revenue. But if the coverage is bad, ratings won't go up no matter what you do.

So, remembering this is a business venture, how do you justify paying the salaries of these guys?
 
There are a few differences between 104.3 and 105.1 that could work SLIGHTLY (though admittedly not much) in 105.1's favor. The signal for 104.3 isn't quite as good as the one for 105.1 in Louisville. I could very rarely pick up 104.3 at home, and I even live in an area of Louisville that is supposed to have their strongest signal. On the other hand, for 105.1, I rarely have trouble picking them up. Also, 104.3, as hard as they tried with the resources they did have, I still don't feel like they had enough resources to make it known that they existed. I would have never known 104.3 existed if not for the internet. 104.3 was run by a group that tried very hard, but really has to make that difficult decision to either be a really good station (they were) or to get the word out there that the station exists to those who didn't know it was there (they sort of did, but there wasn't a lot of it).

Maybe the real answer is 93.9. If Alpha could pry 93.9 out of the "cold dead hands" of Cumulus, and of course, somehow get rid of 105.1 (I'd even settle for somebody like "Educational" Media Foundation taking 105.1 at this point, if it were to keep 93.9 out of the hands of some "non-profit" radio owner), then maybe they could have a fifth station that works.
 
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Which one is the worse depends on your perspective and which part of town you live in. For me, living near Prospect, Paddock Shops, and Ford plant- 104.3 is decent but 105.1 is practically un listenable. I know the opposite is true on the south side. Both are un listenable downtown.

But I think without a doubt those are the two worst FM s in the market. What is true of one is likely true of the other.
 
They're definitely the two worst. I live in Cherokee Triangle, within walking distance of Cherokee Park, which certainly is southwest if you're considering Prospect and that area... but it is far from being the south end of Louisville. I could never pick up 104.3 aside from when I was in my car. 105.1 has never really an issue. It just seems to me that 105.1 has better coverage of the city as a whole, whereas 104.3 has better coverage of areas that are more lucrative for advertising dollars (and poor coverage unless you live in the far northeastern part of Louisville).

Of course, if you look at the coverage map of 93.9, they've got a good signal that covers almost all of the parts of Louisville where people actually live and work (just a small sliver of the southeastern part of the city and EXTREME southwestern part are outside of their local grade area). I don't know why I keep bringing them up because we know it'll never happen, but it certainly would be better for anybody trying to make a commercial radio format work, and they could just let places like 105.1 and 104.3 go to the inevitable religious broadcasters they're destined to belong to.
 
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