Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater Arbitron Ratings: May 2011

[RMarino]

1999- Cox launches a Classic Rocker on WHPT. Then targets CC WTBT 103.5 Full-Force igniting a long term battle of the classic rockers. WTBT loses that battle and in 2005 switches to Country.

If I recall correctly, WHPT never beat WTBT. WHPT was always hovering around a 2.0 and WTBT was in the 3-4 range. But CC gave up quicker than Cox did. Now if you wanted to go back twenty years and replace those call letters with WXTB and WYNF, you would have a point.

Regarding Play, I think the results would have been better if CBS had kept WLLD on 98.7 and launched Play at 94.1 instead where it could have competed better with FLZ. They may have even been able to hold on to a few of the smooth jazz listeners too since WSJT was getting very mainstream sounding at the end.

 

[badjef]

1999- Cox launches a Classic Rocker on WHPT. Then targets CC WTBT 103.5
Full-Force igniting a long term battle of the classic rockers. WTBT loses that battle and
in 2005 switches to Country.

If I recall correctly, WHPT never beat WTBT. WHPT was always hovering around a 2.0
and WTBT was in the 3-4 range. But CC gave up quicker than Cox did. Now if you
wanted to go back twenty years and replace those call letters with WXTB and WYNF,
you would have a point.

Regarding Play, I think the results would have been better if CBS had kept WLLD on
98.7 and launched Play at 94.1 instead where it could have competed better with FLZ.
They may have even been able to hold on to a few of the smooth jazz listeners too since
WSJT was getting very mainstream sounding at the end.

I doubt they needed to. WTBT was an inherited Jacor station.

Once Chris Thomas died, Ron Diaz took the timeslot on WDAE.

You would have to ask him the details.

Losing the Morning Show probably gave a reason to take 103.5 in another direction.

Getting the rights to the Bucs and simulcasting with the new Country station fit well with
what radio listeners were used to.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[gamefreak]

Didn't WTBT air the sydicated "Bob and Tom" show towards the end. How did that go in terms of the AM Drive.

 

[badjef]

Didn't WTBT air the sydicated "Bob and Tom" show towards the end. How did that go in terms of the AM Drive.

They aired B&T in morning drive after Ron Diaz went over to the AM side with Ian Beckles following the death of Chris Thomas and before switching to Country.

This is one of those situations that the station left standing was not necessarily the better one.

Jeff in Sa-ra-so-ta!

 

[TampaDan]

I don't understand why people just want continuous music without any personality. I'm thinking of country stations right now. QYK used to be an excellent personality-driven station but now it has followed the lead of US-103.5 in playing mostly just music and commercials. I guess the days when radio was fun are over. Everything is a jukebox now.

 

[Mike_Hennessy]

Anyone who's been in the biz any length of time knows that listener surveys have to be taken with some skepticism: ask someone if they want "more talk" or "less talk" and the usual answer is "less talk". Interesting to contrast that with FM morning shows where the only time any music gets played seems to be those rare occasions when everyone needs to go to the john at the same time. Oh and how many records does Howard Stern play? Of course, the "less talk" response makes it easy for corporate bean counters to justify canning everyone but the board op...