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W261BX 100.1 New Format

ChocoMingo

ChocoMingo

I think Summit Media is going to replace 99.5 The Vibe as 103.7 The Q's (WQEN-FM) competitor.;) I like The Q but I think Birmingham needs some competition. Summit should do a CHR/Top 40 format called "HOT 100.1" stylized like sister-station W291CL/WURV-HD2 "HOT 106.1" in Richmond, VA and former sister-station WPOI-FM "HOT 101.5" (which personally, I would like to see rise their pitch (like WFLZ-FM) as they went to normal pitch last year) in Tampa Bay. :)
 
tomservo said:
You really think a tiny translator could take even a few tenths from The Q? I don't think it's powerful enough to reach the areas where CHR listeners are. I may be wrong, though.
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Paraphrasing the late Auburn football coach Shug Jordan, who used to say on the Auburn Football Review, "You're so right, Tom". :)

The signal on 100.1 essentially dies once you cross over Shades Mountain, which effectively eliminates Hoover, Vestavia, Mountain Brook and Shelby County. While none of the translators/LPFM's have great coverage over all of the metro, 100.1 is probably the second worst in town. Only 106.5 is worse.
 
My thinking is the Christmas fare won't last too long on 100.1. I've been reading listener comments on Twitter about how they "have found a commercial-free, 24/7 Christmas music station", lol. I just can't see Summit Media leaving the Christmas fare on 100.1 for a long time, especially when "Magic" unveils the annual Christmas feast, which I imagine will be sometime next month. If the Christmas fare were left at 100.1 throughout the Christmas season, most of the Christmas music listeners would gravitate to Magic 96.5's more powerful signal, and let's face it....Summit Media doesn't want to miss out on all those Christmas $. Would it be crazy for WEZZ to go all-Christmas again and alienate their listeners as they did last year? Yes, but they are looking at $ signs, not the big picture. The only advantage that 100.1 would have by keeping the Christmas music on 100.1 would be large numbers of listeners hanging around once a new format debuts on 100.1. I wouldn't be surprised if Santa and his music return to 97.3 around the same time that Magic 96.5 goes all-Christmas, so Summit Media can "level the playing field" with "Magic's" Christmas extravaganza. If the Christmas fare does wind up at 97.3, either "Easy" will get jettisoned to the weaker 100.1 translator OR 100.1 debuts a new format at that time.

I agree with Zach...there is no way that the 100.1 translator doing CHR would be able to make even the smallest dent in the Q.
 
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Charles35080 said:
Paraphrasing the late Auburn football coach Shug Jordan, who used to say on the Auburn Football Review, "You're so right, Tom". :)

The signal on 100.1 essentially dies once you cross over Shades Mountain, which effectively eliminates Hoover, Vestavia, Mountain Brook and Shelby County. While none of the translators/LPFM's have great coverage over all of the metro, 100.1 is probably the second worst in town. Only 106.5 is worse.
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I'm not there to listen myself, but that sounds logical. They need to play to where the signal goes, I suppose. Which, judging by the maps and what I've heard online, is the west side of Birmingham and all over Jasper, stomping on WQJJ-LP, lol.
 
Really, the only way for 100.1 to be successful would be to do a credible job with a niche format. Variety hits would work decently if it were programmed worth a flip, but right now there's no heart, no soul, no nothing, and the music is more schizophrenic than my iPod. Beyond that, I can't think of a format missing from the FM (or AM) dial in Birmingham. We're urban-ed to death here, Fair enough, since there's sufficient population here for that programming. Still, I wonder what iHeart was thinking by putting urban AC on 106.5, since Kiss has that market effectively sewn up, and Hot skews towards urban AC, albeit a little more uptempo than Kiss...plus WTUG covers most of the market well and is probably the best station in that format in the area.

Does the Q need a competitor to make them honest? Yeah, but Cumulus' half-hearted attempt on 99.5 was such an utter disaster, and they are the only corporate monolith with a low-rated, struggling station. (I'm not counting Crawford, since the odds of them doing CHR on 101.1 are slim and none, and Slim has left the building). :) Realistically, the only plausible signals that could go CHR or Hot AC would be 99.5 or 100.5.
 
Looking back through this thread, I'm struggling to figure out if any of us are due brownie points for calling the next format for this station.

It's the night after Christmas and I'm streaming them. They're now "All The Hits 100.1" with a format that I guess is CHR, but the vibe is… more mellow. Mid-tempo pop and urban cuts. I'm not a fan of contemporary music but I'm actually quite digging this. Dunno if this is Summit trying to make a splash or just caught without personnel, but the only liners I'm hearing are a computerized voice. Reads the call sign, slogan and legal ID plus a few song titles here and there.

