The Lake format on iHeart's 102.5 in Greenville-Spartanburg used to be very similar to the Charlotte Lake on 102.9, but they have changed it a bit and it seems more rock oriented. I prefer the Charlotte Lake which reaches most of Spartanburg before a Greenville translator begins to interfere.
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Charlotte Ratings Updated 06/14/23
- Thread starter amfmradio1
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In PPM markets, it's not uncommon to see 6-month (or more) averages used for agency buys. They excluded December and Holiday books, and sometimes the summer months are skipped.
Non-agency accounts don't generally subscribe to ratings, and the "numbers" are not the first thing they look at for local direct sales.
WOSF is still licensed to Gaffney. There’s no controversy. Just listen to the legal id at the top of the hour, or check the FCC’s website. The community of license with the FCC has nothing to do with what Nielsen market it falls in. Two totally different things.
That’s true, local advertisers don’t always buy off of the numbers, and I’ve seen agencies or whoever ask for more months. I still see the 3 month average used and requested most of the time though.
My point was one month doesn’t really matter, and if you average it out WBAV is stronger than WOSF, and that is the case more often than not.
But even though WOSF has moved their signal more towards Charlotte, I guess they are still required to provide a strong signal in Gaffney, which is still their city of license. Is that correct? Several Charlotte stations have strong signals even in Spartanburg, although as you suggest they really don't care about distant listeners outside of the core market.
WOSF is legally required to provide a signal above a certain grade to Gaffney. That is correct. They don’t have any problems meeting that requirement, as their transmitter is just one county north in Gaston County.
However, they are not legally required to cover anywhere outside of Gaffney, including Greenville Spartanburg.
Often it's because a station is moving and the COL losing their only station needs a backfill, so one is pulled in from a COL that has multiple stations. This is why 99.9 in Asheville is licensed to Old Fort now. One of CC's other stations moved in to Asheville and left Old Fort without a city grade signal. 99.9 city grades Old Fort so the COLs were switched.
Makes sense, although seems like an outdated rule these days. 3 out of 4 of IHeart’s Raleigh-Durham stations have changed COL’s in the past 20 years, but I believe they downgraded most of them to move them or something.
93.9 and 106.1 physically moved closer to Raleigh from outlying towers. It was an upgrade for 93.9, but 106.1 downgraded to a C1 to make their move. I have not ever understood why 100.7 changed COL from Rocky Mount to Wake Forest unless it was part of a larger move involving several stations. 99.9 was being moved into the market around that time and Capitol paid a bunch of stations to make changes (and bought a whole cluster in Wilmington to get ahold of WKXB) to allow that move to happen, so it could be related in some way.
The 100.7 move was very likely tied to that 99.9 move-in. What is now WCMC-FM left its original COL, Chase City, Virginia, which maintained its local service from 980 AM, to be re-licensed to Creedmoor, NC, which had no 'local audio service' before. A few years later when WCMC upgraded to operate from the Auburn tower farm licensed to Holly Springs, they would have had to provide-on paper-local audio service to Creedmoor. Thus:
WRDU 100.7- Rocky Mount to Wake Forest
WDRU 1030- Wake Forest to Creedmoor
Since Rocky Mount has several licensed stations, they could 'lose' 100.7 (which in actuality hadn't operated in the city since 1987). Neither station had to modify their facilities since 1030's transmitter has always been right outside of Cteedmoor and 100.7, with one of the most potent FM signals in the state, already had a city grade signal to Wake Forest. The coastal 99.9's downgrade from a full C1 at Burgaw to a much smaller facility licensed to Boiling Spring Lakes would have been needed as well as Nashville, NC licensed class A WZAX moving from 99.7 to 99.3.
Looking at Hits 96.1 unless IHeart likes being at the bottom I would like to see them try Hot Rythmic AC. This would not affect their other properties plus give it breathing room from Kiss. Think KTU, but with a Charlotte feel and vibe to it.
I like that idea or Rythmic CHR.
That's how they started, after all. There was a photo in The Charlotte Observer of white women dancing.
Rhythmic hot AC more in line ie WFLC Miami or Hot 96.9 in Boston.
Yes they changed from oldies Magic 96 to 96.1 the Beat. Then they became more mainstream CHR as Channel 96.1 and later
Hits 96.1. They did well as Channel 96.1 with Brotha Fred and later Ace and TJ. More recently as Hits 961 they seem to struggle.
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iHeart has two premium choice/playlist log formats for adult hits stations that opt to use them, which both WMYI and WLKO are using. WMYI is using the more rock based one (although they do play some 80s pop) and WLKO is using the more pop/older leaning one. Likely WLKO is using the more pop based one due to the fact that WRFX and WEND are down the hall. WKQC doing fairly well also probably contributes. Plus, there’s The Ride still doing its thing. I would be curious to see how 95.7 performs these days.
WMYI recently changed their voiceover to someone different than WLKO is still using that sounds more rock oriented. I would bet WMYI is more rock leaning due to the fact WROQ is very strong and they want to keep it slightly down so their country stations can stay in the top 3. Just my theory.
In the IHeart app there’s a station called “The Lake” which is what WLKO is doing, and one called “The River” which is what WMYI is doing.
Steve FM in Columbia seems to be using the Lake version of VH. Funny thing I've even notice Big 95.7 using the same playlist as 102.9 The Lake. It's interesting to see how some IHeart VH stations do well with the same music logs, but other not having as good of luck.
Where is Big 95.7?
WRIT in Milwaukee. They were oldies now they are classic hits, but use the same playlist as the lake does.
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