Curious Hair wrote:
I would target WIND for a third station if it were to be on the AM band. The problem is that it's owned by far-right Catholics for whom owning the station is less about bean-counting than it is about doing the work of our Lord, which apparently consists of airing Sean Hannity's talk show. They'll happily lose millions of dollars a year if it means some girl somewhere chooses not to get her egg scrambled.
I'm surprised 100.3 bills as much as it does, being such a vanilla non-entity. It's also handcuffed by its ownership so as never to come close to challenging WTMX (which clearly bills quite well). Conversely, I'm surprised the Loop is as low as it is for such a heritage station.
For a while in the late 90's/early 00's, Bonneville owned The Loop (97.9), The Drive (97.1), the MI (101.9) and I think the Lite (93.9) They acquired the Loop from Chancellor/Evergreen when they split/sold off 103.5, 97.9, and AM1000. They had bought and consequently blew up WNIB, stunting with an artist a day (Stones, Frank Sinatra, Zeppelin, Elvis) for what seemed like a long time, before launching "Classic Hits" on the Drive. Back then it was very acoustic- CSNY, Dylan, Zep III, but not Soft Rock per say. They would play Pink Floyd, but only something like "Mother." No GnR or AC/DC like they do now.
I don't recall when or why the Mormons started selling off these properties but I presume it was around the time doomsayers were proclaiming that Internet and Satellite radio would kill off the FM band. But for that time, Bonnevile controlled a billing juggarnaut: The upper and lower ends of the 25-54 white demo, male (Loop on the low age end, Drive on the high end) and female (Mix low, Lite high.) These demos made for very attractive package buys for clients, and kept the ratings underperformers in the group alive and allowed to find an audience ( The Drive format was later copied around the country.) Infinity/CBS had a nice gaggle of compimentary stations too, but not nearly as neatly-tied a sales pitch as those four.