Adams Radio’s revamp of its Fort Wayne cluster continued this evening as the company launched AC “Soft Rock 103.9” WWFW at 10:39pm.
Launching with Kool & The Gang’s “Celebration” and Roxette’s “Must Have Been Love”, the new format positions WWFW against Sarkes Tarzian’s “95.1 Best-FM” WAJI. That station relaunched from “Majic 95.1” in March as it tweaked its format to skew its AC format a bit younger.
The company had sent a press release out earlier on Friday announcing a 5pm launch. WWFW had gone off the air on Thursday to make an emergency move of its transmitter to a new tower site after the base of its tower began sinking into the landfill it was built on. Due to rain storms work was not completed until after 9:00pm when the station resumed broadcasting with a stunt loop of telephone hold music and similar styled announcements counting down to the 10:39pm launch.
This is the second time WXKE has been moved off of 103.9 for a new AC format. In 2002, WXKE moved to 102.9 to make way for “My 103.9” WYLT. That station would later segue to CHR before WXKE returned to 103.9 in 2006.
INSTANT INSIGHT: With Adams sending out the press release announcing the 5pm launch it HAD to ensure to potential advertisers and sponsors that it was prepared to launch the new format at that time. Despite the fact that their were mitigating factors at play (which most may not know about), they gave the impression that they were unprepared. If they knew tower work had to be done then perhaps they should’ve delayed the launch of the new format to Monday morning when they would’ve had time to iron out issues and allow the stunt loop to gain some traction.
Jack Bayes 
Steve Varholy 
Christian 
chrisbubb 
stevens
rooting for wwfw if for no other reason than any station stupid enough to call itself “best fm” deserves to fail miserably.
It took me awhile to figure out why Adams sounded familiar. Many moon ago they owned 95.1 Charlotte that wandered around with formats after leaving its longtime Rock format until it finally found its place in the market.
Kind of fitting that the format launched at 10:39 pm
Mainstream AC seems to be a cursed format in Fort Wayne for whatever reason. The last couple of stations that have tried it (WAJI is Hot AC and was even before the change to “Best”) seem to have lasted no more than a few months (thinking 102.9 and 100.1). Anyone know if this one is leaning softer or if it’s your typical hotter/brighter type of AC?
Mainstream AC cursed in Fort Wayne? Only if you ignore the early history of WAJI. Look at the numbers when Tobin was programming and McVay was consulting.