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Detroit - Too Much Country?

G

Gregg.

Should Detroit have two Country stations? There's 99.5 WYCD, owned by Audacy, and 93.1 WDRQ, owned by Cumulus. Plus two country stations in adjacent Windsor, CIMX 88.7 (100,000 watts) and CJWF 95.9. Add in 102.9 WWWW Ann Arbor, 107.1 WSAQ Port Huron, 95.1 WFBE Flint and 95.3 WQTE Adrian.

Meanwhile, NYC and San Francisco have none. Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Los Angeles and San Diego only have one country station. After WWII, there was a large migration of Southerners to Detroit to work in the auto assembly plants. But that's two or three generations ago.

WYCD does decently in the ratings, currently #10. But WDRQ is way down in the one-point-somethings, currently #19. Yes, country stations take a hit during the holidays, when many country listeners switch to Christmas music stations, so we should take that into account. But I don't think Detroit needs two U.S.-based Country stations plus a 100,000 watt Canadian county station booming in from across the border and several others also heard on most radios.
 
There are other "non-country"-type markets that have two country outlets. Boston comes to mind. Buffalo has two. Even Seattle has two country outlets.
 
And, of course, what determines formats is the ability to sell advertising.

In some cases, a competitive cluster will duplicate a leading station's format just to knock it down a point or two so that the rest of their cluster looks better by comparison.
 
You forgot CFCO and CHOK.

Windsor, Bell Media is clearing a brand. They're not worried about Detroit anymore. They're focusing on Windsor. Ontario, Blackburn is cutting costs. Chatham and Sarnia-Lambton are generally rural areas. Blackburn is putting the same formats on in each cluster. Easier to package sell. Also, Canada has it's own Country music. Cancon. A lot of it is popular within Canada and gets no airplay on American radio. You're not going to hear artists like Sarnia-native Eric Ethridge on WSAQ for example, even though Sarnia is literally less than 5 miles from Port Huron. Yet he gets played all over Canada and has a following there across the country. Same goes for many other Canadian country artists. Country tends to be some of the more popular Cancon. Other Canadian formats, like CHR do not have the same popularity of Canadian artists as Country does.


I wouldn't call Ann Arbor, Flint or WQTE or Port Huron Detroit stations either. They serve their own local area. Sell ads in their own local area.

This is all between WYCD and WDRQ
 
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JeremyAndrews said:
Also, Canada has it's own Country music. Cancon. A lot of it is popular within Canada and gets no airplay on American radio.
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This is interesting information. Thank you for sharing!

JeremyAndrews said:
Other Canadian formats, like CHR do not have the same popularity of Canadian artists as Country does.
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DXing Zoomer Radio 740 out of Toronto has given me the opportunity to hear a few Canadian CHR artists (from the 80s and 90s of course.)
 
Canada has a lot of well loved Country and Rock. Some of it manages to get across the border. Most of it does not.

The Cancon requirement is 35%. The border stations, particularly CIMX and CIDR have a 15% limit I think because they were so close to Detroit. Even with their targeting toward Windsor, they still seem to keep with the 15% limit.

Rogers has a border blaster CHR (For now) targeting Kingston. WLYK. The CRTC frowns on border blasters, so I believe they play the usual 35% limit to keep the CRTC happy even though they don't need to.
 
Gregg. said:
Should Detroit have two Country stations? There's 99.5 WYCD, owned by Audacy, and 93.1 WDRQ, owned by Cumulus.
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As I often say there is no Minister of Radio. Radio formats are determined by the marketplace. The record labels and the Country Music Association would love to see country music playing in every city. But none of them are in the radio ownership business. Obviously WYCD is the market leader, so they're not flipping. For Cumulus, having a Detroit country station is important for automotive advertising, which is big in the country format. The automotive industry is based in Detroit, so as long as Cumulus owns stations in Detroit, they will want one of them to be country. I think iHeart has a sales agreement with one of the Canadian country stations.
 
TheBigA said:
As I often say there is no Minister of Radio. Radio formats are determined by the marketplace. The record labels and the Country Music Association would love to see country music playing in every city. But none of them are in the radio ownership business. Obviously WYCD is the market leader, so they're not flipping. For Cumulus, having a Detroit country station is important for automotive advertising, which is big in the country format. The automotive industry is based in Detroit, so as long as Cumulus owns stations in Detroit, they will want one of them to be country. I think iHeart has a sales agreement with one of the Canadian country stations.
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iHeart works with Bell Media, who owns CIMX (Pure Country) The iHeart platform in Canada (Which includes both Bell Media's Canadian stations and iHeart's U.S. stations) is operated by Bell Media. Like iHeart in the U.S., they call them "An iHeart Radio Station" at the top of the hour. For awhile, the former MuchMusic (Now Much) was branding their awards show (Known as the MuchMusic Video Awards or MMVAs) as the iHeartRadio MMVAs. The show no longer exists since the network does not play music anymore.

