Let's analyze this whole situation a little objectively.
WROC-AM had a lot of strikes against it;
---By far the worst fulltime AM signal in the market
---Zero marketing and promotion, and consequent anemic ratings in most dayparts, from the moment it became a talker--and this predates its embrace of Air America, Miller and Schultz.
---No local programming once Alan Harris, who DID draw some decent numbers as a morning host while he was on staff, was let go
---A lot of satellite and canned programming notable more for its earnestness than its entertainment value (Schultz, Miller and Rachel Maddow excepted--they are good at what they do, but they're only a quarter of the schedule). Air America in its formative years was a train wreck. It's closer to a professionally competent radio network now, but that comes too late to help WROC.
It's hardly a test of the appeal of non-conservative talk in an essentially non-conservative market. AM 950 had almost no ratings after moderate morning host Alan Harris' show ended at 10 AM, even when they were a right-wing talker the rest of the day. People like Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity never drew flies while they were on 950. When Harris was dropped, unwisely IMHO, the station's numbers went south and never fully recovered.
What WROC does prove is this; if you want to make any impact with any format, especially one you expect to succeed wiht a general-interest English launguage audience, be consistent, be interesting, be LOCAL, and above all, make sure your signal is adequate to cover substantially all of the market you're trying to reach. If you're missing all those things, you won't get it done. WROC has arguably fallen short on all those counts as both a conservative talker with a moderate morning show, and as a left wing talker. The political slant itself has little to do with the station's lack of impact in the market ratings-wise and presumably financially.
If they're going with ESPN next, they're not going to do any better.
Their one hope for that signal to make money is to try a Latin format, including locally produced entertainment and news programming for the Latino audience in the drive times and in middays. WROC's signal is fatally limited for any general-appeal English language format, but its primary coverage pattern does capture substantially all of the roughly 50,000 Latinos living in Monroe County because they overwhelmingly live either in the city of Rochester or the inner ring suburbs. Gradually that population will also spread out geographically as it grows. But that's something Entercom won't have to worry a whole lot about for a decade or two if it picks a format for WROC with a potential audience large enough to be profitable, concentrated within its 5 millivolt signal contour, and sure to be loyal as long as only the one station is there to serve it.
I don't think this will happen while Entercom owns the station. They are not running the Rochester cluster with the same approach they take in Buffalo, where they've invested a lot in two out of their three wide-coverage AM signals and done well with them as a result. (The waste of their biggest Buffalo signal is another story best left for discussion at another time.) Here, they have shown they're interested only in making the full market coverage FMs in their Rochester portfolio pay. They have limited expectations for their one limited-range AM---perhaps more limited than they need to be. WROC will remain what it's been--a signal used to chip away a little at the strength of the AMs in Clear Channel's local cluster, nothing more.
