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102.9 Mike FM

I

icycool7227

I have seen many adult variety hits stations excel and Mike FM was one of the few that changed. How come this didn't work out in Fort Wayne? I really don't think this is one format that will die out completely it's that popular.
 
The signal probably had a lot to do with it. 102.9 is licensed to Huntington and doesn't citygrade much of Ft. Wayne at all. Even the 60 dBu signal covers only around a third of Allen County, and 95% of all listening occurs inside the 60 dBu signal contour. Most people won't work to enjoy radio, and that was probably the case with 102.9 Mike FM.
 
A bit of insider info about MIKE-FM. (I was the Sales Manager).

MIKE was created as the 6th separate station in the Summit City Radio Group by Kris Foate. (Actually they moved the Adult Standards "River" Format from 102.9 to WGL AM, killing off the Fox Sports Format that was the low-light of recent WGL history ratings wise.)

MIKE started off strong despite the poor signal on the north side of Fort Wayne. Yellow Billboards and a playlist around 3,000 caught people's attention. When the ratings came in, we saw that it shared listeners with EVERYONE, from Country to Rap.

Kris was replaced by Lloyd Roach, from the investors/Board of Directors, to stop the financial bleeding that was occurring. (Kris is now President of the Ft. Wayne Chamber of Commerce). Lloyd did some pruning during the 11 months he was here including selling WXTW Auburn (Alternative X-102.3) and WCKZ (Z-94.1). We also saw the ratings from MIKE go down and WMEE was doing a MIKE style weekend playlist on the weekends. (Remember the "Anything weekends"?)

So, we killed off MY-103.9 and brought back ROCK 104, brought the River Adult Standards back to FM at 102.9, as a simulcast with WGL-AM and tweaked WILD 96.3 WNHT and by doing this we created three distinct radio stations with very little listener overlap and slashed the sales staff payroll, by going from 6 separate sales staffs to three.

If we were streaming the station, the way all Summit City Radio Group stations do now, they might have stayed around, but as you can see, there was a lot going on behind the scenes.
 
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