"Sappy" kind of sums up WMT-AM... it's usually been several decades behind the times. They were stuck in the 50s until about the mid-70s, when PD Joe Martelle got it up to speed. Then it pretty much stayed in the 70s until Palmer bought it, dropped the music (except Sunday) and made it an actual news/talk station. But it still sounds tired and sappy compared to WHO.
I haven't seen any numbers except 12+ for a couple of years, but I'd expect WHO to do better 25-54 than WMT.
And I'd guess much of the numbers loss for WMT has been in the older demos who have moved over to KMRY, which is playing about the same music today WMT was playing in the 70s.
WMT spent too many years catering to the 65+ part of their audience and failed to do anything (except Rush) to attract any new listeners as the old ones died off. About 10 years ago, a then WMT employee told me they had brought in a consultant, who told them to quit serving rural eastern Iowa and concentrate on CR, since that's where the population is. I think while WMT was staying "comfortable as an old shoe" (as Rick Sellers once termed the station) the people in their 40s who got tired of rock and AC and in other markets would have moved to newstalk didn't move to WMT because it was "too sappy." (A lot of them instead apparently went to KHAK.) Jerry Carr was a nice guy, but did it make sense to have the morning drive show aimed at the WWII generation?
Mediawatcher a few posts back has some excellent suggestions... but CC doesn't seem to want to do much with the station.
I haven't seen any numbers except 12+ for a couple of years, but I'd expect WHO to do better 25-54 than WMT.
And I'd guess much of the numbers loss for WMT has been in the older demos who have moved over to KMRY, which is playing about the same music today WMT was playing in the 70s.
WMT spent too many years catering to the 65+ part of their audience and failed to do anything (except Rush) to attract any new listeners as the old ones died off. About 10 years ago, a then WMT employee told me they had brought in a consultant, who told them to quit serving rural eastern Iowa and concentrate on CR, since that's where the population is. I think while WMT was staying "comfortable as an old shoe" (as Rick Sellers once termed the station) the people in their 40s who got tired of rock and AC and in other markets would have moved to newstalk didn't move to WMT because it was "too sappy." (A lot of them instead apparently went to KHAK.) Jerry Carr was a nice guy, but did it make sense to have the morning drive show aimed at the WWII generation?
Mediawatcher a few posts back has some excellent suggestions... but CC doesn't seem to want to do much with the station.