After a prolonged Christmas music stunt, iHeartMedia has launched Variety Hits “102.5 The Lake” on WMYI Greenville SC at 4pm on New Year’s Eve.
The station had dropped its previous AC “My 102.5” identity on Halloween for “Christmas 102.5“. Positioning as “We Play Anything”, the new format takes WMYI out of direct format competition with Entercom AC “Magic 98.9” WSPA-FM and places it against SummitMedia’s “99.5 Jack-FM” W258CB/WJMZ-HD3 and Salem Media Classic Hits “Earth-FM” 103.3 WRTH/95.9 WLTE.
The new branding clones existing iHeartMedia Variety Hits stations in nearby Charlotte as well as Cleveland.
The first songs on the new Lake were:
- John Mellencamp “Hurts So Good”
- Paula Abdul “Straight Up”
- Information Society “What’s On Your Mind”
- Don Henley “Boys Of Summer”
- Nirvana “Smells Like Teen Spirit”
- Tina Turner “What’s Love Got To Do With It”
Notice the lack of anything other than 80s/90s … Other than imaging of “We Play Anything” or a first name of Bob, Jack, Steve, etc…. can someone explain how Variety Hits in 2020 is any different musically from most classic hits stations now? In Cleveland the Lake shares 99 percent of the playlist from Majic 105.7. The Variety Hits stations don’t really play anything anymore – that you can’t hear on a classic rock, a/c, or classic hits station somewhere else on the dial.
WMYI is playing on average of two 70s tracks and one 2000s track per hour in line with most iHeartMedia Variety Hits stations.