Scott Lindy Gets New Job

Scott Lindy, who left the PD position at Star 94 last month, has landed quickly at WFMS-FM, a country station owned by Cumulus.

WFMS is a legendary station that was #1 in the market for many years under Susquehanna. These days, it's beaten by Emmis' country station, 97.1 Hank FM, but still holds its own in ratings.

Lindy has a lot of country experience, having programmed The Bull here in Atlanta, WPOC-FM in Baltimore and SiriusXM.

Best wishes to Scott in Indy town, where he will get to hobnob with and compete against the likes of JR Ammons and Chase Daniels.

Where is WFMS-FM?

Does not show up on Radio-locator.com

WFMS was #1 in the market for a bunch of years before Susquehanna sold out.

Both WFMS and WLHK were nominated for one of the country awards shows (CMAs?) last year, so it's still a good fight in Indy.

When they were #1 for all those years, they were also the only country station in the market. Then Emmis decided to flip a station to country, and they stole the GM, the PD, and the award-winning afternoon drive host. So Scott has some work to do.

Emmis didn't steal anyone. Jan Jefferies fired them, including a Country HOF personality. Why? Because he programmed
a George Strait song into the rotation. JJ had him fired!

Also, Hank is local all the time. Plus the music is programmed in Indy as well. WFMS WAS thee Country Station for years.
Now it is A country station.

Although WLHK is #1, WFMS is still competitive in the ratings.

RoddyFreeman said:

Although WLHK is #1, WFMS is still competitive in the ratings.

Click to expand...

Number 2 out of 2 stations? Competitive??

Hoosierky said:

Number 2 out of 2 stations? Competitive??

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Yes it is very competitive. We never see the money demos but 6+:

http://ratings.radio-online.com/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb049

WFMS beat WLHK holiday 2014 (only.1 but still a win is a win). Jan. they lost by only by .3 (6.6 vs 6.3.) Feb. & Mar. were not so good for WFMS. Facility wise they are very close. Both are Full class B's with similar coverage:

http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/finder?call=wfms&x=12&y=8&sr=Y&s=C

http://radio-locator.com/cgi-bin/pat?call=WLHK&service=FM&status=L&hours=U

Smaller market but just like Atlanta. Very few markets have more than 2 full coverage FM's doing country.

^ Exactly. And this is why it's not only erroneous to judge a station's competitiveness by 6+, it's even worse to judge it as a "loser" because it trails it's competitor. I'd be willing to bet that #2 country station is out billing the #1 Urban, Alternative, and Classic Hits in the market.

When you have a 30-40 Year heritage country station like WFMS, with a signal that is comparable to WLHK, which flipped
from A/C as WENS not that long ago, and it is losing market share, there is something wrong!
WFMS is as a heritage country station as can be. If you look at the books since Emmis flipped 97.1, as well since Cumulus
took over from the previous ownership, that shows a trend that should not be happening.

Yes, stations always want to be number one. But when you come within an eyelash of it in a short amount of time, you need to see the full picture.

Hoosierky said:

When you have a 30-40 Year heritage country station like WFMS, with a signal that is comparable to WLHK, which flipped
from A/C as WENS not that long ago, and it is losing market share, there is something wrong!

Click to expand...

As I said before, there was no other country station in Indy before. Now there is. The country audience hasn't changed, but it's spread over two stations. When one plays commercials, the listeners switch to the other. When one plays a song they don't like, they switch to the other. That didn't happen before. Now it does. You'd have a point if WFMS went to zero. But the two stations are pretty even. That's what happens when stations share audience.