Update 12/26: Easy 93.1 officially debuted its Soft Oldies format at 12:00am.
The first hour of the new station consisted of:
The Commodores – Easy
The Beatles – Something
James Taylor – You’ve Got A Friend
Bobby Helms – My Special Angel
Whitney Houston – The Greatest Love Of All
Simon & Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water
Neil Diamond – I Am…I Said
Journey – Open Arms
The Beach Boys – California Girls
The Stylistics – You Make Me Feel Brand New
Dennis Yost & The Classics IV – Traces
Barry Manilow – Weekend In New England
Kenny Rogers – Through The Years
Harry Chapin – Cat’s In The Cradle
Jay & The Americans – This Magic Moment
Update 12/21: The shift to Soft Oldies continues as Cox has applied for use of the WFEZ calls. 93Rock.com is now hyping the coming format on its site as well.
Then beginning December 26th, South Florida’s new Easy 93.1 debuts with continuous soft and easy favorites! Join us for the perfect soundtrack at work, home and in the car.
Update 12/11: Cox has begun identifying the station as “Easy 93.1” on the air and promoting “Continuous Soft & Easy Favorites” coming after the holidays. The adjacent logo appeared on the station’s new Facebook page earlier today.
Update 12/8: We’ve seen it time and time again. Whenever we snoop out a domain registration by a company ahead of a planned format change they go and register some more decoys. Cox Miami follows up on the game of cat and mouse with eight additional domains for potential use at 93.1 WHDR.
The domains: 931TheRiver.com, Eagle931.com, Hits931.com, HotTalk931.com, TheBeat931.com, TheBone931.com, TheZone931.com, and Z93Miami.com were all registered by Derick Pitts’ Radio Free Productions on December 6 following our report of Easy93.com
Update 12/5: A pair of domains registered by an employee of Cox Miami may have provided our first indication on what to expect on 93.1 in 2011. The first domain Holiday931.com currently redirects to 93Rock.com. The second, Easy93.com was registered two days before the station switched to Christmas music. Both domains were registered by Derick Pitts, the Interactive Resource Manager for Cox Radio Miami.
Cox operates long time top rated Soft AC 105.5 WDUV in Tampa. A similar format should work with the numerous retirees in South Florida. Is this the future format for WHDR or just a decoy? We’ll keep monitoring as we approach the holidays.
Original Report 11/21: Cox Radio pulled the plug on Active Rock “93 Rock” WHDR Miami early Saturday morning as it goes into stunt mode as “South Florida’s Official Holiday Music Station”. All personalities including syndicated morning host Bubba The Love Sponge have been let go as the station will debut a new format after Christmas. A banner on the station’s website teases a return of the previous Dance “Party 93.1” format which has continued on the station’s HD2. We would not rule out this being a decoy to keep the market guessing for a few more weeks.
Crosstown Rhythmic AC “93.9 MIA” WMIA beat WHDR to the Christmas music bandwagon by a few hours. WHDR flipped at 7:00am Saturday morning. while WMIA made the shift a little after 8:00pm on Friday night after word of WHDR’s pending demise began to spread.
“93 Rock” continually has been one of the lowest rated FM’s in the Miami/Fort Lauderdale market albeit being the only outlet for current Rock music. The station debuted in February 2005 following the demise of Clear Channel’s “94.9 Zeta“. Clear Channel’s Classic Rock “Big 105.9” WBGG now is the only Rock oriented outlet in the market.
jimi 
-RedDevl- 
Ralf 
Mark 
Cox Radio did nothing to properly promote the Bubba the Love Sponge show. No billboards, no TV spots, etc. Miami is a tough market to begin with, but throw in poor promotion and it becomes much more difficult for a show to succeed.
Miami radio in general sucks. Too much repetition.
How about give 103.1 THE BUZZ a good deal for duplicate broadcasting on 93.1…. Done & done!
Now that would FREAKING RAWK!!!
-RedDevl-
Like Miami needs another AC station. Between WLYF, WFLC, WRMF and WEAT, there’s already too much competition in the format. They’re gonna fall even harder on their backsides with this one than they did with the active rock format. Cox just can’t get a clue to save their lives, can they?
This might be wishful thinking… but I’ve done some investigating and am almost certain they are still stunting. Check this out…
*Flipping orders usually come down from corporate at the last minute before it happens catching everyone by surprise.
*The domain easy93.com was registered a couple of days before they flipped to Christmas music… but it was registered by Derick Pitts locally, leading me to believe that when they created the site, they had no idea what they were flipping to. If easy93 were legit, corporate would have registered the domain the same way they did with Party931.com and 93rock.com under Craig Ashwood.
All this plus the fact that they are teasing “a better party” on 93rock.com PLUS the fact that Party931.com has been stale for a very long time now up until the flip leads me to think they are ultimately going back to Party on HD1.
Along with a new Christmas logo on Party and some new banners, if you’ve listened to HD2 lately, you’ll also start to hear some brand new promos mentioning “a better party”.
Maybe it’s me looking too much into it… but I just can’t believe that they are going to bring this “easy” format with that lame logo into a market like Miami that is not only saturated with this format but is also in need of “a better party” station.
Those are my two cents. 🙂
I Was Looking At Party 93.1 HD 2 Facebook Page And Info Has been Taken Down? Could This Mean Might be going Back To FM Radio Or HD 1
PS Could Easy 931 Could Be A Stunt Or The Real Thing And Why Would U Tewll Ur Comp. What New Format U Doing
This is why I just sent an email out to all PD’s/Online Directors in my markets that any format flip info is to be kept offline. All logos will be stored locally until the day/night of the flip. Same goes for domain registrations. They can be set up in an instant these days. Some markets do it the right way, and others do not.
You know why stations keep format flips secret? It’s because we don’t want the competition to flip to the same format BEFORE us. It’s potentially devastating, and you guys have fun with it.
Our digital vp plans on trickling down this new policy company wide.
Mark,
You are correct that most companies do not do a good job in keeping flip info offline until the actual flip, but I don’t think we’re having fun with it. Once the registrations hit the public databases they are public info. We simply take advantage of data that is publicly accessible. The scenario you mentioned took place this past May when Clear Channel beat Saga to CHR in Milwaukee by three hours. If your company puts that policy in affect company wide, its something that should’ve been done years ago. Otherwise we’re going to keep reporting any registrations that come into the databases.