I am new to this board, but was amazed to see so much heated discussion of "Big Radio". I live in Freeport and I seldom listen to the stations because I don't like the mish-mash format that seems to permeate all by the Monroe AM station - IMHO, 93.7 plays the sappiest, crappiest, least interesting music of all time. Ir reminds me of why I love XM.
But the format must work, or at least is not a turn-off for the real advertisers, who buy because of local news, local sports, and "big" presence. Thompson's strategy clearly is to cross-sell among the various formats to reach different demos. 93.7 used to pop up with a 0.5 share in the Madison Arbitrons, but no more since he's taken the "region" focus. I think he deserves credit for identifying that there is a regional connection between Freeport and Monroe that could be exploited, something no one else ever did, and adding the Freeport sticks just made sense. He can't go north and Freeport can't go east - so there's "the region".
Now if he'd just put CC's "RealOldies1690" format on WFRL!