I used to pick up WXRC at 95.7 from Hickory reasonably well even west of Asheville.
I once picked up WTMT outside Myrtle Beach when WEZV was temporarily off the air.
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WORD to 98.9, Magic to 106.3
- Thread starter 101tm
- Start date
I used to pick up WXRC at 95.7 from Hickory reasonably well even west of Asheville.
I decided to try this morning and found quite a few articles about 106.3 when it was in Newberry.
Nothing so far that qualifies as a Wikipedia reliable source that says "Dixie 106.3".
Gave Magic the first really “long” listen this week and sound aside, I think the programming sounds much better than when it was on 98.9 over the past few years.
New jingles are slick and flow really well with the music and overall imaging isn’t excessive but doesn’t sound cheap (a lot of Audacy’s larger market AC stations don’t even bother with jingles and have very generic imaging)
There seems to be a better “balance” between 80s through today (they’ve even added a few 70s songs) but they’re a bit limited on the 90s…maybe 1 song per hour. The playlist seems tighter than when it was on 98.9.
DJ’s sound more excited/engaged and say 106.3 in a “positive” tone
Unfortunately the sound quality is still crap OTA and the RDS doesn’t work half of the time. I know there aren’t engineers around the stations all the time anymore and people do stream (which sounds good) etc but sound quality is still important. I’ve seen several mention it on the Magic FB page. They’ve obviously done something since they put the station in stereo instead of mono but the OTA signal quality is just brutal. I wonder what the possibility of something being broken is - the station had been in mono as a talk station for well over a decade without much processing, so could something be broken they were unaware of that’s surfacing since they fired up the tunes again?
I’ll be curious what the ratings do - there will obviously be drop off from people who can’t get 106.3 or 95.1/101.5/HD (the latter are never mentioned on air) but I wonder how bad it will be. As far as the market goes, most of the areas outside of the primary coverage provided by 106.3/101.5/95.1 (save for Easley, Piedmont, and Williamston areas) are pretty sparsely populated. The recent ratings seemed to show a trend of WSPA rising with perhaps most of the listeners coming from WMYI which has dropped pretty hard, but now WMYI has a pretty good signal advantage with solid coverage of Greenville, Spartanburg, Cherokee, Pickens, Anderson, and Oconee counties in SC, anything to the north of those and pretty far south of those counties too.
New jingles are slick and flow really well with the music and overall imaging isn’t excessive but doesn’t sound cheap (a lot of Audacy’s larger market AC stations don’t even bother with jingles and have very generic imaging)
There seems to be a better “balance” between 80s through today (they’ve even added a few 70s songs) but they’re a bit limited on the 90s…maybe 1 song per hour. The playlist seems tighter than when it was on 98.9.
DJ’s sound more excited/engaged and say 106.3 in a “positive” tone
Unfortunately the sound quality is still crap OTA and the RDS doesn’t work half of the time. I know there aren’t engineers around the stations all the time anymore and people do stream (which sounds good) etc but sound quality is still important. I’ve seen several mention it on the Magic FB page. They’ve obviously done something since they put the station in stereo instead of mono but the OTA signal quality is just brutal. I wonder what the possibility of something being broken is - the station had been in mono as a talk station for well over a decade without much processing, so could something be broken they were unaware of that’s surfacing since they fired up the tunes again?
I’ll be curious what the ratings do - there will obviously be drop off from people who can’t get 106.3 or 95.1/101.5/HD (the latter are never mentioned on air) but I wonder how bad it will be. As far as the market goes, most of the areas outside of the primary coverage provided by 106.3/101.5/95.1 (save for Easley, Piedmont, and Williamston areas) are pretty sparsely populated. The recent ratings seemed to show a trend of WSPA rising with perhaps most of the listeners coming from WMYI which has dropped pretty hard, but now WMYI has a pretty good signal advantage with solid coverage of Greenville, Spartanburg, Cherokee, Pickens, Anderson, and Oconee counties in SC, anything to the north of those and pretty far south of those counties too.
Sadly the 101.5 translator in Anderson sounds worse than 106.3. The feed to it sounds like it keeps going in and out of stereo and it sounds almost tinny. Worse, the music drops every 30-60 seconds for 5-10 seconds at a time and there’s just a carrier.
The 107.7 translator in Anderson for The Block sounds good.
The 107.7 translator in Anderson for The Block sounds good.
I won't try to correct every piece of misinformation on this thread, but the actual history of WSPA-FM's flip from Beautiful Music to Soft AC is this: I became Operations Manager of WSPA-AM/FM in 1990. I had been PD at WSPA-AM since 1986. We flipped WSPA-FM to Soft AC as "Lite-FM" in February 1991. GM Larry Alverson and I had met with consultant Jack Taddeo at the annual NAB meeting in 1990 to plan the flip. IMO, Jack was the best AC guy around at the time. The challenge was to get a rather drastic format change past Spartan Radiocasting owner Walter Brown, aka "The Old Man". We presented the change to Mr. Brown as a much more modest one than it actually was. We told him we'd be "adjusting" from 3 instrumentals to 1 vocal in the old format, to 3 vocals per 1 instrumental in the new one. In fact, we played only a handful of AC instrumentals after the flip. The Spartanburg newspaper jumped on the change, with a headline about how our move had abandoned older listeners. Letters to the editor addressed this injustice daily for a few weeks. But, contrary to an earlier post, we did not "live in the shadow" of WMYI for the duration of the 90's. We gradually made inroads as WMYI's popularity slipped from enormous early 90's shares, and we eventually caught and passed them in the 25-54 target demo, particularly W25-54. It was that success that got me the PD job at WMYI in 2000.
