Hubbard Adult Hits “Rewind 100.3” WILV Chicago is undergoing a rebranding.
Just as it has at two other times in recent history, WILV has dropped the “Rewind” moniker for just “Chicago’s 100.3“. The station also used the city and frequency name while evolving between formats in 1997 in between its “100.3 The Point” and “Windy 100” brands and in 2008-2010 between Rhythmic AC “Love-FM” and the launch of the then 80s centric “Rewind” identity. The current move comes as they station moves further away from its 80s base and added songs from the 2000s.
The move follows a similar rebranding by Hubbard at its former “Rewind 94.9” WREW Cincinnati. As the station became more current/recurrent based, it relaunched as “The New 94.9” on October 1.
WILV ranked tied for 15th in the Chicago market with a 2.4 share in the November PPM ratings. With 93.9 WLIT currently playing Christmas music despite its shift from AC to Hot AC earlier this year, this give WILV a chance to once again go after the AC hole in the Chicago market as a flanker to sister Adult CHR “101.9 The Mix” WTMX.
I’ve noticed on my trips to Chicago and from listening online that 100.3 has already been pretty close to AC for some time. “Rewind” has been a misnomer for quite a while for this station. I think of them as an AC with a larger and more varied gold library than 93.9.
Also, 93.9 isn’t really Hot AC in my opinion, just a much younger and hotter mainstream AC than they were before. (Not at the moment of course, since they’re all Christmas.)
Actually, in between the Point and Chicago’s 100.3 as WPNT the station was calling itself FM 100. An interesting choice, considering that that was the most well-known identity of 100.3 in its beautiful music days as WFMF and WLOO. Before the Point, the station was WXEZ “EZ 100” in the late 80s when it morphed into a soft AC format (but held onto the Bonneville BM library until the flip to Hot AC, at the end mostly playing it in overnights while the instrumental slots during the day were more smooth jazz–and it was transferred onto carts).