Breaking: Format Changes Imminent In St. Louis and Birmingham

Posted at 8:30am EDT. Edited at 8:52am.

Clear Channel “Oldies Radio 103.3 KLOU” will flip to 70s/80s based Classic Hits “My 103.3″.

The domains my1033.com and playwhatIwant.com are both pointing to a password protected URL right now. There should be a few more format changes on this memorial day weekend and we’ll be here attempting to break them before they happen at RadioInsight.com.

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Elsewhere around the country on this Memorial Day weekend.

In Birmingham, Citadel Soft AC WYSF “Y94.5″ will flip to Hot AC “The New 94.5″ at 5:00pm today. More info at the Birmingham News.

In Wilkes-Barre, 103.1 WFEZ has dropped Soft AC to join the News/Talk network of sisters 910 WBZU Scranton , 980 WILK Wilkes-Barre, and 1300 WKZN West Hazleton. New Orleans listeners may noticed two former call letters from 105.3 that have been parked in NEPA.

Net Gnome Alert: Change Coming to Philly?

Update 5/16/07 10:30am:

We were right on the money. “Radio 104.5″ is now on the air in Philadelphia.

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We at RadioInsight pride ourselves on trying to use the tools of the internet to break news on impending format changes. We’ve been quite successful in the past, especially when it comes to the moves of Clear Channel Philadelphia.

It was just 9 months ago that Clear Channel flipped 106.1 WJJZ from Smooth Jazz to Rhythmic AC and 104.5 WSNI from Soft AC to Spanish Contemporary. However, that was before Philadelphia became the first market to switch to Arbitron’s Personal People Meter.

With the first PPM ratings released at the end of April, the Spanish format of “Rumba 104.5″ found itself lingering at the bottom of the pack, meanwhile Greater Media Rock WMMR, Classic Rock WMGK, and Variety Hits WBEN all rose significantly from the diary based winter book. In a market that had seen Active Rock WYSP segue to Hot Talk and Alternative WPLY flip to Urban the previous year, the PPM ratings showed a potential hole for another Rock oriented format in Philadelphia.

Hence when we saw anonymous registrations for radio1045.com and radio1045fm.com we were intrigued. When we saw the domains quietly transferred to the Clear Channel server, our eyes perked a little more. When we saw the password protected site refer to http://phil2-ip.clearchannel.com we knew exactly where we should be looking.

The logo pictured above we swiped from the site earlier in the week while investigating. The logo is nearly identical to former sister 104.1 WMRQ Hartford, CT, whose Modern Rock format was branded “Radio 104″. That station is now Urban WPHH “Power 104.1″.

Should be interesting to follow this one over the next few weeks.