The Infinite Dial

At least once a year, Clear Channel unleashes an interesting slew of format changes--as evidenced by the real estate they've occupied on this page recently. The most recent was last Friday's change at WSNP Rochester, N.Y., from Rhythmic AC--never a format that seemed like a fit for the market--to "Country 107.3." In its initial publicity, the new station promised to play never more than two minutes of commercials an hour--not quite the commercial free/all-sponsorship model of sister KZPS (Lone Star 92.5) Dallas, but the closest we've seen to commercial free we've seen with a mainstream format.

Clear Channel has obviously never been afraid to unleash a hard-to-respond-to flanker on a competitor before. The young-end/more rhythmic WKFS (Kiss 107) Cincinnati was meant to mess with the more adult leaning WKRQ (Q102), but it still came as a surprise to some of those involved when it ended up becoming the Mainstream Top 40 leader in the market and nudging Q102 further into Hot AC (at least for a few years). And WSNP, like ABC's WGVX Minneapolis--which also changed formats last week--is a signal-challenged outlet that has been frequently redeployed for competitive reasons. So it's not surprising to see WSNP now aimed at Country perrenial WBEE.

But short of going commercial-free altogether forever, there's nothing more existential than taking a station to only two units an hour. Unless, of course, what develops at KZPS gives the station the eventual ability to add sponsorships eventually and stay at two minutes an hour.

Also worth noting, the URL for the new station is "MyCountryFM.com," which is also used as the sole identifier on one of the station's drops. Does that handle portend a multi-market rollout of the concept?