With their ratings woes of late, I saw this coming.
The only thing worse than Christmas music on November 1 is Christmas music pitched up on November 1. The "hippo song" and "Grandma Got Run Over" are bad enough as it is. (43, BTW, and an AC enthusiast.)

I think the late great Paul Christy was behind the AOR era of WCAR. They changed formats so many times during the '70s (with little to no success until they finally sold the station to Golden West and went Country as WCXI) that my timeline of when they did what is kind of hazy, but I think that was ...

AC stations are all about reaching women up to their late 40s. A 49-year-old woman now was born in 1973 or '74, and for better or worse, the '80s are part of the "music of her life." By contrast, the '90s and '00s didn't have as many "mass appeal" hits - the '90s were dominated by hip-hop, country a...

So what it amounts to is essentially swapping the AM and FM formats and tweaking them in the process. The new logo strongly resembles that of Mix 92.3 in Detroit! Some AC stations use "the '80s to now" as their tag line. A lot less cumbersome, if you ask me. Another potential implication of "80s, '9...

The book "Rockin' Down the Dial" has a great chapter on the roots of free-form radio in Detroit in the late '60s. 100.3 WKNR-FM was also an underground station from about 1969 until the 1971 flip to "Stereo Island." 101.1 WXYZ-FM (pre-WRIF) aired a syndicated progressive format from ABC corporate kn...

Many of Detroit's major commercial TV stations had a teen dance show at one time or another. In addition to 2Hot, ch2 had Detroit Bandstand in the late '50s (when WJBK radio was a Top 40 leader). Ch7, in addition to American Bandstand, had Club 1270 with Lee Alan and Joel Sebastian; ch9 had Swingin'...

Thanks for the response, both of you. I passed the info along to John Rieger to be posted on dx-midAMerica.

I've had a tip that 1380 and the 101.9 translator have split from simulcasting 106.3 and debuted a new format, but I'm not within listening range to tell. Chris Kadlec or someone else in the area, can you confirm?

During the Detroit newspaper strike in 1967, WTVS 56 experimented with its own newscast during the evening hours, meant to mimic the style of an actual newspaper. The American Archive of Public Broadcasting captured the November 21, 1967 installment (the date says 1968, but it's mentioned it's the d...

Shame on them if it was a sick joke. I have a very close friend who was just diagnosed with breast cancer. It's not funny. Suzanne bravely battled it for decades.

WOW at 265,000-watt WSRW losing in the beauty pageant numbers to an AM/FM translator combo. Has 105.7 ever been this low in the 12+ rankings? Are the 40-something women not listening to WCSG preferring the butt-rock parade on GRD these days? With these ratings, I wonder if they (and/or 100.5) pull t...

1200 WMUZ is also in HD. I imagine all of Crawford's Detroit stations are - not sure about 1340 WCHB as I can barely receive them in analog here, let alone HD. At night I can get 1210 WPHT out of Philly to flash in HD, but have never had it lock. And yes, WFDF was originally Radio Disney when it fir...

Probably should be moved to the Chatterbox area, as this really has nothing to do with broadcasting.

I saw one around the I-69/I-94 interchange near Marshall last week.

Marcus wrote: ↑

Tue Sep 26, 2023 10:56 pm

Now that The Roar is gone does Birach have anything to lose if AM 1160 becomes Sports? Why not double your audience so you can have a 0.1 in the ratings?

Double nothing is still nothing...