Here's what I heard in the last ~40 minutes:

Perfect - One Direction
Sorry - Justin Bieber
Stitches - Shawn Mendes
Wildest Dreams - Taylor Swift
In The Night - The Weeknd
Hide Away - Days
I Know What You Did Last Summer - Shawn Mendes, Camila Cabello
Stressed Out - Twenty One Pilots
What Do You Mean? - Justin Bieber
Hello - Adele
Here - Alessia Cara
Roses - The Chainsmokers, ROZES
Confident - Demi Lovato

They seem to like single word song titles. So what would this, formatically? CHR, Hot AC, something else I'm not familiar with? I dig it, but I can't place it.

Edit: Looks like it's a loop. I'm still listening and the top three songs have just played again. Oy.
 
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Music selection sounds like Hot AC. Probably just a stunt. I'm not seeing any online presence for the station (website, Facebook, Twitter), and the fact the songs are currently looping doesn't indicate anything of a permanent nature is going on over there.
 
Charles35080 said:
According to Radio Insight, Summit has registered a new domain for stations in both Birmingham and Louisville.
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I saw this a few minutes ago. The story is available for paid subscribers only.
 
Lite 106.9 (a station that Summit owns in Louisville, and despite the branding, they have really been more AC than soft AC for about the past five years... the "Lite" branding is just something they've held onto since 1993) in Louisville has been advertising a change coming on January 4th on-air, and after doing a little trial and error, namely looking at some of Summit's other brands around the country and attaching 106.9, I found that on Christmas Eve they registered 1069play.com and play1069.com, which is branding that Summit is using for some (maybe just one) Hot AC station in Richmond, VA. As it turns out, it looks like they also registered the following:

973play.com
play973.com

TECHNICALLY, it isn't clear whether or not it was Summit who registered these names. It was done anonymously, of course, but all of these "Play" names were registered on Christmas Eve. But that seems to be the most logical.
 
sdskees said:
This is the Richmond, VA station:

http://www.1037play.com/

Just a run of the mill Hot AC (last four artists on there are Adele, Lady Antebellum, Lifehouse, and Jason DeRulo).
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Ah, dangit! I was looking through the Summit stations on their website earlier and forgot to click on Richmond. Unless those URLs are a stunt, I'm betting this exact format with this exact same website will show up in Louisville and Birmingham on the 4th.

I'm kinda surprised, to be honest. I thought for sure Summit would drag out the easy AC on 97.3 forever and put a new format on WENN 1320/100.1 instead. But now I am thinking they may move the soft AC to 1320/100.1 (again?) after Play — or whatever — debuts.

Then again, Summit either owns outright or appears to own several domains which could come into play in Birmingham or maybe a few other markets. They still seem to be hanging on to domain names like 973thebuck, newstalk973, oldskool973 and power1001. A friend hipped me to that last one… W271BN was "Power 102.1" for a while before it was handed off to WAGG.

And last but not least in the website roundtable, birminghameasy.com is still active and still streams WENN 1320/100.1.
 
Here in Louisville, they registered the domain names jamz1039.com, 1039jamz.com, and jamzlouisville.com back in the summer. 103.9 is "The Hawk" right now, a country music station that plays the slightly older (but not classic) country music, sort of like Nash Icons. "Jamz" is their branding for their hip-hop/R&B stations. So far, nothing has even happened on 103.9, and honestly it looks like nothing will. So if they do nothing in Birmingham for now, that wouldn't be totally surprising. But I fully expect 106.9 to flip on Monday, as a "big change" is being heavily advertised on-air and online (and it'll also be a little bittersweet to be honest, even though they haven't been soft AC for years, Lite 106.9 is probably one of the longest lived "brands" in our market).
 
tomservo said:
Ah, dangit! I was looking through the Summit stations on their website earlier and forgot to click on Richmond. Unless those URLs are a stunt, I'm betting this exact format with this exact same website will show up in Louisville and Birmingham on the 4th.

I'm kinda surprised, to be honest. I thought for sure Summit would drag out the easy AC on 97.3 forever and put a new format on WENN 1320/100.1 instead. But now I am thinking they may move the soft AC to 1320/100.1 (again?) after Play — or whatever — debuts.

