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Entercom Launches Alt 98.7

Wrong. 89X played active rock for the past three years. Very little music in common between the new 98.7 and 89X. From the late 90s onward, 89X for the most part wasn't a pure alt. Most of the time, they incorporated a good deal of harder rock into the playlist. The 2015 to 2017 period, which brought record low ratings, is an exception.

This is an unbelievably poor move by Entercom. Pure play alt as defined since the mid 00's has no audience here. IHeart tried it with 106.7 and failed miserably. The same fate will befall this station.

Dropping AC makes no sense at all if the aim is to generate revenue.

This appears to mostly be a move to wipe out payroll as opposed to building a successful radio station.

The audio chain on 98.7 sounds terrible right now, I might add.
 
While I enjoy alt rock, I gotta agree with Mark. Unless they did some sort of research that said that the AC product wasn't working or that Alternative is what Detroit needed, I don't understand why they would've dropped it. Seems like a really poor move on Entercom's part, most likely one that will come back to bite them.

If, by some grace of God, they program it better than iHeart did with Alt 106.7 and it actually doesn't flop, I'll stand corrected.
 
AceBiscuits said:
Unless they did some sort of research that said that the AC product wasn't working or that Alternative is what Detroit needed,
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We've talked about this elsewhere. Soft AC skews really old. Just about anything attracts younger. Sure, the audience will be smaller, but the TSL will be bigger, and the demo will be lower. Not a lot younger, but enough to make it worth doing. Plus they have infrastructure in place to import hosted shows from LA and NYC.

That's the only research they needed to do.
 
Re:

TheBigA said:
We've talked about this elsewhere. Soft AC skews really old. Just about anything attracts younger. Sure, the audience will be smaller, but the TSL will be bigger, and the demo will be lower. Not a lot younger, but enough to make it worth doing. Plus they have infrastructure in place to import hosted shows from LA and NYC.

That's the only research they needed to do.
Click to expand...

The audience will be much smaller and AQH share in A25 to 54 will underperform the prior format by a big margin.

All one needs to do is go back to 2017 and look at the data for the failed Alt 106.7 or 2015 to 2017 era 89X. Both stations performed horribly in both ratings and revenue.

This move is all about cutting costs and increasing distribution of David Field's pet format. Detroit hasn't had an audience willing to support a pure play alt since the 90s. To succeed, any such station has needed a good morning show and has needed to skew edgy (with a decent dose of aggro rock), not snowflaky.
 
MarkW said:
This move is all about cutting costs and increasing distribution of David Field's pet format. Detroit hasn't had an audience willing to support a pure play alt since the 90s.
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With regards to your first point, so what? As I said, they have infrastructure to do a national alternative format efficiently (as does iHeart). What's wrong with that? Running radio stations isn't about providing free music to the public. It's about selling ads and making money.

As I said, the audience will be smaller, but more in the demo. They've obviously ascertained there is ad money available if they can reach that demo.
 
You are wrong about "more in the demo." This station will perform horribly in the money demo.

This is yet another case of David Field destroying shareholder value.

98.7 was usually just outside the top 10 in the money demo. This new station will probably be barely inside the top 20. Look at Alt 106.7 and 89X from 2015 to 2017 if you don't believe me.

Format theses by big radio fail often. In your world, every format call evidently is correct and every radio exec is a genius. I've lived in SE Michigan since 1999. This format is destined for failure, mark my words.
 
98.7 is destined for instant failure. Now WOMC should be changing to all Christmas real soon.
 
I wonder if it might actually pick up an audience, now that 89X and The River have exited the formats. I would be curious to see what sort of figures they had in Detroit after the exited the Neilson surveys. I'm guessing the reason ALT106.7 failed was because of the 89X factor. Now that they are history, anyone who jumps into the void could well make some money.
 
leethalweapon said:
I wonder if it might actually pick up an audience, now that 89X and The River have exited the formats. I would be curious to see what sort of figures they had in Detroit after the exited the Neilson surveys. I'm guessing the reason ALT106.7 failed was because of the 89X factor. Now that they are history, anyone who jumps into the void could well make some money.
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That is actually a great point. We’ll see in the next few ratings. I have Alt 98.7 on at the office and a few of my “30 something” employees actually like it.
 
bobgoodbob said:
So what's going to happen with the airstaff of 98.7 the Breeze? They might stick around but I highly doubt it.
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None of them really go with the new format. Chadd and Kristi will end up on some other AC (or even Classic Hits) somewhere else. Kim Adams and Sandy Kovach are probably out of work, unless they get recycled at WOMC. Afternoons were VT'd by Race Taylor in New York, so no loss there.

Unless they launch a compelling morning show, I expect the majority of the dayparts to be VT'd.
 
Kevin said:
That is actually a great point. We’ll see in the next few ratings. I have Alt 98.7 on at the office and a few of my “30 something” employees actually like it.
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This is a good point. I wouldn't be shocked if it was programmed to have more of a rock vibe than the rest of Entercom's alt stations.
 
AceBiscuits said:
This is a good point. I wouldn't be shocked if it was programmed to have more of a rock vibe than the rest of Entercom's alt stations.
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The current state of the format is very pop friendly. The format has shifted from a primary male skew to have a female lean, at the moment. 12 months from now, it could swing back the other way.
 
AceBiscuits said:
This is a good point. I wouldn't be shocked if it was programmed to have more of a rock vibe than the rest of Entercom's alt stations.
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I like Entercom’s Flashback Alt on radio.com, it’s too bad we don’t have it here in Detroit on an HD 2 or 3 or even a main station.
 
TheBigA said:
That would be a smart move given the unchallenged success of WRIF.
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Seems like my guess is proving to be right so far. Noticing Greta Van Fleet in the mix, a band that isn't so subtly an homage to the sounds of Led Zeppelin.

Edit: They're playing Juice WRLD now (that's hip-hop for the older crowd here); not sure what they're smoking over there, or in New York...
 
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