Contemporary radio is on the decline, this has been beaten to death on this forum. The # of younger people are just not there, they are gone. They are not even P2 consumers anymore. They are just gone. You think the youth do not know what AM is, wait 10 years and FM will be in the same category. The numbers, the research all show it. When you see a CHR and a 1.8 share, or even a 2.2 share 6+ they are NOT hitting their demos. Can decorate it all you want, the numbers are not there when they should be winning the 12-17 demo double digits driving up their 6+. This is basic Math and statistics. You can't change that.

There is no room in this market for 2 CHR's and an Adult CHR. Actually, there is room for just 1 of them and WTMX can survive if tweaked. If this was 1990, 2000, 2010, there would be a skew in one of them, or *all* of them by this point. Hip Hop is not an option as it is saturated. The gold standard for a few years has been, gold formats like Classic Hits. There are enough niche ways to take these stations. But, failure is acceptable in radio and it is considered the norm.

Spoken word is popular, but WBEZ was Top 5 and kick ass 25-54 numbers, they have now faded. Happens when you automate the crap out of the station 90% of the day. I can assure you the Newsradio 780 PD and corporate had sleepless nights when they were eating into their numbers before and during covid and now they are trying to automate more too. Live and local sells. "We are broke and can't spend money" is a BS excuse and will further kill the medium.

WLIT, the research is holy grail and no gut instinct is allowed. (Todd @ WLS-FM is proof of research and no gut instinct). WLIT is musically adjusted what the research says to refresh playlists and to better perform in the market with sister stations. This has not occurred as the #s show it. I do not doubt Hunter that the playlist has been modified. METV-FM is a horrific example for Classic Hits (sorry I disagree with the METV-FM fans on this board that it is Classic Hits). METV-FM for sure has taken a lot of WLIT numbers playing those softer 60s and 70s staples as opposed to WLS-FM being 80s and rock based.

At some point, sooner than later, you will see WSCR moving to 96.3FM and that heritage will be allowed to rest as the AM stick will be sold, finally the WBBM-FM calls will be moved to 105.9 and that 780 stick will be jettisoned too. They are not even recognizing the AM side anymore in production and positioners. Unless some act of God changes this trajectory, it will happen. Sad part of this? The current staff @ B96 are not putting out a bad product, considering the Audacy abuse and not supporting it, along with over saturation and no market for it anymore. If there was some backing, it would be really more alive and in your face, what is needed to motivate the remaining audience and take them away from KISS. Molly is trying, but you can't get water out of a stone and you can't change the market or audience conditions. There has been a push in the background to take B96 Classic Hits against WLS-FM reliving the 80s - 2K Dance era, but Audacy is tone deaf in an audio based industry and it will never happen. Finally, in a world of PPM, I am not sure that Mixes @ 12 Noon, 5PM, 10PM and weekends will satisfy PPM. Also, the glory days of Eddie and Jobo, Dance 40 format, radio being an integral part of people lives are well behind us. Also, PPM does not like the style of radio they put on. Could they sound great on the air. Of course. But, time has passed they are older, we are older and both have changed.

Society has changed. Habits have changed. Entertainment consumption has changed. When I listened to Eddie & Jobo on the Killer Bee in the 90s I was accessing AOL on dial up paying 3 dollars an hour posting on BBS, typing away using my IBM desktop running DOS 6 and Win3.1 on 2MB of RAM. I am now on a fiber connection, paying a flat fee, with 64GB of RAM on my laptop and this thing can talk back at me as I talk to it. Or I can grab my smartphone to finish this post as I head out the door. Times have changed....... sometimes, you just can't go back and some things fade away, notably terrestrial radio.

Z