Yet, when Emmis bought WHN in 1986, they added sports talk programming in the evening. At that time, WHN was the flagship station of the New York Mets. Then, on July 1, 1987, Emmis dropped the country format to take a chance on an all-sports format. Thankfully for the country music fans, WYNY flipped to country music on the same day that WHN became WFAN. I remember that WFAN struggled to make the all-sports format work during its early years, but as we know, WFAN would gradually become a successful station that has inspired other stations to adopt the all-sports format.
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Country for Frisco,zilch for NYC
- Thread starter JoeBenjamin
- Start date
In fact, Country WHN only had three really good years, 1977 to 1979. By 1980, it was in significant decline and by 1984 it was down to 19th or 20th.
Yes, I remember that "transformation." WYNY was simulcating a different Evergreen station with a different format each day. (See details here) Then, on February 10, 1996, I was pleasantly surprised when the station first identified itself as WKTU and started playing dance music.
Jeff Smulyan was a big sports fan. He bought the station mainly to get the Mets contract. The station at the time was owned by the Mutual Broadcasting System. They had just been sold from Amway to Westwood One, and as part of the sale they sold WHN and WCFL Chicago.
In October of 1980 WRVR-FM flipped from jazz to country WKHK Kicks Country, giving WHN competition from an FM. While the FM station wasn't a success, it did hurt WHN.
In September 1993, Infinity's Mel Karmazan announced his company would manage Westwood One, and that forced the sale of WYNY. The CBS deal came later, and CBS Radio was combined with Westwood One.
Interestingly, both of those were highly directional 50 kw that had to protect something to the west of them. WHN, of course, not only protected Mexico but nearby CHUM. Smulyan managed to orchestrate the combined deal with SBS to move sports to 660; that gave WFAN a true full market signal.
Of course, that was the tail end of the definitive move of mass appeal formats to FM... any AM music station that did not have a primarily 35 and over appeal was going to decline rapidly in those years.
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On the topic of available frequencies, Chicago seems to be the largest market that is at no shortage for full market FM’s. There have been a lot of changes in that market (due to the “wiggle room”) vs markets like NYC due to less short spacing and pretty much everything is available in some form on the dial.
In NYC, I know the signals aren’t the same, but I see 95.5 going religious as a swap for 94.7 going commercial which had been religious for decades.
In NYC, I know the signals aren’t the same, but I see 95.5 going religious as a swap for 94.7 going commercial which had been religious for decades.
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This was part of the GE purchase of RCA & NBC, that led to the sale of NBC Radio and the NBC radio stations. Emmis got WNBC and Westwood One got WYNY, which reunited it with the country format.
Yet part of the key to making the deal work was a satisfactory sale of 1050 AM to SBS, which then moved its "Super KQ" format from the inadequate 620 facility to 1050, giving Smulyan the needed leverage to make it all happen.
The (now demolished) WHN 3-tower DA next to Giants Stadium didn't protect CHUM. It was built in 1941 with protections to Mexico, KYW and several more distant Canadians on 1050. CHUM came later, first as a daytimer and eventually full-time, and it has always protected New York... unlike 1010, which was a Canadian/Mexican clear and where WINS had to provide considerable protection to Toronto.
You can hear the difference very clearly in Rockland County, where WEPN is a much cleaner signal than WINS.
You can hear the difference very clearly in Rockland County, where WEPN is a much cleaner signal than WINS.
Generally speaking here but why is 25-54 more important to radio but 18-49 for tv ??
It's not comparable. 95.5 is on the Empire State building with one of the best signals in the market. 94.7's transmitter is out in New Jersey where it masquerades as a New York City station. No matter what the coverage maps may show, its signal is absolute garbage in Manhattan, and everywhere else in the 5 boroughs where tall structures block and reflect that signal from out west. It also misses a chunk of Long Island that real NYC stations reach.
