Hagerstown Spring Ratings

[Slinky]

A bit of a throwaway book, with so much cume moving around, but when a market only has 2 books a year, you have to analyze:

WAYZ rules the market as usual. The new Eagle makes a HUGE debut, now 2nd in the market. Eagle made a great debut in Frederick as well. Nassau knows how to do the Classic Hits format. Classic Rock 101.5 debuted strongly in Hagerstown as well, showing there was a huge hole in the market for classic rock/hits and Star 92.1 just wasn't cutting it. The Oldies audience seems to have either stayed with 106.9 or moved over to AM. 95.9 didn't do much with its new Oldies format, but it's not the greatest signal in the market.

Brand new Hot AC 92.1 The Point has a disappointing debut. Really there's no need for this station in the market with Mix 95.1 doing much better with something similar. New CHR Hot 103.7 debuted mid-book so it's hard to get a read on the station's numbers.

Among the stations that didn't change formats, WQCM was down a bit, probably hurt by the new classic rocker. Surprisingly, Wild 96.7 didn't go up even though it lost its only CHR competitor when 101.5 flipped.

 

[leach]

> A bit of a throwaway book, with so much cume moving around,
> but when a market only has 2 books a year, you have to
> analyze:
>
> WAYZ rules the market as usual. The new Eagle makes a HUGE
> debut, now 2nd in the market. Eagle made a great debut in
> Frederick as well. Nassau knows how to do the Classic Hits
> format. Classic Rock 101.5 debuted strongly in Hagerstown
> as well, showing there was a huge hole in the market for
> classic rock/hits and Star 92.1 just wasn't cutting it. The
> Oldies audience seems to have either stayed with 106.9 or
> moved over to AM. 95.9 didn't do much with its new Oldies
> format, but it's not the greatest signal in the market.
>
> Brand new Hot AC 92.1 The Point has a disappointing debut.
> Really there's no need for this station in the market with
> Mix 95.1 doing much better with something similar. New CHR
> Hot 103.7 debuted mid-book so it's hard to get a read on the
> station's numbers.
>
> Among the stations that didn't change formats, WQCM was down
> a bit, probably hurt by the new classic rocker.
> Surprisingly, Wild 96.7 didn't go up even though it lost its
> only CHR competitor when 101.5 flipped.
>

I think 95.9 went oldies after the spring book had already started so it might be a tad early there. Come to think of it, at the start of the book Greaseman did a sold out show in Hagerstown when 95.9 was classic rock WKMZ and then a few weeks later...oldies without Greaseman.

While 92.1 The Point didn't do much in it's debut book, I wouldn't write them off yet. When WKSI Winchester's 98.3 KISS-FM had it's debut, their numbers at first were worse than what The Point had this time. But that was then and this is now. Today that station is giving WINC-FM a run for it's money.

I agree, this is a throwaway book. I have seen some stations that had great numbers in their first book ( Harrisonburg, VA's 106.3 WBOP is an example of that ) only to drop off and never return. It may take another book or even two to really see the impact of the changes that took place in Hagerstown earlier this year. Though I did see something interesting in all of this. The rather large drop for Lite 97.5 WLTF. It looks like they lost quite a bit of their audience this time but I think a lot of it has to do with that Lifetime syndicated show they started airing earlier this year. True people want to be informed and entertained in the mornings but a discussion about women going through that "change of life"?