I appreciate some of the fond recollections of WSPA-FM's beautiful music legacy. However, the numbers for that format were fading fast. There is no question that the flip to soft AC was very successful.
Greg McKinney
I appreciate some of the fond recollections of WSPA-FM's beautiful music legacy. However, the numbers for that format were fading fast. There is no question that the flip to soft AC was very successful.
Greg McKinney
Thanks for jumping in and providing some much needed history on WSPA-FM, Greg! I’ve looked for years to find more of their history between the well remembered beautiful music years and the earliest memories I have of WSPA-FM as “Lite Rock”/Magic 98.9 (early 30s here) and have only really found stuff here and there online. I do remember periods in the 2000s as the decade started progressing where WMYI just started wiping the floor with WSPA-FM, I believe. Specifically around 2005-2007 or so I want to say, but it could have started earlier. Not sure why I thought WMYI had always generally been more successful.
Have you looked at what I added to Wikipedia when I found sources? I was able to find a lot on newspapers.com (Wikipedia gives me a free subscription if I use it), NewsBank (a library I go to has that) and ProQuest, and more specific Google searches.
Charlotte's 102.9 Lake has a primary play list of 160 songs. Occasionally some other nuggets get played but mostly 80s and early 90s. Soccer Mom heaven but very repetitive for the rest of us.
Almost 3 weeks in to this and 106.3 still sounds like garbage, as do WYRD-HD2, WFBC-HD4 and the 101.5 translator. No other station in the market sounds like this, not even small operations like La Jefa. Sister station The Block’s 96.3 facility is a translator and sounds a million times better than what is coming out on 106.3. How are they able to make a translator sound better than a C3?! The RDS also only seems to work or be correct 50% of the time.
Sounds like Audacy has put most of their effort and emphasis on upgrading 98.9 for WYRD rather than moving the Magic format to 106.3. Despite Magic being a high rated number 3 in recent ratings. We'll see if that declines in the coming months. Meanwhile by default , 98.9 may gain more out of market listeners due to the stronger signal and wider coverage area. So revenue from out of market political ads may be the motivation.
Considering that the site I use often shows streaming, and it shows very little of that, I'd say that's a safe bet.
They did get new jingles cut for Magic, and new imaging - so the Magic move probably cost more but it’s harder to promote. It’s a lot easier to advertise that WORD got a stronger signal on 98.9 than it is to promote Magic moving to an inferior signal…how do you really put it in a positive way? The 106.3 facility I believe hit #3 as talk 10-15 years ago, even before the Anderson and Pickens/Oconee translators. So it’ll be interesting to see overall where they settle.
I do notice the audio level for 98.9 is still rather low for a talk station, especially compared to 94.5, 104.9, The Fan signals, etc.
Maybe someone at Audacy read these boards,
106.3 is sounding a little bit better than last week,
but it can still use some improvement with sound quality...
The 98.9 WYRD-HD2 and 93.7 WFBC-HD4
still sounds terrible and difficult to listen to.
106.3 is sounding a little bit better than last week,
but it can still use some improvement with sound quality...
The 98.9 WYRD-HD2 and 93.7 WFBC-HD4
still sounds terrible and difficult to listen to.
I noticed this as well. Audio chain sounds cleaner, there’s more fidelity/separation and the audio sounds brighter. It sounds better than 98.1 which isn’t hard but I’ll take it. If I’m correct, 98.1, 103.3, and 106.3 are the only commercial stations in the market not in HD.
WFBC-HD4 is the worst of them all and the 101.5 translator in Anderson sounds like it, it’s like the audio fades in and out almost.
Did Audacy even do a good and effective of advertising the change? Reason I ask I saw the other day in a Facebook group there was some confusion over what happened to both stations, as a few confused listeners thought both stations had folded 😂.
Hopefully that’s just an isolated case but still strange. Someone else contacted us as they were confused why Magic’s “new morning show” was being so hateful (gee I can only imagine) and we politely told them about the change to wish they were thankful as they had no idea about the change and had taken 98.9 off their radio settings 🤣
Hopefully that’s just an isolated case but still strange. Someone else contacted us as they were confused why Magic’s “new morning show” was being so hateful (gee I can only imagine) and we politely told them about the change to wish they were thankful as they had no idea about the change and had taken 98.9 off their radio settings 🤣
Driving south on 85 toward Atlanta 98.9 came in clear down to Commerce and began to break up before Jefferson exit and gone by Braselton. B-93.7 used to make it to Braselton but now there is local interference. Went to Mall of Georgia and hoped to visit the new Whataburger, but the drive thru line was backed up way down the street. Supposedly they are coming to the Upstate and up to Charlotte later this year. But basically Upstate radio makes down to Commerce before starting to drop out. The move to 98.9 definitely expands the reach of WORD programming down in Georgia.
I've gotten WXRC in Marion, NC but not the best.
Maybe the mountains there blocked it but I'm surprised. Now that I think of it the tower was farther north, I think right off I-40 on one of those mountains, at the time I heard the station west of Asheville.
They shouldn't come to Charlotte. We already have What-a-Burger and if they try to locate here they're going to have problems.
Unless it's the same chain that's already here, which I doubt from your description.
There is still a Magic 98.9
(I was listening to recently).
But it is Urban Formatted
and is in Salisbury MD (WSBY).
I kinda like it though, and its an iHeart station.
(I was listening to recently).
But it is Urban Formatted
and is in Salisbury MD (WSBY).
I kinda like it though, and its an iHeart station.
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