Merlin doesn't care much, if at all, about WOR or WABC. Those two AM stations are overloaded with older listeners, and with the exception of one or two WOR programs, older males.
Merlin is after younger females, who listen to FM music stations that have five times or more the weekly audience of a WABC or WOR. Look at the NYC ratings, WOR and WABC have a weekly audience of about 1-million unique listeners each, and probably share a lot of the same, mostly older male, listeners. While the big three Clear Channel stations have 5-million younger listeners each. And there likely is a majority of females in that younger FM audience.
As I mentioned in another thread, I don't think most traditional all news listeners will find what Merlin is offering that appealing either. So, Merlin is not a direct threat to WCBS-AM or WINS. It will grow the cume for news listeners by getting mostly younger women to slide from their favorite music stations down the FM dial to catch the latest household tip, celebrity news, and traffic and weather. They may listen every once in a while, and then go back to the music. But, that could give Merlin a large weekly cume, and respectable market share and ratings numbers. That would result in big advertising revenue because of the increased number of spots that can fit into an all news format.
It's hard for most of us who remember the glory days of WOR and WABC, but those AM stations are hardly in the big game anymore.
Check yourself, in the latest PPM ratings WABC has less than 1.1-million different listeners a week, WOR has 857,000 while top station WLTW has 5.6-million, and two of its sisters in the Clear Channel cluster have 5-million younger listeners a week each.
Unfortunately, WABC and WOR have mostly older politically interested male listeners who spend a lot of time listening. That really isn't the audience that most consumer product and services advertisers are looking for. Once Merlin gets going listen to the spots it will carry, as opposed to the viagra, prostate formula, and panic gold sellers you'll hear on Conservative talk radio. It's a different advertising market all together, and the really big money market is for young women, and WABC and WOR aren't in that game at all. Too bad, hard to believe, but that's the way it is.
Merlin is not making a blunder, it knows exactly what it is doing and why. Yes, there are production kinks etc. to be worked out, but those are easily fixed. Remember, it is a totally new organization that hired some very good people. But few of them have ever worked together before. Give it a few months to work out the kinks, and then watch the ratings and revenue numbers. It is on to something big. This format provides the kinds of features and information that women surf for on the web but now can listen to in the car or kitchen. This is about inventing the future of demographically targeted all news radio in a 21st century internet world, not the past, it is not the 1960s anymore. And if you remember back then, lots folks couldn't believe anybody would listen to all news all the time, but those were people who remembered the world of network radio dramas, comedy and soap operas. Times change.
