Pros/Cons Of Flipping To Country

Is the current leading country station sounding a bit dated?

Are they sitting on their laurels and not in touch with today's listener tastes?

If so, go for it.

However, many markets outside the top 50 now have three or more country stations and in those places one more station is only going to fragment and decrease the available shares.

Competition is always good for the listeners, as the shares in Minneapolis demonstrate.

CBS' BUZN @102.9 (the former WLTE) launched right after Christmas and debuted with a five share 6+, while incumbent Clear Channel's K102 has been defending aggressively and in that first month increased from a six to a 6.7, repeated that in it's second month and has further increased to a 7.2 during March, while "KMNB" settled 5.3-5.0-4.9 6+ in the wake of the battle thus far.

Unseating an incumbent is seldom cheap or easy to do.