Couple of interesting things happening with the old NextMedia cluster. WXLC started simulcasting WCCQ out of Joliet and they're now "Free Country," the third or fourth attempt to go after US99. However, this time, they're using the old Kiss FM/Energy FM/Nine FM strategy of cobbling together a station out of suburban stations, a strategy that didn't work for any of them, either. XLC had been simulcasting Star 105 out of Crystal Lake for a little while as part of another daisy-chaining strategy, this after they got a heavily subsidized new storefront studio at Gurnee Mills from which no live/local programming originates anymore.

More interesting is that 95.9 The River in Aurora is now doing classic alternative to go up against XRT and Q101 rather than the Drive and Rock 95.5. I'll be listening, but probably not over the air:



If Alpha Media (their logo is a big dog...an alpha dog, if you will) wants to pare down their cluster and go the simulcast route, it would make much more sense for that signal to simulcast our butt-rock friends to the north, WIIL Rock, which has very little overlap:



That would give you pretty much full coverage of the exurbs and your whole target demographic for bands called Dungbucket and Hungergunk.

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What is this radio you speak of?

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The real question is why is it so expensive to own a radio station. As the format is dying, you would think it would be filled with independent stations.

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the world will always the world. your entire existence is defined by your response.

I'll have to throw 95.9 on the car presets and give it a tumble.

Slightly off topic and, yes, I know this is long winded. We're friends with a couple, one of whom is from Bangladesh, the other of whom is from India. They both obtained various degrees from various universities in Illinois and, after moving to India, made it a point of returning to Illinois to give birth to all three of their children. Since then, they've gone back and forth and their kids all speak Bengali, English, and Hindi. So, these kids are fairly well traveled and have seen a lot of the world.

They're back in town, their oldest child is 15, we were talking about sports, and my wife pointed out that I listen to a lot of baseball games on the radio. This kid, who is incredibly bright (his dad is a PHD and a computer science professor and his mom has three different degrees and speaks about five different languages) did not understand the concept of listening to sports on the radio. I had to explain to him that someone sits and watches the game (live as it's happening) and describes what they're watching to you.

Classic alternative rock makes sense because there's no one under 30 playing guitar music anymore.

Unless they are going to the game, I really don't know any teenagers that even watch baseball let alone listen to it. Maybe a few innings here and there but not a whole game. So much has changed in the 20-30 years.

I'm up for some more classic alternative as I love 1st Wave on XM, but could use a different variety (hopefully) of classic alternative.

I was shocked, in talking to my oldest boy, that he follows the Score on line from across the country. He's not a huge sports guy and I think he zoned out when I had it on in the car. Maybe it's a comfort, like a taste of home. I don't think the Score is nearly as CHICAGO as it was back in the golden age.

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O judgment! Thou art fled to brutish beasts,
And men have lost their reason.

did WIIL ever actually simulcast the old 96.7 Will Rock (WLLI) from Joliet when that was going 20-25 years ago? Or did they just happen to have similar formats and call letters?

The lesser radio conglomerates have tried the "challenge Chicago stations using suburban rimshot simulcasts" strategy since the 90s and it's never really worked. Another one I remember in addition to Nine/Kiss/Energy was classic rock being simulcast on a northwest Indiana and far northwest suburban station with both signals being on 103.9 FM. T

I'm betting they ran them separately. They ran the Star in Joliet and the Star in Crystal Lake for years as different stations with the same format and same logo, not to mention XLC running the same format, before a bean-counter realized "oh we can have them play Katy Perry songs at the same time instead of 12 minutes apart and save money." They didn't have to save money at first, because for a long time, running those stations as hyperlocal, super-serving alternatives to the Mix was good business (at least for XLC and Star 105 in CL, dunno about Joliet). You could bill quite respectably by being a presence in the area and hustling to those remotes at salons in Grayslake or car dealerships in Vernon Hills.

I agree with you, Exile, that doing the old Big City Radio (ironically, that was the company who pioneered the suburban rimshot thing) strategy is inherently doomed, but running nearly a dozen discrete stations is a spend-money-to-make-money approach that doesn't work if you can't or won't spend money.

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I'm pretty sure the Butt Rock station broadcasts out of Gurnee Mills...on the sad end by Value City Furniture and the Floor and Decor store. I want to say the entrance is by Portillos.

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Yeah, the Waukegan and Kenosha stations all moved their studios to Gurnee Mills. The old XLC/KRS building on Belvidere that they were trying to get out of for years was on a floodplain that finally flooded so badly that it knocked the stations off the air for like a week. That Gurnee Mills super-studio was their white whale for, man, more than a decade. It was going to be the catalyst for all sorts of concerts and live events at the mall since they were always going to bring WIIL Rock down from Kenosha too. They finally got it (at partial taxpayer expense) a month before COVID. Womp womp.

WIIL Rock is an interesting case in that their stick is still somewhere in Kenosha/Pleasant Prairie, but they changed their city of license to Union Grove so that they can lie to the FCC and say it's in the Milwaukee market and skirt the ownership cap for the Chicago market. However, they run the station out of Gurnee and quite obviously market to the north suburbs, so I don't know why some FCC official doesn't listen to literally one stop set and ding them on it.

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Sounds like the old WABT, the Wabbit. I don't remember that simulcast, but twinning McHenry County with Northwest Indiana sounds like a reach.

After EMF bought the Loop and flipped it to Christian rock, a bunch of Loop people went up to 103.9 (then The Fox) to work there. Then EMF bought that and it went Christian too. Pat Capone is at 95.5 now. I'll be keeping an eye out for the hat trick.

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WIIL rock also rides the wave of a very popular long-running morning show. Like him or not, you have to acknowledge the guy's popularity. The day he retires....that station will take a major hit.

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Because even the humourless drones from the FCC know listening for 10 minutes will activate some sort of brain bleed that brings you straight to every Friday 5 o'clock remote at fucking Jesse Oaks and requires you to hit Blarney Island and Kief's Reef all summer...and will probably cause you to catch the clap from Tom Kief himself.

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Agreed. They replace him and go syndicated at their own peril.

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What would a computer programmed WIIL Rock look like:

Seether
Halestorm
Korn
Limp Bizkit
Nickelback

Every hour on repeat.

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Grustlebung
Dirgewater
Forgetting Francine
Necrothimble
Pud

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Free Beer & Hot Wings!
Bob & Tom! (which is still called that even though one of the two retired almost 10 years ago)
shit, what's Mancow doing these days?

Been listening to 95.9 for a while, I'm alright with the format change but will take some time to get used to.