Most of Bell Media's stations are geoblocked in the U.S. The Windsor stations are among the few exceptions.

It wouldn't surprise me if they had a sales agreement with Bell Media in that area as a result.
 
The auto manufacturers purchase some advertising on radio locally, but definitely not a ton, and the auto dealers who advertise on 93.1 are the same dealers who advertise on numerous stations up and down the dial.

Summit Place Kia far and away purchases the most spots; their ads are ubiquitous on at least a dozen stations in the market.

In terms of Cumulus' national country programming, I cannot recall hearing any ads from car manufacturers.
 
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MarkW said:
In terms of Cumulus' national country programming, I cannot recall hearing any ads from car manufacturers.
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The automotive category is a lot more than car manufacturers. If you're hearing ads for car parts or service, that's automotive.
 
True. AutoZone buys a lot of advertising on country. They also buy a lot of advertising on sports radio and rock.

For what it's worth, I hate 93.1's playlist and find 99.5's to be vastly superior. 93.1 plays too much quasi-country music with rhythmic pop influences and also has an absurd amount of repetition.

99.5 made some category tweaks within the past few months, and I really like what I'm hearing over there.

Heck, I'm more likely to tune to 95.9 or 88.7 for country before 93.1. That's how much I dislike 93.1 right now.

I'm also not a big fan of the afternoon DJ on 93.1. He has the wrong type of personality for country in this market. He reminds me of how the DJs on Radio Disney used to sound.
 
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MarkW said:
For what it's worth, I hate 93.1's playlist and find 99.5's to be vastly superior. 93.1 plays too much quasi-country music with rhythmic pop influences and also has an absurd amount of repetition.
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Keep in mind that DRQ is positioning itself as "new country," so it's playing its currents more frequently. Meanwhile, WYCD is still playing Cole Swindell's song as though it's a current, when it peaked 4 months ago. Their playlists are the same size, but it looks like DRQ is aiming for younger listeners, while WYCD is aiming older.
 
Cumulus has found a way to program multiple country stations with poor ratings in Michigan. That's an impressive feat; usually country performs well just about everywhere in this state.

I will say W4 in Ann Arbor is a very good station; Cumulus has managed not to screw that one up.

My favorite country station statewide is 103.5 WTCM in Traverse City.
 
JeremyAndrews said:
iHeart works with Bell Media, who owns CIMX (Pure Country) The iHeart platform in Canada (Which includes both Bell Media's Canadian stations and iHeart's U.S. stations) is operated by Bell Media. Like iHeart in the U.S., they call them "An iHeart Radio Station" at the top of the hour. For awhile, the former MuchMusic (Now Much) was branding their awards show (Known as the MuchMusic Video Awards or MMVAs) as the iHeartRadio MMVAs. The show no longer exists since the network does not play music anymore.

Most of Bell Media's stations are geoblocked in the U.S. The Windsor stations are among the few exceptions.

It wouldn't surprise me if they had a sales agreement with Bell Media in that area as a result.
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To what extent is iHeart providing any programming or other services to Bell, if any?
 
Gregg. said:
Should Detroit have two Country stations? There's 99.5 WYCD, owned by Audacy, and 93.1 WDRQ, owned by Cumulus. Plus two country stations in adjacent Windsor, CIMX 88.7 (100,000 watts) and CJWF 95.9. Add in 102.9 WWWW Ann Arbor, 107.1 WSAQ Port Huron, 95.1 WFBE Flint and 95.3 WQTE Adrian.

Meanwhile, NYC and San Francisco have none. Chicago, Philadelphia, Washington, Los Angeles and San Diego only have one country station. After WWII, there was a large migration of Southerners to Detroit to work in the auto assembly plants. But that's two or three generations ago.

WYCD does decently in the ratings, currently #10. But WDRQ is way down in the one-point-somethings, currently #19. Yes, country stations take a hit during the holidays, when many country listeners switch to Christmas music stations, so we should take that into account. But I don't think Detroit needs two U.S.-based Country stations plus a 100,000 watt Canadian county station booming in from across the border and several others also heard on most radios.
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Full power class B KBAY 94.5 licensed to Gilroy, CA serves San Jose and the south portion of the SF Bay Area market with Country.
 
I think the other question that I’d have is what radio format is missing on FM Detroit radio that Cumulus would expect to perform better than country. In Philly I’d love a 2nd country station if it was a classic country format.
 
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