In a matter of minutes, three stations serving two nations in what used to be one market surrendered three unique format positions in order to bring in their company’s national format initiatives.

Virgin Radio was born in the United Kingdom in 1993. Astral Media debuted the brand in Canada on 99.9 CKFM Toronto in 2008 and would soon spread it to stations in Montreal, Ottawa and Vancouver. While the latter two would later drop the brand, Astral’s successor Bell Media would continue to roll out the “Virgin Radio” brand to CHRs including new stations in those markets. The addition of 93.9 CIDR Windsor brings the brand to 12 markets across the country.

Bell Media would roll out a second brand in May 2019, when thirteen of their Country stations all relaunched as “Pure Country“. With Windsor and two other launches today, Bell now has “Pure Country” stations in sixteen Canadian markets.

Here in the U.S., Entercom has gone all-in with Alternative since the completion of its merger with CBS Radio in 2017. Today’s flip of WDZH Detroit gives the company sixteen stations in the format.

The Detroit/Windsor radio marketplace lost an Active Rock leaning Alternative, a Hot AC leaning AAA, and a Soft AC while gaining a fourth Country, a second Mainstream CHR, and a replacement Alternative. “89X” and “93.9 The River” were outliers in a Bell Media portfolio quickly focusing on core format brands. The additional caveat of the American stations not focusing ad sales in Canada and vice versa also comes into play here as CIDR is now the only CHR targeting Southwest Ontario and CIMX one of two Country stations. But radio signals don’t just stop at the border and the entrenched brands will still retain many listeners and the new formats will peel some as well.

“98.7 The Breeze” was trending upwards in recent months from a 2.8 share in August to a 3.7 in October. However with Alternative being a core product for Entercom and a hole for another younger male skewing station in the market made possible by the demise of CIMX in particular, it is not a surprise that Entercom quickly changed formats at WDZH to try to prevent another operator from beating it to the punch. With Beasley’s Rock 101.1 WRIF currently leading the Detroit market, even getting a portion of CIMX’s previous audience will help keep them from completely dominating in multiple demos. It was WRIF’s poaching of CIMX’s morning hosts Dave & Chuck The Freak in 2012 that turned around the fortunes of both stations.

There are also a lot of similarities between how Bell has built its national brands and Entercom did when it made its restructurings in September in particular between Entercom’s Country stations and Bell’s “Pure Country”. Both brands feature local or regional morning and afternoon shows, national midday and evening shows and specialty weekend programs.

Entercom was able to have a fully-fledged brand ready to go in Detroit with less than 24 hours from time time CIMX and CIDR began promoting their format changes to take place. Having their Imaging Director and voice Dan Stone in-house at WNYL New York along with a national programming team to quickly build out the brand made the turnover feasible. Entercom head of Alternative programming Mike Kaplan was even able to repurpose the “Alt 98.7” jingles he had commissioned when he programmed iHeartMedia’s KYSR Los Angeles. The company quickly utilized all of its resources to get the brand launched.

Are the Detroit and Windsor markets better served by having “89X“, “93.9 The River” and “98.7 The Breeze” go away? Probably not as there are now multiple niches that are not being served by broadcast radio. However from a business perspective Bell Media and Entercom can much better serve their goals and cut costs with the new “Pure Country 89“, “93.9 Virgin Radio” and “Alt 98.7“.