No Detroit CHR from 1994-98?

[deadend]

After WHYT changed to The Planet and was alt rock, and before WDRQ went top 40; was there no true CHR outlet in the Detroit market? Just curious how a major market at that time didn’t really have one.

[MWmetalhead]

You are correct!

Q95-5 pretended to be CHR during much of this period with such slogans as "Continuous Hits" and "Today's Best Music," but in reality bounced back and forth between Hot AC and a tighter more current & recurrent-driven Adult CHR presentation.

CHR was in a lull nationally in the early to mid 90s. The rise of grunge rock and the rise of hip-hop are largely responsible. It was during this time WGRD in Grand Rapids ditched CHR for Modern Rock (after previously spending a couple years in the early 90s as Hot AC) and 95 WVIC in Lansing ditched CHR for Country. Rimshooter WSNX - then based in Muskegon - dayparted heavily with a very adult friendly sound during the day.

I presume Q95-5 wanted to bookend WNIC musically, which is why they never went full-blown CHR in the 1990s.

Further complicating the scenario in Detroit is the fact multiple rock & alternative stations were targeting the 18-34 year old crowd, and WJLB was also very popular with that segment.

[BKRPDM]

By early 1997, if you wanted a good flavor for general CHR, you’d have to catch the softer hits on Q95.5, the rhythmic hits on ‘DRQ, and the alt-flavored hits on Planet. I also used to listen to WTWR 98.3 in Monroe, which I think was broad-based CHR at that time.

[Mega Hertz]

If you wanted true CHR, you watched MTV, even if it was "dayparted", so to speak.

Once the Spice Girls and the boy band explosion started (and the Deregulation Act of 1996 went into law), clusters were tripping all over themselves to get a piece of the action. Once the hits got more rhythmic, it was all over.

Regardless, I will always love DRQ up until they flipped in 2005.

[MWmetalhead]

Tower 98 sounded pretty good in the 1997 / 1998 timeframe. I used to listen online with RealPlayer.

By the time I enrolled at U-M for the fall 1999 semester, Tower 98 was sounding very lame. Boring jocks, boring imaging, boring everything.

[bmw]

The slogans I remember from Q95-5 during the 1990s were "continuous hit music" and "Detroit's hit music leader."

[48125er]

I said this before, but Q95.5 sounded like a Small city top 40 like 96.9 in Port Huron, 105.9 in Charlevoix or 107.9 in Cadillac.

[ChrisWL1980]

Technically, Detroit's period without a mainstream CHR station began at the end of 1992, when 99.5 The Fox disappeared in favor of Wow-FM (and later WYCD). WHYT reported as a mainstream CHR (as Radio & Records didn't have a Rhythmic panel yet), but they were straight up Rhythmic/Churban, not dissimilar to Power 106 in L.A. or WPGC in Washington. Their thinking at the time was that Detroit had enough AC stations (93.1, 95.5, 100.3 and eventually 97.1 were all doing some kind of AC in late 93-early 94) that they didn't need to play Celine Dion or Michael Bolton, and enough Rock stations that they didn't need to play Aerosmith.
As a regular listener to Q95-5 during the 1996-98 time frame, I think the most CHR they sounded was late 1997-early 98, while Rick Gillette (formerly of WHYT) was in the PD chair. By day, they were a pretty conservative sounding Hot AC, going back as far as the late '70s with gold. At night they sounded more uptempo and played more dance and rhythmic titles (including remixes) and even a very little bit of hip-hop. They seemed like a happy medium between what 93.1 and 96.3 were doing at that time even if 93.1 and 96.3 were quicker on new music in their respective genres. Still, I needed a dose of real CHR at times, so from Macomb County, I DXed not only Tower 98 but 92.5 Kiss FM and CK105.5 (which I could easily get on AM 1570 on my clock radio).
By that fall, Gillette was gone and Q95-5 was sounding more milquetoast Hot AC almost 24/7. They replaced the Top 8 at 8 countdown with an all '80s hour and played the heck out of Bryan Adams stiffs while even Hot AC was opening up to Britney Spears and 'N Sync. WDRQ made the right move by pivoting to CHR/Pop and embracing the teen-pop boom wholeheartedly, and 95.5 would spend years playing catch-up. During this time, Q95-5 sounded draggy and stale compared to even other Hot ACs I listened to, like the ABC "Best Hits/Best Variety" format I heard then on Big Rapids' Y102 and Alpena's WHSB while vacationing up north.
Regarding West Michigan's CHR scene at that time, I didn't arrive in Grand Rapids until the fall of '98 for college but got the chance to listen to Mix 96 while college hunting previously, and I thought they sounded pretty good, as did WKFR at that time. By the time I started at Aquinas, Mix 96 had given way to I-96, which was almost like a Hot Hits station in that they seemed to play the same 20 songs over and over (and also had Wayback Wednesdays with some bizarre (for a late '90s CHR) gold choices, like "Dancing Queen"). Meanwhile WSNX was just a bit too rhythmic for me, so I preferred WKFR for my CHR listening.

[Mega Hertz]

https://youtu.be/QbAShZRmQPo?si=5R0dtVVZHz5na32z
1996

https://youtu.be/yUbLdJBblNo?si=R9F0apFUmSPLXrxx
1998

[MWmetalhead]

The slogans I remember from Q95-5 during the 1990s were "continuous hit music" and "Detroit's hit music leader."

That last one was adopted in 1999, I believe, after DRQ made ratings inroads.

Many of us laughed when that slogan was initially adopted because 95.5 was (still) so slow at adding new music and avoided most rhythmic songs altogether.

It wasn't until the entire air staff and programming staff were replaced (winter 2001, I want to say?) - which is when Mojo, Spike and Sarah began in mornings, J. Love was hired for afternoons, and Booker was hired for nights - that the music started to get a bit more adventurous, especially at night. It isn't everyday that a station's entire weekday air staff gets shitcanned and replaced by new people (who were all live and local) while not even rebranding, but 95.5 had been sounding so stale that the changes, honestly, were not very controversial.

[ChrisWL1980]

On the subject of slogans, I seem to recall that both WDRQ and WKQI used the slogan "Today's Best Music" simultaneously for a very short time circa 1997. That happened after DRQ dropped the "Detroit's Dance Music" tagline and added some Modern AC product to sound a little more like a mainstream CHR (though they remained a Rhythmic reporter). DRQ eventually rebranded to "Today's Hit Music," which fit their Dance/Pop hybrid better than "Today's Best Music" which suggests a Hot AC format.

[BKRPDM]

I thought that JoJo Kincaid was quite talented and interesting, but his style didn’t seem to fit with the Hot AC programming at the time.

Who was handling evenings at 95.5 in that 1997 era? I forget.

[MWmetalhead]

Dave Fuller and then Marc Mitchell.

[unscopedaircheck]

I remember 95.5 making a big change in 89ish. I recalling phoning in a request for Batdance by Prince back then and being told they no longer play that. Was that the change from CZY to KQI?

I remember the evening guy on DRQ being decent...Tik Tac? Circa 98? That was a good station for a year or two. Good personalities, good imaging, good music...could have been a little more dance for my taste but still better than the others.

[BKRPDM]

I remember ‘DRQ starting in August 1996 as a Rhythmic CHR with a good deal of oldies and recurrents. Then it seemed to change a bit back and forth, gravitating to more dance/harder R&B and then back to a Rhythmic Hot AC…they seemed to find their way by late 1998, to CHR.

The morning show with Joe Mama and Trixxie was fun. If I recall correctly, eventually Domino took over mornings, and then eventually Towers.