WZMX format change

[mwaters@wesleyan.edu (Martin J. Waters)]

       WZMX/93.7, Hartford, formerly a '70s station that moved into classic
hits, showed up yesterday as "The Point." It's doing a classic rock format
that at first listen seems as though it's very heavy (even for a
classic-rock format) on guitar-driven rock bands. The promos (new voice)
explicitly speak to an older baby-boom male demo. "No punk, no grunge, no
rap, no metal." "Not the station your wife listens to." "The greatest hits
of rock 'n' roll." I listened only for a short time today, but it sounded
like all late '60s and '70s guitar bands, with Ringo doing "With a Little
Help From My Friends" thrown in. It sounded like no jocks. They did,
however, roll about eight (!) ads in a row just before 5 p.m. Boy, I'd pay
extra to be the seventh ad in that set <g>.
        I don't even know if Sebastian is still on the morning show, as I
haven't checked on him yet.
        So, I'm curious for comments from the programming experts here.
With WHCN having just dumped its really bad bird-feed morning show and
tweaked up its classic rock format, and now doing heavy promotion; and with
classic-rock WAQY from Springfield running slightly behind WHCN in the
Hartford ratings, what is this about? IMO, WZMX is going after a piece of a
very small pie. From winter to spring in the Arbitron, WZMX had gone from
3.8 to a 3.2. (I don't have access to the latest book.) You can't tell from
that whether all their ratings are just from Sebastian. WHCN and WAQY had
2.4 and 2.1, respectively, in the spring, in Hartford. WZMX had a 2.2 to
WHCN's 1.7 in New Haven.

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