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CHR in Memphis
- Thread starter MVB13
- Start date
The market is only 40% non-Hispanic white, so Blacks and Black music have a huge influence. There are several contemporary Urban stations that are the de facto CHRs in Memphis.
And they are usually at the top of the local ratings every month.
...remember GK the DJ on WHBQ..... George Klein...
I work in a market with a similar demographics. The CHR here performs horrendously as well. In Memphis, my understanding has always been that WMC is treated as the defacto pop music station. I am, however, somewhat surprised that Kiss didn't get any kind of a bump after WHBQ flipped.
Keep in mind that Memphis hasn’t had a full market CHR signal in over 30 years.
As another poster mentioned, FM 100 has generally filled that niche well, even though it has almost always been an adult-oriented CHR. The old KMPZ 98.1 “Z-98” had better 12+ numbers than most anything that has replaced it despite having its tower in Frenchman's Bayou, but it was hard to sell. When Dittman sold it, the new owners flipped it to oldies post-haste.
Don't know if we'll ever see another CHR on a full-market signal in Memphis. Memphis doesn't have many stations on the main transmitter farm, and a lot of smaller markets nearby are close enough to cause spacing issues with Memphis but too far to comfortably move in. Most of the established stations are performing well enough in their target demos that they’re not likely to pursue another format. Audacy won’t want to risk taking shares from FM 100. So, unless iHeart thinks moving 101.9’s format to a different signal or Cumulus decides the format is worth a try, it's not likely to happen.
I remember when Kix 106 was a top rated station. Maybe not #1, but in the Top 5. It probably has no listeners in the city. They all live in the burbs. I see the same thing in Houston. People are sometimes unaware of how their local area has changed until they listen to the radio. It's the canary in the coal mine.
The odd thing about KMPZ was that it was pulling those high shares during perhaps the worst time in CHR history. And another odd thing is that FM100 flipped to Hot AC right after KMPZ flipped to oldies. Instead of moving in a more mainstream CHR direction and taking that audience. I don’t recall listening to Z-98 much during its 2 year stint. Did they ever play any countdown shows? I know Rick Dees was on FM100 from 1984-2001 then 2009-2020 so we can rule Rick Dees out. Did they play Casey’s Top 40 or AT40? I seem to recall Casey departing FM100 in the 90s around the time Z arrived and he didn’t return until around 2001 during the flip of Kiss to Wild to Pig.
I remember FM 100 being an adult oriented CHR even when it was competing against Z-98. I remember it playing roughly one late-60’s/early-70’s oldie each hour. It was generally an oldie with a tie to Memphis and its music heritage.
Z-98 aired AT-40 with Shadoe Stevens. FM 100 aired Casey's Top-40 and Rick Dees. I believe Z aired AT-40 on Sunday mornings, and FM 100 aired CT-40 opposite it. I almost think FM 100 aired Rick Dees on Saturday mornings, but don’t hold me to that.
And WHAL-FM/Hallelujah 95.7 is the #2 rated station in Memphis, with a cume higher than Kix 106! Making it 6th in cume. And WHAL-FM is on a class A signal, having their 60 dBu cover very few places outside of Shelby County!
Also, WDIA is still doing pretty well, even without an FM simulcast.
That would make sense. Great memory! Dees was Sundays on FM100 8pm-midnight during the 1984-2001 era. With a short time in the mid to late 90s 7pm-11pm then back to 8pm-midnight until 2001. Somewhere in the late 90s they switched from the top 40 version to the Hot AC version of WT40. The 2009-2020 era was Sundays 7am-11am on FM100. I can only assume he left FM100 for WHBQ-FM last year. They wouldn’t play him simultaneously on two different stations in the same market.
I actually found out about Z-98 by listening to American Top-40 and hearing Shadoe Stevens welcome the station to the family. I knew I was going to be going to Memphis in a few months and remembered the station. I found FM 100 while surfing the dial as my parents were checking in at the hotel.
I remember listening to FM 100 on an occasional Sunday evening during my brief college stay in Memphis. I never heard Dees, but I might not have been listening after 8:00. I remember hearing Casey on Sunday morning both in 1989 against Shadoe and during the Fall 1993 semester a few years later. The first time I heard “I Would Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)” by Meatloaf was during Casey's Top-40 on FM 100 one Sunday morning. I generally listened to WEGR with Oldies 98.1 as my second button, but I'd tend to hit FM 100 third. I could hear more stations on my stereo on the next-to-top floor of Richardson Towers, but almost all the regular catches were smaller market stations. The only notable exception was WZEZ 92.9 out of Nashville.
FM 100 doesn’t list Rick Dees on its website anymore, though that doesn’t always mean anything. I stream WHBQ-FM sometimes during my workday. It’s one of my TuneIn presets, but I don’t usually flip it on until after the morning show is off. I've heard the Rick Dees promos, though. Seems like I remember hearing Ron Olson was his partner at one point. He was never my cup of tea, but he’s stood the test of time in Memphis.
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