It comes down to knowing your customer. Y102 target's Reading/Berks A25-54 And skews more F than male in that demo. They don't try to be something they aren't. They are a local radio station to their coverage area.
They are a hybrid format between rock and almost AC. They stick to the music in their format. Classic rock and the best of today. They will play new stuff from the classic rock acts and the lighter side of new rock artists. You will hear new songs by the stones, bon jovi, etc but you won't hear radiohead, kings of leon. You will get the lighter rock hits of new artists like a KT Tunstall, rob thomas, occaisonally foo fighters, etc.
If listeners want to hear Straight out Rock or straight out more alternative they can get the Philly stations plain as day. A Reading station can't compete with WMMR, WYSP, or a WRFF for rock/alternative and they would be stupid to try. If you are number one in the market overall and hitting on all cylinders over many demos to change would be stupid. Same way if they want Pop Hits, Hot AC, or other formats just surf the dial and you can likely find a philly station that can do it better.
Plus Y102's airstaff knows the community and is more entertaining than some of the other air staff's in the area.
Look at the market.
WEEU goes for the older demo with Feedback, Rush, Charlie and Co. etc.
WIOV is a Lancaster station with great spilover into Berks, and they are country and they do quite well in Reading with the country format.
Frank - You can't go into Reading berks with a format that listeners can already get on their radio. Listeners can get almost the same music on their radios with MGK from Philly, WRVV from Harrisburg.
2 years later, Frank now appears to have waved the white flag and given up on Reading trying to carve out a niche of western suburban Philly radio. You hear it in their liners, saying serving Phoenixville, Pottstown, West Philly suburbs etc. Even their marketing pieces are amusing I saw one that used a NY/Philly combo to try to make them show as many listeners as possible. Kind of Funny how Frank creates a custom market NY/Philly combo for their ranker. They must have used a national book or something but it was just amusing that someone tries to create a book that doesn't exist and changes their liners to try to carve out a region where none exists.
Reading is almost like an island to itself as you have full spillover from Philly, Harrisburg/Lancaster and Allentown. The stations that know their customers seem to keep doing well. The Y102's, WEEU and WIOV all keep plugging along doing their thing while the new kid on the block tries to move to another nieghborhood. Best of luck to adll stations in the market and the ratings were scheduled to come out last week around the 1/14 so to be a week later and have heard nothing could just mean that the book was bizarre.
