Problem with 92.9 going AC is that it would throw them squarely into the Cox AC buzzsaw of B98.5 and 104.1 (less so with 104.1, because I assume that they would be a white-bread AC). Also don't forget Star 94 as a hot AC (when they finally make up their mind what they want to do).
Not to say that CC knew what they were doing, but apparently they thought that Peach couldn't compete with B98.5, despite being a distinctly different soft AC offering with a great brand.
I'm not saying that we're on our way back to the mid-80s when we had 6 AC's at one time (94Q, Peach, B98.5, Warm 100, Fox, and Lite 106), but IMO an AC 92.9 would overserve AC, unless they saw blood in the water at Star and tried to go hot AC and knock them off while avoiding competing with B98.5 head-on.
Now, back to the OP's assertion...Roddy had a great post on his blog about what to do about Rock 100.5. I think the same issue applies to Dave.
I don't know if one station could be, as 99X once styled it, "everything alternative" if "everything" includes all alternative from the 1970s through the 1990s, even if you stuck with softer AAA stuff. Would, say, a Roxy Music or Joe Jackson fan be interested in 1990s stuff, or vice-versa? Yes, an alt connoisseur would, but I think that the "average listener" would find themselves hitting buttons to not listen to the "old stuff" or the "new stuff". Otherwise you're now competing with iPods.
As Roddy said about Rock 100.5 (and Roddy--please keep me honest here), Rock 100.5 is trying to play a little bit of everything from classic rock deep cuts to active rock. Problem is, they are playing classic deep cuts to avoid the "Stairway to Hotel Freebird" AOR cliches, and also not compete so head-on with River. That's a problem because deep cuts result in button-pushing and don't equate to good ratings (yesterday, I heard "Whole Lotta Rosie" by AC/DC, as an example of a deep cut that I almost didn't recognize).
Then there's the problem that many listeners, offered a range of music from the 1970s to today, won't like one end of that time period or the other. While I agree with Roddy on some of his recommendations (leave the active rock to Project), and disagree with others (more classic rock standards--I say go easy on the classic rock altogether and avoid the cliches that way), the bottom line is that Rock 100.5 needs to trim the timespan they are trying to cover, and the same would apply to Dave. Not all--in fact, very few--of the potential listener base I would consider "connoisseurs" that would love a lot of deep cuts and a broad timespan of music. You and me, maybe, but not the general public.
Now, the obvious counterpoint to that is that an AC station like B98.5 DOES draw from a wide timespan, and they have been successful matching up Boston (!) and Nazareth (!!) with female vocalists. Maybe the solution is to program an AAA station like an AC station but with alt music, including all of the research that that entails, instead of an alt station playing just the softer stuff that the promoter brought that week.
