I agree with you. Also, keep in mind the market has so many stations going after what is essentially the same demo, the AC demo: Star 94, Power 96-1, B98.5, Q99-7, The Fish. Adding an AC just would not work.
I always enjoyed listening to Peach and even Lite driving in GA. I don’t remember the numbers when they flipped, but I don’t think they were underperforming as much as then-Clear Channel wanted a country station in Atlanta. At the time, both 101.5 and 106.7 were still country so it became a 2 against 1 battle for a couple of years.
The market is so unique in the fact there’s a COMMERCIAL contemporary Christian station that does well, then Star; neither of which are mainstream AC, nor is even B98.5 IMO. B98.5 is sort of a “modern AC” at this point bordering on a Hot AC format. I’m not sure why they don’t feel the mainstream AC format that is successful in most other markets will work, but what they’re doing now works so if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. B98.5 segued away from the more typical AC format when they were trying to fight off a Hot AC Star and adult leaning Q100.
Atlanta has a young leaning AC with B98.5, Star and Fish taking a lot of the AC audience, and other factors. Plus, the ethnic composition of the market makes it more difficult for the market to support a mainstream AC in addition to all of this. On paper it makes sense but when you break it down it’s pretty obvious. I could see classic hits being a more viable option than a mainstream AC.
Keep in mind iHeart had the option to take every other signal in the cluster AC had they wanted. The Bull is the oldest format in the cluster. They could have multiple times with 105.7, 96.7 (multiple times), 105.3 (awful signal for AC) and 96.1 a decade ago. Audacy could have taken Star mainstream AC. There’s a reason nobody is taking up mainstream AC or even classic hits which are the biggest format holes. I hate it, but it’s just the unfortunate truth.
It’s a shame when all news failed Cumulus didn’t take 106.7 back to classic hits, it may have been a success and may not be K-Love now. The largely canned AGH format didn’t do terribly considering it was on a low budget.