> NYC needs an alternative station,an oldies station, a talk
> station & a country station. 105.1 could be
> alternative,102.7 could be oldies,107.1 in west chester
> county could be talk & 96.3 could be country.I'm sorry all
> of u hip-hop fans out there i think nyc only needs 1 hip-hop
> station the one that was there the longest Hot 97.
>
Ratings of Hot 97 and Power 105 are consistently high, and neither of these stations is likely to take a huge risk of switching to a format like alternative rock or country. Conventional wisdom is running strongly against oldies right now, however strong CBS-FM's performance might have been immediately prior to its recent flip to Jack.
No one would love a real alt-rock station to return to the airwaves more than me, but I'm totally unpersuaded that Power 105 should or will flip to that or any of the other formats you mentioned. It's just not in the cards. Maybe it seems redundant for there to be two hiphops FMs in NYC, but the market is obviously huge, and the stations' numbers tell the story.
As for Mix 102.7 flipping to oldies, that might not be the craziest idea in the world, given the numbers CBS-FM had versus those of Mix. But of course, it's owned by Viacom (Infinity), where the decision to flip CBS-FM to Jack
was made. If they wanted to continue to program oldies, they could have made CBS and Mix oldies and Jack, respectively, which they didn't do. That has been hashed and rehashed on this board at this point.
Switching 107.1 The Peak from AAA to alternative is an interesting idea. With the station's limited signal, that might not seem like a solution to a lot of alt-rock fans, but might (or might not) be in that station's interests. I kinda like listening to The Peak (or at least knowing that it's there for me to listen to), but on the other hand, the point I'm supposed to be making here is that demographics and ratings (and billing!) are what really drives programming decisions, not satisfying a particular fan base. So I can just dream on...
Also, there is plenty of talk on AM. WABC, WOR, WLIB, not to mention the sports stations. WNEW's experience with "Hot talk" on FM might have been a poor example of FM talk, but it was a dismal enough failure that it's hard to imagine another New York FM doing talk.
And country? Haven't we talked enough about that already?