It's business, I get it. But why wreck something that already works? If anything, those new owners could have chosen a different frequency too and left The Sound intact. Without social media in 1987, I could imagine what the demise of KMET would have been like. Being on the air for 19 amazing years, I can imagine.
While keeping in mind that "you've got to give to get" and compromise is necessary in deal-making and that EMF was seeking something "decent" for their money...
Why do you think Entercom let this particular format + frequency go when they had a choice of what to offer to EMF for sale?
It depends on your definition of "wrecking something that already works" - as this divestiture did have to take place,
Entercom did the right thing by disposing of the one format they had with lower-performing demos and revenues.
Entercom was going to offer up one of these FM frequency choices to divest: 93.1, 94.7, 97.1, 100.3, 101.1 and 106.7.
Other than offering 106.7 (arguably the weakest signal but with the highest revenue format) and going through the expense
and trouble and possible negative hit to revenue by "resetting the preset" in SoCal listeners thoughts if they were to move
the alternative format to one of their remaining frequencies, there were really very few other options.
As a sidebar, it keeps the cluster's "integrity" intact as the remaining formats were all built by CBS Radio while the classic rocker was
the outlier and seemed destined to be spun off when the proposed merger first made news in February 2017.
Don't blame the buyer for "taking away" the so-called "beloved" format - it was ultimately Entercom's decision to part ways with The Sound.
EMF was just a willing buyer with cash-in-hand - what they choose to do with their newly bought vehicle is their business.
(Of course, it was well-known what they would do as they only program two similar formats nationwide.)
As most radio folks will say, only about 1 to 2% of a station's audience will actively participate in calling, writing and otherwise
contacting the station via the various communication methods available. A few hundred social media detractors/e-mailers/letter-writers
is a drop in the bucket compared to the hundreds of thousands of a station's cumulative audience in a market such as L.A.
But as mentioned in another post, with the ownership change, what backlash exists has no effect on new ownership (EMF) and old ownership (Entercom)
accepts the "negativity" as the cost of doing business - in this particular case, for the greater good of acquiring a full cluster of stations in revenue market #1.
