Obviously WYLA was not the product the library wanted for the station regardless of board members doing power plays if such occurred.
A newspaper awarding 'best of' is limited in scope and far from accurate when compared to the whole market. Each newspaper has a certain number of readers and a certain 'format', if you will, that targets a certain group in the market. Only some of the readers vote, a small percentage. Generally staff has some influence in the final outcome in some way, intentional or not. Let's say in a market of 1 million, a paper has 100,000 readers and 2% vote on these things. It is easy to surmise 2,000 of 1,000,000 would be responsible for the outcome. While you can counter companies like Nielsen use samplings of small numbers, that number is carefully calculated to be a cross-section of the whole market with results undergoing a 'weighting' to assure a much more accurate result. A newspaper has a certain group that is it's reader, not a wide cross-section of the whole market.
Funny thing, I know a guy at a newspaper with 25,000 circulation. Some of the 'Best of' are determined by staff members because some only get one or two votes. They decide on awarding some of the 'lowest numbers' and 'really close numbers' based on if there is a chance to increase the winner's advertising budget.
Social media is not a bad indicator. The words, however, do not always reflect listening habits overall. It takes an emotional tug to get any post, however. That is an important factor. I do not know the percentage of actual regular listeners actually post. I know the request line back in the old top 40 heyday was thought to be about 2% of the audience, a figure I was told many times.
I think it would be fair to say the station had a loyal niche market. Based on the market as a whole, that might be quite few in number. Stations that tend to be so eclectic tend to reach about .5 to 1.5% of all radio listeners in the primary coverage area. Those same stations are generally highly revered by the local press media simply because they are unique and out of the ordinary. It may have been the library board thought the station would be attracting a much larger cross-section of the market than it did.
At any rate, it is sad to see the station vanish. Regardless of the number of listeners, actual or perceived, I am all for more media options versus less, even if I'm not a fan.
