Format Change: 95.7 WFLN Philadelphia Becomes Max 95.7
After 40 years of service as Philadelphia’s Classical Music station, frequent ownership changes in the mid-1990’s and developing business trends led to the demise of 95.7 WFLN. Greater Media Broadcasting donated the WFLN music library to Temple University’s 90.1 WRTI. With Q102 leaning Rhythmic, the Modern AC format of Max was thought to fill a niche between Alternative Y100 and WIOQ. However, it took almost 6 months for Max to put together an airstaff and ratings were never able to get much higher than a 2.3 share. In May of 1999, as ratings were beginning to turn the corner after the addition of the Barsky Show in mornings, Greater Media pulled the plug on Max in order to beat AMFM to the punch with Rhythmic Oldies.
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It’s interesting to hear this aircheck for two reasons. First I had heard that this happened but this is the first time I got a chance to listen to the actual format change and the way it was executed.
Second, a similar situation took place on January 22, 2007. WGMS the commercial classical station in Washington, D.C., dropped the format and became George 104. They transferred the music to WETA one of the two NPR stations in the market and they changed from news talk to classical 24 hours a day.
I think they ended in a similar way to the way they did it 10 years earlier in Philadelphia.
The only difference here is that because of frequency changes in D.C. which had taken place earlier, WETA has a better signal than the former WGMS.
By the way, the WGMS call letters were moved to the translator for WETA in Hagerstown, Virginia.
The only difference between what happened in Washington D.C. and in Philadelphia is that WETA/WGMS airs classical music 24 hours a day.
WRTI broadcasts classical during the day and jazz at night.