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WIVK

RMarino

RMarino

Why is it that WIVK goes unchallanged for the country audience in Knoxville? Surely they can't be unbeatable. Even if by chance that was true, someone else could get a healthy slice of that rather large country pie (I mean a 25 share, come on now!)

What country competition have they had? I know for awhile WOKI 100.3 was country.
 
WOKI was the only full market signal ever to challenge them and got them back into the teens. WIVK controls that signal now. The only other two 100KW signals are making good money as is 15kw WWST. The only other station with more than 6,000 watts is owned by (you guessed it), Citadel.

Eventually someone with a pipsqueak signal will try again (maybe the new 96.7). But WIVK is pretty much invulnerable.
 
Several other stations have tried over the years to compete with WIVK with a country format and none have been successful. WBIR-FM 103.5 (which is now known as WIMZ) ran a country fromat during the mid to late seventies before they switched to rock and became Rock 104 in 1979. Mack Sanders tried it at 95.3 FM before he made that station and WNOX-AM the LAUGHING STOCKS OF KNOXVILLE RADIO in 1982. And 94.3 FM tried the format in the early eighties. All three stations failed MISERABLY when they tried to compete with WIVK.

Another advantage WIVK has is tradition. I know people in Knoxville and East Tennessee that have not listened to another station in at least 15 years. Even if another station tried the country format, a VERY LARGE segemnt of WIVK listeners would stay with them out of habit, even if the other station was VASTLY SUPERIOR to WIVK.
 
A lot of stations are that way. When I was in the Tri-Cities, WXBQ was the top dog (and still is) as far as country stations go. No one has tried to go up against them, but WGOC does a good job in the classic country vein. I'm now in the Fayetteville (NC) market, and WKML is the number one country station here and has been for quite some time. But they have not been the number one station. WZFX (Foxy 99-Urban format) has retained the number one position for a long time. This is a rather strange market, whereas stations from other ranked markets invade the Fayetteville market. Stations like Eagle 92.9 (Florence), Wheelz 100.5 (Marion/Florence) and 94-7 'QDR (Raleigh) come into the Fayetteville market, 'KML is still the country leader. 'IVK and 'XBQ need the competition, if anything, to freshen up their stations and thereby give the respective markets a little life. What it takes, though, is money and power.
 
very impressed with jwk's knowledge, nice! it is pretty much impossible to compete with the powerhouse wivk unless you're bill gates coming in with some super station and talent; and even then it would take ten years to become even with wivk. from a tradition aspect, wxbq is pretty much in the clear like wivk, if not more; but when it comes to everything else, including a one-on-one relationship with your audience, that's why wivk is ten times better than wxbq. feel free to argue this point, but am I the only person who believes that djs on country radio should at least be SOMEWHAT in tune with that type of music they're playing?... i don't want to see my country radio dj in public wearing baggy pants and a backwards ball cap. sure we work where we can work, like any other professional person trying to make a living, but the issue isn't with the people who take these jobs, it's the ones who hire them. i was taught in school that "format" is more than what kind of music you play, it's every aspect of the station. can you professionals tell me if that's correct? i like to think it is and that's where wxbq is totally clueless! i can name at least four people on wxbq who are the type of people i just described and two of them are real good friends of mine. as an etsu graduate who lives in morristown, i can pick up both stations very well and it's obvious to anyone who enjoys country music that wivk is better. although wxbq is dominating their market, they should have 25's like wivk, not 19's that keep falling.
 
Granted that to compete with WIVK, you'll need some heavy-duty talent and a great signal to even try to take on that heritage. If any signal could have done it, I would have thought 100.3... So why then did the country experiment at WOKI fail? What did they do wrong?
 
Nothing really went wrong at WOKI when they were running a country format. They were the first station that had a country format that was actually able to pull some of WIVK's numbers from them. Dick Broadcasting bought Johnny Pirkle out and took over WOKI. They changed formats because the FFC would not allow a corparation to run the same format on two station unless they are simucast on both stations.
 
The FFC? What is that? I know you can't mean the FCC. U.S. Government has no control over what the music format of a station is. Canadian government does, but not the U.S.

If you're saying that WIVK owned WOKI at the time and didn't want the competition, that's another thing. But didn't they have different owners until 2003 when Citadel bought Dick (long after 100.3 ditched country)?
 
RMarino said:
The FFC? What is that? I know you can't mean the FCC. U.S. Government has no control over what the music format of a station is. Canadian government does, but not the U.S.

If you're saying that WIVK owned WOKI at the time and didn't want the competition, that's another thing. But didn't they have different owners until 2003 when Citadel bought Dick (long after 100.3 ditched country)?
Click to expand...
That was the reason Dick Broadcasting gave when they reached an agreement with Johnny Pirkle to take over the management of WOKI. Several spokespersons from Dick Broadcasting stated that the FCC would not allow them to run a country format on both WIVK and WOKI at the same time since they were being managed by the same corporation. From my understanding, Dick Broadcasting is still paying Johnny Pirkle a large sum of money each year for the agreement they made with him back in the 90's.
 
According to what I had read on www.hallsnews.com and the Walker Johnson Column the first deal in the (mid 90's) was a ten year deal which expired in 2005 it was re-upped. After the LMA extention that was when Citadel moved the newstalk format to 100.3 and the sports animal was born 0n 99.1. The new deal is a 7 year deal and keeps the mighty 100,000 watt signal from challenging WIVK and keeping it in the Citadel stable until 2012
 
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