I'm talking about how, ever since the loss of Power 99, every top 40 or rhythmic in Atlanta never really failed, but somehow managed to just be the format that was "in the wrong place/wrong hands at the wrong time". The Beat.. they never failed, but they just so happened to be owned by the company that figured out and decided if they flipped their fm to newstalk along with am, their overall ratings would improve. WWVA JUST HAPPENED to pop up - on a signal that is not giving the station all the power it deserves. Also, out of all stations, WWVA seems to be the one with the "strange things" happening to the music playlist as the PD change occurs (I guess people are saying the same thing is happening at Star - which, ironically, is a station that was ONCE a top 40..). And speaking of Star, for the longest time, they had a big signal, could've gone more rhythmic, but chose to be heavy on the ac lean for many years. Then WWWQ and WBTS (FINALLY) popped up, WWWQ just happened to be owned by a company that would eventually be bought, causing the station to change. WBTS lasted a good ten years, but (like I said earlier), they just happened to be in the "wrong hands at the wrong time" as well.
Notice how these series of coincidental catastrophic events always happened in top 40 or rhythmic side of things. Most of the other stations seem stable.
I guess one could argue the same thing happened to the rock stations and soft rock as well, so I can't really say the Bermuda Triangle Effect ONLY happens to the top 40 and rhythmic formats. One could also say I should notice that unlike some other formats that just failed and disappeared, I should count my blessings that my favorite ones were always reattempted every time a bad circumstance hit. Maybe they weren't as lucky as the "invincible" urban stations (with steady owners, music pd's/playlists, and consistency), but they surely weren't as lucky as the other Atlanta formats that were actually tried once, failed, then never came back at all.
Anyway, Q100 is sounding pretty good and "proper" right now, and I believe- if given time and an appropriate signal, WWVA COULD EASILY be everything that it has potential to be as well, especially nowadays, with all the changes and evolutions that have taken place in rhythmic music recently. Urban and Rhythmic no longer share as many songs as they used to, now that music has changed and a lot of urban influenced pop & r&b today don't cross over into urban like it did when hip hop itself was "the new pop" that was dominating the charts in the mid 00's. I can see urban continuing to do well in Atlanta, but I truly believe a proper rhythmic/rhythmic top 40 - ON A FULL POWER SIGNAL can earn its way right up and surpass at least one of the four Atlanta urbans in ratings. I believe there are more people who are into urban sounding music that also want to hear some variety sounds with their urban influenced sounds than people think, rather than strictly hearing one particular urban style sound. But, of course, if a rhythmic is not available, they will settle for something else that's "good enough" or "somewhat good enough" as a quick source of music from time to time. I doubt that the "wierd playlist issues" will effect WWVA's cume though, since the average listener only listens for a brief period of time and will not notice one song, a few, or all the songs that are oddly disappearing and coming back to WWVA's playlist a week or two later. They'll think it just wasn't playing at the times they were listening. On top of that, the songs that are vanishing and coming back are hits, so it's not like new listeners will be unfamiliar with the recurrents that are "mysteriously reappearing on the playlist".
Q100 is great, but the whole thing would just be "incomplete" without WWVA. WAMJ, WHTA, and WVEE are not only different from each other, but are all a lot more different from WWVA than many people think, and the ones who love the WWVA sound will easily see the differences.
AS FAR AS NEW MUSIC:
WWWQ has improved with adding new hits "in a timely matter". However, WWVA, for some reason, has something odd going on with their playlist. Not only are new hits by (some) artists that have already been established on their station, lacking, but (like described earlier) there are RECURRENTS (proven hits) that are disappearing and start slowly but suddenly coming back into rotation days/weeks later! It's not even like people could say "those songs that work on top 40's or rhythmics elsewhere wont work in Atlanta", because even Q100 has even successfully added many of them! What's funny is that as soon as WWVA has a mixshow, many of those "missing" hit songs are surely played in those mixes.