Fresh Listen: Bob & Sheri on K104.7

It was an unusual sequence of events.

In mid-April, syndicated morning show hosts Bob Lacey & Sheri Lynch announced that they were leaving WLNK (107.9 the Link) Charlotte, N.C., the station that had been the Bob & Sheri show’s home base for 29 years, through three different brands of AC and Hot AC.

In late April, Radioinsight reported that the Link rebranded as Hot AC Mix 107.9 under PD Terry Foxx. The new station moved afternoon hosts Matt Harris and Ramona Halloway to mornings. In the mid-’00s, WLNK’s success with personality in both drive times became a model for many stations in the AC format, but waned (at least for a while) with the advent of PPM measurement in the 2010s.

On May 9, Bob & Sheri announced they would be moving to gold-based AC WKQC (K104.7) on July 17. That move sent morning team Phil Harris & Melany Myers to afternoons, and to an 8:30-10 a.m. workday kickoff slot. Now K104.7 was the station with morning teams in both dayparts (and one particular morning team in both dayparts).

On July 20, the June PPM numbers for Charlotte came out, and both stations were up. K104.7 rebounded 4.9 – 5.5 – 6.0, returning to No. 2 in the market. The new Mix was up 3.1 – 3.1 – 5.0, its best showing in nearly three years, according to Radioinsight’s Chris Huff. That prompted a fresh listen to Bob & Sheri and to both K104.7 and Mix 107.9 in afternoons.

When I listened on Monday, July 18, K104.7 had structured the hour into three main morning-show content blocs — two national, one local — allowing it to still play 9-10 songs. The team were also heard on sweepers and teasers during the music blocs, basically serving as their own imaging voices, and on endorsement spots.

The first bit was the daily “Can You Believe This” feature, today celebrating summer’s halfway point with an “Ultimate Summer Bucket List” of activities. Lynch read off the activities — picnics, catching fireflies, a small-town parade, going to a daytime movie, while Lacey and morning-show director (rather than producer) Max Sweeten said which ones they’d be interested in.

One of the show’s running jokes is Lynch teasing Lacey about being cranky. When they got to “making s’mores,” Lynch already knew Lacey would hate doing that. Lacey insisted that he had more nuance than merely loving or hating something. “You disrespect s’mores and you look down on people who like them,” she shot back.

The second bit was an upscale dating coach’s “seven signs of a low-quality man”: He insists on going 50/50 on dates; he makes you feel self-conscious about commitment; he lacks manners. On issues of manners (another long-running topic), the team members agreed. The top two warning signs were teased to the next break.

The local break was Lynch talking about flying back from a trip to visit her mom in Utah. In the airport for the trip home, she was next to a large group of vacationers flying to Carowinds, and how surprisingly proud she was to hear them talking about visiting Charlotte as if it was Las Vegas or Orlando. “This is home,” said Lacey.

Phil & Mel had their own topical bit about manners that afternoon — a couple who were offering tiers of food and drink at their wedding based on the cost of the gift, as well as the resurgence of the wedding industry and the inevitable rise in postings of bridezillas behaving badly on social media. Bob & Sheri had a presence in afternoons, too — both a morning recap promo and a rollover sweeper teasing the next morning.

In the mornings, after Bob & Sheri’s handoff, Harris was by himself on the air and over the intros — not a second morning show. He was teasing that Myers would be back on the air that afternoon. In that particular stretch, she didn’t say why she was out, but she had just returned from surgery, following an early diagnosis of breast cancer. She writes about it here.

I recently included K104.7 in a profile of gold-based ACs that had essentially filled the Classic Hits franchise in their markets. (One of the points that Bob & Sheri themselves made in the K104.7 announcement is that the new station would be a better fit.) In the hour of afternoons I heard, the music seemed particularly pumped up, almost like a Friday afternoon kickoff. Here’s the station at 4 p.m. on July 19:

Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”
Maroon 5, “One More Night”
Buggles, “Video Killed the Radio Star”
Scandal, “The Warrior”
Gorillaz, “Feel Good, Inc.”
Aerosmith, “Dude (Looks Like a Lady)”
Whispers, “Rock Steady”
38 Special, “Hold On Loosely”
Gotye, “Somebody That I Used to Know”
Bangles, “Manic Monday”
Genesis, “That’s All”
C & C Music Factory, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”
David Bowie, “Modern Love”
Prince, “I Would Die 4 U”
Spin Doctors, “Two Princes”

The new Mix 107.9 bills itself as “’90s, 2000s, and today.” On the occasions I’ve heard it, there’s been a lot of tempo-based gold as well, particularly of the late ‘90s/early ‘00s sort that is now starting to resurface at Hot AC. In the 4 p.m. hour, Madison James, most recently with WSTR (Star 94) Atlanta, was teasing the station’s 5 p.m. “Happy Hour Mix” and encouraging listeners to persevere through that one last endless Zoom meeting. (“You could be back in the office and having to look at them face to face.”) She was also talking about recent interviews with Elle King and Duncan Laurence.