Mix has effectively replaced WROZ as the Harrisburg market's "Easy Listening" station, locking up the Women 45-54 demo. But in order to really compete for top-dollar against Wink in W25-54 they've got to gently push the younger end down to include more 35-44 chicks. The trick is to identify those songs that the 35-44's love & the 45-54's will tolerate. Another way to think of it is to target a 10-year demo of "fortysomethings", or as Arbitron calls it, Women 41-50. Envision a 45-year old woman and play her favorite songs. Hint: she graduated from college around 1984. So, maybe a music universe focused on the eighties, but slopping into the seventies & nineties. Older songs are more dangerous than newer ones: she knows the newer ones, but might have been too young to relate to, say, Cat Stevens or Carole King. Besides, texture is more important in this format than chronology.
It's really just classic programming strategy: first go after the "extreme" demo--in this case, the oldest cell--and then gradually try to broaden it toward the middle, where most of the bodies (and dollars) are.
