I believe that this whole process started about 9 months ago when their numbers started staying very stagnant after a very turbulent Spring and Summer 07 book. The morning show fiasco was the first nail in the coffin back around this time last year. They tried bringing in someone from Texas, and that failed miserably. They played around with Randi, Ronni, Mo, and whoever else was around the station at 6am, which bombed. Blazor and Mo weren't a smart choice, but given their financial responsibility to Grego, they didn't have much room to maneuver with a "new" established show. The current (at least until yesterday) morning show is hard to listen to. They look at the front page of the Drudge Report, and regurgitate it. Add to that, the begging and fishing for calls to extend the content, and you have what it is, an under-developed and amateur morning show that can't anchor listeners to the station for the rest of the day. Overt repetition is understandable in the radio industry, but hearing them constantly doing the Pay Attention part of the show was tiring. Who has time in the morning to listen to 4 hours of a show? Being the new kids on the scene, they should be happy that they have listeners at all.
After researching the Arbitron numbers for each day part and jock, they were basically stagnant as well. Instead of bringing in fresh talent, The Blitz brings back Viper, who sounds as old as he is. His numbers stay the same, as well as the sound of every one of his breaks. Ronni's numbers go up about 2 years ago, then slide back down. "Hey baby" gets old, along with the seemingly endless Ronni's Rock Report that goes on way too long. Why she couldn't do quick :30 blips throughout her show every hour and keep her listeners coming back to hear more is beyond me. Hannibal has one of the best Rock deliveries and interaction between himself and the listeners. He sounds like nighttime radio should at a rock station. The part time jocks as well as the overnight jocks are well, exactly that. The PPM won't be in the Columbus market soon enough to reap the supposed under-utilized numbers as a Rock station.
The Blitz started sounding interesting around the end of last year. They were running funny and interesting contest promos and imaging that really gave them the feel of a major market station. If I didn't listen to the station for the music, I listened to hear what contest they were running for the weekend, which leads me to the next point. Why do weekend contests? Your weekend listeners are different from your weekday listeners. Some stations even change their playlists and imaging for the weekend because of this. Have a weekday contest when you have the most listeners, or plan it to drive listeners to the day parts that you want to improve. The cool imaging stopped, the daily dead-air watch began, and the station went back to sounding like it was put together by interns. Why not keep the momentum up and move forward. With the "pray for rain" billboards and the crazy spots, they began to have a pulse again. They pulled the plug, the heartbeat stopped, and we're back to square one.
Regardless of whatever The Blitz will become, I am hoping that there is freshness to it, as well as something that binds me as a listener to it. When Radio 106.7 came on, I liked the broad playlist, but now I think the station lacks a personality. The Blitz used to have a huge personality. It once was the young, tough rocker. Now it's the tired old man who sits alone in the dark, listening to his 8 tracks and LPs, refusing to get a new-fangled cd player. The Blitz thought that 106.7 wouldn't go after them, but they were wrong again. Someone asked why they didn't finish out the week. This is radio, they make sudden changes to avoid an employee revolt. That course of action is almost always what happens.
NABCO has a great signal with 99.7, and I can't see them swapping it with Talk-FM. Even voicetracked WMNI gets higher ratings than WTDA. More local based programming would help. You don't need to pull over talent from other stations, but you do need to put someone on that is engaging. Whatever happens on Friday, I hope there is true change. I feel for the jocks that might lose their jobs as well as their families, however, this is now the norm for this industry. Get a new sound, new jocks, and new programming, and start fresh. NABCO is a small company that should have the ability to be very agile and not have to worry about clearing each step with 10 levels of bureaucracy above them. Give Columbus something that really stands out.
By the way, a little bit of basic web site hacking will reveal what they're flipping to. They may want to protect certain directories on their web server.