As we first indicated was likely to happen yesterday in Daily Domains, Entercom has quickly rebranded newly launched Alternative “Alt 101.9” WQMP Daytona Beach/Orlando FL to “FM 101.9“.
WQMP flipped to Alternative on Wednesday, November 29 using identical branding to its just-launched sister stations in Dallas and New York. iHeartMedia has been using the “Alt” branding in the Orlando market on its 101.1 WJRR-HD3 since September 2016. While we await some form of confirmation from either group that was the impetus of the forced rebranding after just five days, it is one of those circumstances where 2+2 does equal 4.
WQMP continues with its 10,000 songs commercial-free, now just under a new name.
Cory 
Mark W. 
Kinda surprised their NY station didn’t rebrand as well. Didn’t you post that iHeart had registered the “Alt” domain to its WAXQ-HD2 a couple days before “Alt” launched on 92.3?
Sure sounds like Entercom knows what it’s doing! LOL
They just detonated a $10 million per year biller in Seattle today (a station inherited from CBS) so that they could keep a $5 million per year biller. Makes sense to me!
What I want to know is how a company could launch an entire format and use the name of an established competitor and not realize the duplication.
It reminds me of something Crawford did years ago on their multi-market-spanning WYDE in Alabama. Although it was targeting Birmingham it always put a massive signal into Huntsville and all the rural areas of northern Alabama. They flipped to a music format back around 2007 as “Fun 101”. But there was already a Fun 92.7 in their coverage area, so less than a week later it became “Star 101”. But then was already a Star 99.9 in the coverage area, too! They finally settled on “The New 101.1”, although WYSF in Birmingham was calling themselves “The New 94.5 WYSF” at the time. So they managed to more less pick three existing station names within their coverage area. I always got a laugh out of that. (Less than a year into this debacle, they went from music back to talk with their old “101.1 The Source” moniker.)