• Get involved.
    We want your input!
    Apply for Membership and join the conversations about everything related to broadcasting.

    After we receive your registration, a moderator will review it. After your registration is approved, you will be permitted to post.
    If you use a disposable or false email address, your registration will be rejected.

    After your membership is approved, please take a minute to tell us a little bit about yourself.
    https://www.radiodiscussions.com/forums/introduce-yourself.1088/

    Thanks in advance and have fun!
    RadioDiscussions Administrators

Indy's i94 now Hot AC

A

Apollo7979

It appears i94 has made the transition to hot AC this week as a lot of 90s and early 00s tunes have been added to the playlist.

The new slogan didn't quite sink in when I heard it but it was something like "Indy's Hits from the 90s through today."

I wonder how this is going to play out. On one hand, Indy hasn't had a full-blown hot AC since the days of WENS. However, they will be competing with other well-established (and more powerful) adult stations. Since i94 hasn't upgraded their signal yet, at-work listening, especially from downtown south and west, could play a major role in the station's performance.
 
You are correct Mike. Although unlike hot ACs, modern ACs like ZPL stay current musically and don't tend to play music that's much older than a couple years old. I94 is playing the 90s & 00s while playing the same stuff ZPL plays. Although, I don't think a broader playlist is going to make much of a difference. If you can't get the station in the office, you're not going to get the ratings.
 
Apollo7979 said:
Since i94 hasn't upgraded their signal yet
Click to expand...
FCC database shows them licensed at the new power level now. As expected, this small power increase made a negligible difference. It takes a 4:1 power increase to make a substantial difference...a little over a 2:1 difference is about the same as a 3KW class A going to 6KW...a change that's often met with a collective yawn. http://transition.fcc.gov/fcc-bin/fmq?list=0&facid=71438
 
I had no idea that they had already moved. It was about a month ago that I heard WFMS' TOH still identifying Indianapolis as their COL.

According to WPFR's newsletter, their transition happened on June 8, and based on the wording they chose to describe their frequency change, you could tell they're still not too pleased.
 
All Access mentioned the transition from CHR to HOT AC at i94 today. They even got a quote from everyone's favorite CHR programmer, Jan Jeffries.

"i94 has established its base as a tight current list Top 40, and is now in growth mode with the upper end of the 18-34 demos. Injecting some library product to accompany current rotations with limited dayparting is the current process."

This is downright laughable. Anyone knows that if you'd truly established solid ratings, there would be no need to suddenly shift the format.

"Additionally, i94 has established excellent cume. "

Hardly. How this guy manages to keep his gig after he continues to launch failure after failure after failure is beyond me.
 
It's been interesting to watch this station flounder since Cumulus took over. It seems like everyone understood that CCM was the right format for this station; everyone except the programming wizards in Atlanta who blew it up. It took Susquehanna years of experimentation and research to put together a successful format for 93.9. Then just when The Song was going well, along comes Cumulus, who blows it up because they "don't like it," and starts basically pulling formats out of their butts, hoping to find one that works. So instead of listening to the local people who know the market, know the competition, know the station, they just continue to fail.
 
badstevie,
While a completely agree with your accessment of this frequency's situation, I think you must also consider the fact that once local managment changed, there was little resistance locally to corporate's format change. I don't mean this in any "mean-spirited" way, but Chris Wheat wasn't going to fight to keep a CCM format - he likely wanted a change as much as Cumulus was ready to do something else, even probably greeted it with open arms. So, no matter how successful The Song was, there were no champions for it at any level. It didn't stand a chance even if it could draw ratings while doing cartwheels.
 
I think Charlie Morgan was still there when they made him switch it from The Song to news/talk. Which of course failed, and was of course the fault of local management!
 
Charlie and Cumulus parted ways a few months before the Song ended. I don't think Chris Wheat had started as MM at that time.

In other news, the new format sounds worse to my ear than Warm 93.9 did. And that's saying something.
 
If Cumulus were to sell the Indianapolis stations to Cox WFMS would probably put a bigger beating to Hank and I94 would probably go back to CHR and really give 100.9 Radio Now a run for the money. Of course if Entercom want to they could take WZPL back to a full blown CHR since most of the CHRs they run in other markets are near the top of the ratings and they have a much stronger signal than 100.9 radio now.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Charlie and Cumulus parted ways a few months before the Song ended. I don't think Chris Wheat had started as MM at that time.
Click to expand...

Incorrect.

The Song shifted to Christmas in November 2006. FM Talk launched January 2007. Morgan's departure didn't come until Summer '07, followed by Wheat's arrival in early Fall.
 
Google "Charlie Morgan" and you'll find reports that he left Cumulus in Fall '06.
 
N_D_Radioguy said:
PTBoardOp94 said:
Google "Charlie Morgan" and you'll find reports that he left Cumulus in Fall '06.
Click to expand...

And those reports, much like you, would be incorrect
Click to expand...

The thing is, they were (ostensibly) posted by Charlie Morgan himself.  Are you telling me that Charlie Morgan:
a) Is in denial that he worked that last year at Cumulus?
b) Was hit in the head by Jan Jeffries as part of his severance and forgot exactly when he left?
c) Knows less about his own employment history than All Access?
d) Has impostors/fanboys running around the Internet?

:eek:

(Nevermind the fact that all third-party sources agree with you and All Access...)
 
I'm not surprised that i94 is now Hot AC. It seems to me that Cumulus programs a lot of their CHR's as Adult CHR's or Hot AC's. The 3 Cumulus stations (92.3 KKHQ - Q92.3, 99.7 KBEA - B100 and 97.5 WZOK - 97ZOK) that are closest to me have a bland playlist with a lot of older songs that most mainstream CHR's don't play. There are also songs that they don't play that are in the CHR/Mainstream charts.

-Chris
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
N_D_Radioguy said:
PTBoardOp94 said:
Google "Charlie Morgan" and you'll find reports that he left Cumulus in Fall '06.
Click to expand...

And those reports, much like you, would be incorrect
Click to expand...

The thing is, they were (ostensibly) posted by Charlie Morgan himself. Are you telling me that Charlie Morgan:
a) Is in denial that he worked that last year at Cumulus?
b) Was hit in the head by Jan Jeffries as part of his severance and forgot exactly when he left?
c) Knows less about his own employment history than All Access?
d) Has impostors/fanboys running around the Internet?

:eek:

(Nevermind the fact that all third-party sources agree with you and All Access...)
Click to expand...

e. He [or whomever he had post it on his behalf] made a mistake, much as you did above.
 
Fall 06 plus non compete equals??

I think as much as billing was acceptable to most Cumulus believed some hick format they didn't choose would be a sliver of what they could get.

As soon as Cumulus entered the picture there was no local input, that amounted to much. "We pick the format, you manage sales. Regardless of what we do sales had better perform."
 
Status
This thread has been closed due to inactivity. You can create a new thread to discuss this topic.


Back
Top Bottom