X98.5 adds a talking head!

[awp69]

X now has an on air personality, "Ricky A", to its afternoon drive. Pumped in from Summit's corporate headquarters in Birmingham.

The really question is why? The station has dropped down to a .7 after some pretty drastic changes to reduce new music and play more 90s alt.

The station was up to around a 1.4 last year when John Pallarino was PD and put new music in on a much more regular basis. For a translator on a bad signal, I thought it was doing pretty damn good with those numbers.

Now the station sounds stale and repetitive. And who needs more grunge when The Planet plays enough of it?

Lack of on-air DJs aren't the problem. The playlist is. Just need to go back to the formula that was starting to pay back dividends under Rino.

 

[AMRocks]

I'm sure it's not costing them a dime to add this person. The guy was probably assigned the duties and didn't really have much of a choice.
I'm not a regular listener to know it's it's become repetitive, but their other translator, Chuck 97.7, has definitely changed. I loved the station about 6 months ago. I really never knew what they were going to play. I even heard Johnny Cash once! It really did play "everything" as they claim. Now, it's pretty much 80-90s rock with a token KC & the Sunshine Band thrown in every hour or so. <Yawn> I tend to listen to Earth FM more now. They have more variety, although the music on Chuck was much better (and, where I'm located, the signal was much better, too.)

 

[awp69]

Yeah, Chuck has changed as well and not necessarily for the better. Earth is crushing it on the "adult hits" spectrum.

X added a second DJ yesterday for their mid-day shift. She was already doing promos for the station and is in Greenville. The other guy "Ricky A" is based in Birmingham and is piped in.

Guess it makes the station sound more legit and "local", but still feel it's the playlist that needs work.

I have heard some rumors about some changes that might help that though.

Also hear the usual rumors about it flipping, but with the renewed focus on the station with live jocks and the fact that there's been numerous flip rumors going all the way back to a few months after it came on the air, I seriously doubt there is a flip coming. Four years of those rumors and it's still on the air.