+1 for KGRG1. They are good considering what they are working with down there in the ‘Claw.
Remember, we had 103.7 the Mountain for over 20 years. A lot of people feel it deviated too much from its heyday in the mid-late 90’s and combined with air staff going away, the writing was on the wall. It spent its last few years as basically a AAA in name only, segueing into a fairly generic product that leaned heavy on the classic rock staples.
They have done a decent job with the Mountain HD2, so that’s where I would go assuming I had a HD radio and was dead-set against internet streaming. Otherwise, there are still a plethora of good AAA stations streaming.
I think this kind of brings me to the point that part of AAA’s appeal (and its downfall) was that the format became very loosely defined and fragmented. A AAA station that leans heavy on classics (and heritage as David mentioned) like KBCO in Denver sounds very different and attracts a different audience from WVMP in Roanoke, VA or WXPN in Philly. Then you had the more rock leaning adult hits stations like DaveFM in Atlanta that were reported in the trade publications as AAA. Heck, I have even heard pioneering Rock AC stations like WMMO in Orlando and WRHQ in Savannah, GA called AAA.
The format is interesting, and I firmly believe it can do well when it’s programmed in a way that appeals to local tastes. The problem is more with station ownership in larger markets these days: If I’m a market manager, why would I risk decreasing my cluster’s revenue (and possibly losing my job in the process) by putting a format that will take more money/work to succeed and will likely be more difficult to bring in the “money demos” desired when there are generally other, more advertiser-friendly formats to try?
That being said, in smaller towns where demographics and ratings are less important than the quality of your salesperson(s), AAA can do (and frequently does) fairly well