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Rocket Fueled For Christmas, Bob & Tom Out - And Possibly Rock Format, Too

DToTheJ

DToTheJ

Lafayette's WSHP-FM (95.7 The Rocket) will be switching to Christmas music starting Monday. In anticipation of the move, the station has dropped the syndicated "Bob & Tom" morning show, which aired on the station for fifteen years.

Meanwhile, the station's general manager hints at a format change after completing its run as "North Pole Radio," telling a local newspaper, "Tune in and listen... We feel we've found a real good niche in the market and we're going to fill it with real good programming."

More info:
http://www.jconline.com/article/20101028/NEWS09/101028012
 
DToTheJ said:
"Tune in and listen... We feel we've found a real good niche in the market and we're going to fill it with real good programming."
Click to expand...

I'm thinking Lafayette may get it's first FM News/Talk station. It's the only genre Artistic Media Partners has yet to try at it's Lafayette cluster.
 
News/talk on FM, yes. News/talk in general, no.

Remember they attempted news/talk back in 1998 after they purchased 1410AM. That venture was lackluster to say the least.

I think they may be able to pull off news/talk this time around. 95.7's station manager has experience in the format, and it will indeed fill a much needed hole in the market. Too bad the classic rock format has to be sacrificed, though.
 
Well...Lafayette is currently one of the country's strangest markets. AC and news/talk, along with country, are staple formats pretty much everywhere you go. However, Lafayette has been without a market-focused AC for over 2 years and news/talk...minus Jeff Holmes' attempt last year with 1410...for 10. Either format would be welcome, IMO.

CCM is already being done on 106.7, 97.7, and to a lesser degree, on 89.9 and 97.3.
 
AC and Talk make the most sense. I don't see them doing too much local news. That costs too much. At least with the talk format, its all plug and play now.
 
RDO, you have a point with talk. All the prime hosts are ripe for the picking and that alone might be enough to bring in the ratings. Afterall, WIBC and WLS didn't cover Lafayette news, but they still managed to pull in a 2 share at times based on their talk programming alone. Terre Haute also relied on WIBC and WLS for talk until Midwest flipped their fledging country station to talk. Like Lafayette, Terre Haute was without talk radio ever since Emmis sold WTHI(AM) which was also roughly a decade ago. WIBQ starts up a talk format a year ago and its now #3 in market. Granted, WIBQ's signal is just as good in Terre Haute as the other 50,000 watt stations in town, but it shows how the format could be successful if it has the right lineup in place.

As far as local news goes, I suppose they could try to farm it out if they wanted to go on the cheap. The J&C might be interested in providing news stories for a commercial trade or WLFI could provide the station with news copy like they did with GLM.

With AC, the only downside to having it on 95.7 is Artistic could run into the same reception obstacles as WGLM did, if not more. AC, IMO, would be better suited for an in-town stick or a 50,000 watter where it could easily be picked up in more offices and businesses. I'm actually really surprised no one has picked AC up in this market yet. Catering to that lucrative female 25-54 demo would seem like a no-brainer.

Both AC and talk should be in Lafayette and hopefully someone decides to make a go at both in the future whether or not either are in Artistic's longterm plan for 95.7.
 
Talk would require spending money unless they decide to go all bird all the time. Who has Rush now in Lafayette? If you expect WIBC type news though, forget it. Too much ca$h.
 
Nobody does.

The only political talk on Lafayette's airwaves is on WBAA AM/FM, Purdue's NPR stations. It's been that way for over a decade.
 
AC will not work on WSHP because of the signal problems. Classic Rock sort of worked because you can crank it up and quality is not "as" critical and the base of the format was Bob & Tom, which is talk. Talk would work because signal quality is not as important but you would probably need Rush as an anchor and art dumped Bob & Tom because he didn't want to pay for programming. Rush doesn't come on trade so that probably won't happen. Look at the trade options and go from there.
 
Nobody. KHY was doing 6 hour jock shifts. Now with the arrival of Bob & Tom, it appears that the jocks will be doing normal daypart shifts.
 
kd8hho said:
if they do talk, prob end up with something similar to Freedom 95.9
Click to expand...
Which is not a bad sounding bird based station.
 
How long has Ernie Caldemone been with AMP? He was a fun guy to work for in Columbus, IN twenty years ago.
 
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