I would say that WLSQ's format was too good for Crossville and it belongs on a Knoxville signal, but with B-97.5 playing a lot more '70s these days, I doubt there would be room demographically.
RMarino
You are right about WLSQ being to good for Crossville, imagine growing up in Crossville in 1975, 76, & 77 time period, there was no outlet for that kind of music there. Country was the dominating sound back then or Album rock artists Like Steve Miller, Bob Seger, Lynard Skynard, Doobies. Disco, Soul, & R & B crossovers were not, so how could Crossville expect to embrace a format like vintage Top 40 that is Disco, Soul, & R & B dominated. Judging by a lot of these posts on the loss of this little station Knoxville did embrace this format more so than say Crossville, Rockwood or maybe Harriman. So yes it tells me that Knoxville was and still is quite thirsty for a Music Radio style or Golden format of some sort again. Yes B-97.5 is turning back to the 70's over the weekend and have added gold cuts during the day as well but they still use the same jingle package they use day to day, and the jocks don't deliver the 70's any different than they do with their regular programming. What WLSQ seemed to do was recreate radio from 30 years ago. Did people notice the reverb on the station, the vintage 89 WLS jingles, the high personality disc jockeys it sounded like we were listening to a Top 40 AM station circa 1977 or something. Only it was on FM. Even the newscasts reminded me of when I was a kid and my favorite T-40 played the news every hour. It was nostalgic to some degree. I also noticed they never gave the years out to the songs they played. Almost as if they were back in time except the dj's did topical current humor. I remember hearing them do jokes about Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan jokes and other topical current events. So in a way if Knoxville picked up that format on one of their failing stations I don't think it would effect B-97.5. They did well before they started doing heavy 70's. I think the only reason they started the flashback was because they knew their company messed up a couple years ago when they dumped their oldies to go Jack. They knew there was still a thirst for that music but didn't want to completely change B around. I was a WLSQ fan like most. Maybe the nostalgic delivery was what the charm was all about! I wonder if a bigger company could recreate that as well without consultants screwing things up!