What moved to 1050 was not WSKQ itself, but the Spanish-language AC format. WSKQ stayed on 620 while SBS used 1050 as noncommercial placeholder station WUKQ until the frequency exchange with WEVD was completed. WSKQ flipped to a Spanish-language oldies format, and WUKQ played Spanish-language AC music. On February 1, 1989, WUKQ moved to 97.9 FM and became WSKQ-FM while WEVD moved to 1050 AM. WSKQ-FM, which was then known as FM 98, played the Spanish-language AC music that was previously broadcast on 620 and on 1050.
I wish EMF would have gotten 94.7 instead of 95.5. IMO, 94.7 would be a much better signal for K-Love than 95.5, given that K-Love trends more suburban and NJ listeners probably eat that format up vs NYC. I know I know, EMF doesn’t care but just theorizing. The contemporary Christian and country audiences tend to overlap a lot. However, I’m guessing EMF was willing and had way more $$$ to cough up than Entercom/Audacy did for WPLJ. Entercom probably would have nuked PLJ anyway and kept Hot AC on New 102.7 instead.
If the whole country format had been on 95.5 (which Cumulus could have done), I don’t think it would have done any better. Maybe the limited LI coverage would have helped, but not by a lot.
I’m assuming Audacy is going to let that CP for 94.7 expire. I do agree with the prior comment that if iHeart could have another FM in the market, they probably would do country and be willing to accept the lower revenue due to a lot of their syndicated programming getting clearance in market #1.
Well it's a New Jersey signal and it should rightfully be a News-Talk station that super-serves northern NJ, similar to the way WKXW does in Trenton & central NJ. If they did local sales they would have all the northern NJ businesses, car dealerships, etc. locked up since there aren't a lot of other mass media outlets serving North Jersey's rather large population.
I realize the reality of Nielsen's ratings methodology and the agency business in the NYC market makes this prohibitive and we'll never see it. Too bad, since that would be the best use of that signal and would best serve the public in its strongest coverage area.
WHN was an AC/country station not full country and times were different. NYC is much more ethnic now now. WYNY hovered at 1.7-1.9 and was never incredibly successful. I have no idea if they made money but it was no show stopper. After that there was little to no interest in a new country formatted station. Presumably because it wouldn't and doesn't sell which has been discussed ad nauseum and proven yet again with the demise of WNSH. I doubt we'll see anyone give country a try again in NYC for decades
Since we're discussing former Country stations in this market, how did Y-107 do?
They had 4 stations in the region on 107.1 all simulcasting the same Country programming. As I recall, most of their commercials were from NJ businesses. So perhaps they only really needed their one station on the Jersey shore.
As I recall, they were bought by a Hispanic broadcaster, which made the disastrous decision to flip the programming to Spanish CHR,, even though their signal(s) reached relatively little of the intended audience.
They had 4 stations in the region on 107.1 all simulcasting the same Country programming. As I recall, most of their commercials were from NJ businesses. So perhaps they only really needed their one station on the Jersey shore.
As I recall, they were bought by a Hispanic broadcaster, which made the disastrous decision to flip the programming to Spanish CHR,, even though their signal(s) reached relatively little of the intended audience.
That is sort of like "Fiddler on the Roof": tradition. TV simply has, for many decades, looked at 18-49 despite efforts by CBS to get it changed to 25-64 or something leaning older.
Yeah, but in Spanish language radio we refer to station names, not call letters. There are stations I have owned whose call letters I don't even remember!
My point is that the key to the Emmis transaction was to find someone to take over 1050 and, of course, one that would not keep an English language format that might compete with them. SBS had the financing, the desire and the Spanish format. What SBS did after that was their own set of steps, also involving having to find buyers for the over-quota stations at each point in the process.
Trenton is a separate rated market. NE New Jersey is not... it is part of the NYC metro. The problem stations that serve parts of a market have is that there is vastly less revenue and even less audience interest.
For example, Long Island is the 20th largest US market, but since it is embedded in the NYC market, it is only 45th in revenue and over 70% or listening is to NYC radio stations. This is typical for smaller adjacent markets as well as embedded markets.
That would still not take away the fact that the NYC stations get the bulk of listening in their own coverage areas.
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