Shut It Down
For those of you outside the Delaware Valley....
WAMS was Wilmington, DE's Top40 station back in the day. The owner made a sweetheart deal with the State of Delaware to sell them the station for more than market value. The calls were changed and now this station runs a continuous loop of pre-recorded (often inaccurate and out-of-date) scheduled highway repair projects (not current traffic - scheduled roadwork).
A flea-bite station in Newark, DE has picked up the calls. This is a station, which can not be received well in most of the Wilmington market and which has a history of changing formats (even calls) every few months. Currently, they are running Scott Shannon's "True Oldies" channel from ABC. People have posted on the Delaware and Philly boards that the station is also running some local programming but (here again) these programs seem to come and go and times keep changing without explanation. Reports have also been posted that the owner is trying to sell or to get somebody to infuse some cash by buying a minority share, and/or that the station is still/again considering yet another format flip.
Against this background, a handful of posters can't stop posting about this station. The Wilmington market is within the primary coverage area of a Philadelphia Oldies station and also has two rim-shot FM Oldies stations with decent signals in parts of the market. The Philly Oldies station generally places in the market's top 10 with ratings close to a three share (plus or minus). The rim-shots (one from York, PA - 56 miles away) also show up in the local Arbitrons; but this "WAMS" does not show up - at all - never has.
Now, a post about "WAMS" pops up here on this board. I have no way of knowing if the "WAMS" groupies on this site have any connection with the station or even if they actually listen. I can't explain the fascination with a flea-bite station with a satellite-delivered format (the three Oldies stations which actually have listeners are all local).
OK, they have a website and somebody did animated graphics. (Yawn) So what? I think this station is a waste of bandwidth. I think they should turn their license back in to the FCC and reduce clutter and interference with real stations on the AM band. I think instead of getting satellite Oldies relayed through a bad AM signal, you should sign up for XM or Sirius and get satellite Oldies direct.
