I think a better term for what happened at WCIE might be a sellout. The previous owners sold the station to a group they knew had no intention of keeping a CCM format and probably made little or no effort to find a buyer that would keep CCM, and they deserved most if not all of the blame.
Something similar happened at least three times in TN, with WMSO in Memphis (Sold to Bott in 1986), WAJJ in McKenzie, TN (Sold to a KJV Only, anti-CCM group in 2005), and WNAZ in Nashville (Sold to Bott in 2011). In all three cases the same thing happened as with WCIE.
I was very vocal along with others when WMSO was sold about protesting Bott's removal of CCM, but they had it set in their minds that they were doing what they believed was God's will (right or wrong) and there was no changing it. As time went on and through contact with people who worked for Bott I realized that they didn't know anything about doing a CCM format and we should have never expected them to keep CCM, and that the previous owners deserved most of the blame for selling to Bott when they knew they had no intention of keeping CCM.
After that with the sales of WAJJ and WNAZ I knew the groups who bought the stations would do the formats they knew and I didn't expect them to change. So I directed my comments that I believed the sale was wrong at the previous owners, who deserved the blame. In the case of WAJJ I felt like I was the only one who protested the sale, but in the case of WNAZ there was a major effort to save the station by the listeners, but in both cases our protests were ignored and the stations were sold anyway. In both cases we were probably too late because by the time the news was out the deals were done. But in both cases the previous owners who sold out to the first buyer and made little or no effort to find a buyer that would keep CCM deserved the blame, not the new owners who they knew had no intention of keeping CCM.
In the case of WMSO however, God was able to turn it around and start something even better. The previous owners made up for selling WMSO in the 90's by starting WYLT 94.9, which eventually became the first K-LOVE station in Memphis, and was the first of all the K-LOVE and Air 1 stations in West TN, North MS, East AR, and SE MO. So although I believed WMSO's owners were wrong in selling out, God used it in a way to eventually expand CCM radio into areas that never had it before.