Then again, Summit either owns outright or appears to own several domains which could come into play in Birmingham or maybe a few other markets. They still seem to be hanging on to domain names like 973thebuck, newstalk973, oldskool973 and power1001. A friend hipped me to that last one… W271BN was "Power 102.1" for a while before it was handed off to WAGG.

And last but not least in the website roundtable, birminghameasy.com is still active and still streams WENN 1320/100.1.
Click to expand...

I had considered that also...that SummitMedia might move Easy's soft AC format to 100.1. Would that be the best idea? Probably not. Remember what happened when they jettisoned "Y'all" from 97.3 to the 102.1 translator? That didn't go over too well with the listeners, with the much weaker signal. Since a good portion of Easy's listeners are at-work listeners, those listeners might no longer be able to hear "Easy" if the soft AC format were moved to 100.1. SummitMedia *could* move the WEZZ calls and format to 97.7 and replace the "Peach", which would be an interesting scenario since 97.7 was originally WEZZ, but I don't think it'll happen. Even though the signal on 97.7 would be considerably better than that of 100.1, "Peach" seems to have a good following and the listeners might not care for that move too much. It'll be interesting to see how it all PLAYs out. ;)
 
Old Skool 97.3 FM, Birmingham's Hip Hop Throwbacks station.

I predict that'll be the new format, when the dust settles.

I see them having a pic of a dj scratching on the ones and twos, for their new logo.

I also see Easy moving to the 100.1 FM/1320 AM combo, as well.

Something I would seriously think about.

Dan <><

P..S. If my prediction is right, I see them opening Old Skool with this tune: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFofKGKlWo4
 
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I don't see another urban station of any permutation coming to Birmingham anytime soon. Even given the percentage of target listeners for such a format, the dial is chock-full of urban-oriented stations. There are three full-power stations in the market (95.7, 98.7 and 107.7), one rimshot that covers the market well (92.9), two low-power translators (104.1 and 106.5), and two urban gospel FM translators (102.1 and 105.1). That's eight out of 30 FM commercial signals in the market. Besides, why would Summit put a format on 97.3 that would potentially dilute market share from 95.7 and/or 98.7?

Better yet, hasn't WEZZ performed better than any format that has been tried on 97.3? Sure, it's averaged somewhere around a 2.2 12+ since the current format debuted, but I don't think any of its previous incarnations (CHR, active rock, oldies, country or sports) has exactly set the woods on fire. The overall weakness (6.4kw) of the signal hurts this station, but it has accomplished something that I think was its real purpose: it has kicked Magic 96.5 in the shins.
 
I'm with Charles...the market is too saturated with urban stations now, although I wouldn't necessarily group in the two urban gospel stations in that tally. Granted, the urban, urban AC and urban gospel stations are all marketed to an African-American audience, but grouping all of those together as directly competing against one another would be akin to saying that country and southern gospel stations share the same audience. There is some overlap, of course, but to me, it's apples and oranges. Old School R&B would be better served if one of the existing urban stations took on that format, with 106.5 being the best candidate.

97.3's soft AC format has garnered the largest 12+ numbers in the station's (almost) 20 year history, even recovering from the all-Christmas fare they did in 2014 that cost them quite a bit of their audience. Still, I am guessing WEZZ skews with a much older demographic than "Magic" does. Case in point: I know several people who have told me they listen to "Easy 97.3" and most of them are in their late 60's to mid 70's. The 12+ numbers don't tell "all the story" and they aren't used in selling advertising, anyway. WVEZ Lite 106.9 in Louisville just opted for a name change last night as "106.9 PLAY" and from what I've read, that station typically places in the top 5 in the 12+ numbers there. "Easy" might have taken some wind out of "Magic's" sails, but the demos for "Easy" are much older and I would imagine, not nearly as saleable. 97.3's weaker signal has always been an issue for them, even after upgrading from a class A to C2 many years ago. I've always thought if 97.3 were split off and sold to a group such as EMF, it would fare better as a noncommercial entity. Maybe a similar sort of station swap-a-roo could be done as what occurred in Mobile a couple of years ago between WABB-FM and WDLT, where EMF wound up buying the former WDLT at 98.3 (a C2), converting it to K-Love as WLVM.
 
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I believe I read somewhere (or it was sent to me in an e-mail that someone had registered play973.com and 973play.com, which kinda made me think it might be a copy of what they did in Louisville and what they do now in Richmond. But so far it's been all quiet on the western front. I secretly thought the Easy format would migrate (again?) to 100.1/1320 in the process. It's still playing the same ~1 hour loop of current hits, but the branding was tweaked from All The Hits to Commercial Free Hits.
 
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