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Buffalo/Rochester Ripple

S

SirRoxalot

"Alternative 107.7" gets a new PD, from Rochester. Tom Taylor reports:

Alternative rock programmer Nik Rivers has been hired by Entercom to program its new Buffalo alternative rock station WLKK “Alterative Buffalo 107.7” He comes to Buffalo from Stephens Media Group’s WZNE, Rochester “94.1 The Zone.”

Ithaca College grad, with a pretty good track record dealing with poorer signals in Albany & Rochester. Well, he's got another fringe station, now with Entercom. Hopefully, it will be a stepping stone to a bigger signal someday. Maybe he'll shake-up a stale Buffalo market a little.
 
Took a view of The Zone website.....noticed that the station has a lot of on-air staff. Hopefully Nik will be able to put a roster of staff in place, eliminate a lot of the repetition that I'm hearing now on 107, and give the others a run for their ratings. We're pulling for 'ya....
 
For all of Entercom's mistakes/missteps...and I used to work for them...Alt is a longtime strength. They were a previous owner of KITS/SF, one of the darlings of the format.

Here in Pittsburgh, my current station was Entercom's red-headed bastard stepchild. But 21 years ago they finally got serious (after 20 years of ownership) about my station and bought a 2nd FM as a flanker.

After that 2nd FM had served its purpose in helping my station eliminate a format competitor, Entercom flipped it to Alternative. They gave it everything they had and it quickly became a destination where everything about it oozed personality...like how Jeff Kaye might have done Alt-Rock. That good. The people who owned the heritage AOR in the market, Secret Communications, had bought a flanker FM and flipped it to Alternative within weeks of our flip, complete with Howard Stern, but Entercom's "Revolution" held the upper hand until Secret bought both my station and the Revolution...and immediately killed it for Smooth Jazz.

I learned from my PD that Secret knew they were killing the better station, but between the then-astronomical $21 Mil spent on "The X" ($10 Mil for Howard Stern and $11 million to buy a city-grade signal to replace the suburban stick where the X was originally launched) and the ever-so-infinitely slight sliver of a possibility that the FCC would not approve the purchase from Entercom...they made the correct business move.

The Revolution lasted all of ten months. And even though The X is still around, Gen X-ers still remember The Revolution very fondly today and wonder why it had to go away. The X spun it as combining the best of both stations but it just wasn't the same.

I know 107.7's about the last place you'd want to be to launch anything in that market. But I wouldn't bet against Entercom's ability to build a successful Alternative franchise.
 
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Entercom's apparently going to take another shot at the male numbers that Cumulus attracts, and Jack's P2 status for rock-oriented listeners. The question is whether they can take numbers away from Jack and The Edge without cannibalizing Star and Kiss. In any event, even a 2-share is better than what 107.7 got as a repeater for WBEN. They could attract a few advertisers that have no interest in any other format on the current dial. We'll see what resources they put into it.
 
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