October 25, 2021, Issue 779
WNSH Flip: Why & What’s Next
Business decision and not likely. Those are the (perhaps simplistic) answers to the questions many are asking after Audacy flipped WNSH/New York to Classic Hip-Hop Friday (Breaking News 10/22). Conversations with industry pros familiar with the market – including several who did not want to be quoted – offer insight into the dynamics in which the station operated. Similarly, they underscore why another company may be reluctant to flip a valuable signal to the format. And so the nation’s top media market is without a terrestrial Country station again, as it was for more than a decade prior to WNSH’s 2013 sign-on. (Ed. Note: Country Aircheck received no response to multiple requests for interviews with Audacy executives.) Ratings and revenue provide some clues to the decision, with P6+ share peaking at 2.8 in both April and June of 2019; P6+ cume reached 1,216,000 in Sept. 2016.
WNSH Annual Billings 8 6.5 7
6.2
5.9 5.5
6
(in millions)
5.3
Grand Ole Opry Reaches 5,000
4.8
5
4.0
4
3
2
2.8
Source: BIA 2013
Cub Your Enthusiasm: Arista’s Ryan Hurd premieres his new album Pelago at Carol’s Pub in Chicago. Pictured (front, l-r) are songwriter/producer Aaron Eshuis, the label’s Kaileen Mangan, WUSN’s Marci Braun, Anne Helton and Country Aircheck’s Lon Helton and the label’s Lauren Thomas; (back, l-r) the Cubs’ Jason McLeod and Hurd.
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On Oct. 5, 1925, the National Life and Accident Insurance Company signed WSM-AM/Nashville on the air. One of the station’s first announcers was George D. Hay, who had been at WLS-AM/Chicago and hosted its popular weekly Barn Dance program of “old time music.” Desperate for programming to fill the schedule, Hay brought the barn dance concept to Nashville, and on Nov. 28, 1925, the WSM Barn Dance debuted featuring the music of 82-year-old fiddle player Uncle Jimmy Thompson. That program soon Bill Cody became known as the Grand Ole Opry,
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