Final Listen: WROZ (Fun 101.3) Lancaster

In January 2012, I wrote about Mainstream AC WROZ Lancaster, Pa., then known as the Rose, twice in one week. 

On a Friday, I profiled the station and its evolution to a hotter, more current mix that landed somewhere between the AC norm and Adult CHR. On the following Tuesday, they were included in an article about “The Hardest Rockin’ Songs at AC,” because they included songs such as Guns N’ Roses’ “Sweet Child O’Mine” and Lita Ford’s “Kiss Me Deadly” on their Flashback Friday and lunch hour programming. (In 2012, it was still remarkable for an AC station to play “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or “Here I Go Again.”)

Here’s WROZ at 11 a.m. on Jan. 13, 2012:

• Club Nouveau, “Lean on Me”
• Kelly Clarkson, “Mr. Know It All”
• Sugar Ray, “When It’s Over”
• Katy Perry, “Firework”
• Timbaland f/Onerepublic, “Apologize”
• Adele, “Set Fire to the Rain”
• Orinathi, “According to You”
• Dave Matthews Band, “Crash Into Me”
• Pink, “Perfect”
• Matchbox Twenty, “How Far We’ve Come”
• Proclaimers, “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)”
• Tim McGraw, “Live Like You Were Dying”
• Lady Gaga, “Born This Way”
• Aerosmith, “Dude (Looks Like A Lady)”

At the time, I thought WROZ was better executed than similar stations that were trying to modernize. Before long, AC taking its cues from the late ‘00s/early ‘10s success of CHR would be the norm. Some, as in this monitor of WROZ, limited the ‘80s to two songs an hour. A few tried to become “millennial ACs,” just in time for the pipeline from Top 40 to start drying up. In 2015, WROZ would reimage as Fun 101.3, influenced by WBEB Philadelphia’s recent rebranding from B101 to More-FM.

In mid-July, WROZ was sold to Educational Media Foundation, owner of the Christian AC K-Love Network. Current PD Ronnie Ramone and the entire programming staff, along with GSM Loren Good, will exit when the sale closes in mid-to-late September.

In the interim, WROZ has segued to a more ‘90s-to-now approach—again at the seam of Mainstream and Hot AC. In the spring Nielsen ratings, WROZ was up 3.8-4.1 12-plus but first in 25-54 women with a 9.2, according to Ramone, and strongest in its third month when the station was at its most contemporary.

Here’s a “Final Listen” to the station at 6 a.m., August 19, with morning team Dennis (Mitchell) & Michelle (Cruz) whose main topic that morning was flooding the night before and continued traffic issues and closures:

• BTS, “Butter”
• Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande, “Rain on Me”
• Third Eye Blind, “Semi-Charmed Life”
• Britney Spears, “Toxic”
• Ed Sheeran, “Bad Habits”
• Bruno Mars, “Treasure”
• Def Leppard, “Pour Some Sugar On Me”
• Harry Styles, “Watermelon Sugar”
• Nelly Furtado, “Say It Right”
• Magic!, “Rude”
• Alanis Morisette, “You Oughta Know”
• Nelly & Florida Georgia Line, “Little Bit”

WROZ has also reinstituted the Flashback Friday feature, launched in 2001, but discontinued in 2019. Here’s the station at 2 p.m., on August 20:

• Rick Astley, “Never Gonna Give You Up”
• Go-Go’s, “Our Lips Are Sealed”
• Icehouse, “Electric Blue”
• Kenny Loggins, “Footloose”
• C&C Music Factory, “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”
• John Cougar Mellencamp, “Hurts So Good”
• Janet Jackson, “Nasty”
• Phil Collins, “In the Air Tonight”
• Amy Grant, “Good For Me”
• Jets, “Crush on You”
• Def Leppard, “Love Bites”
• Technotronic, “Pump Up the Jam”
• Michael Jackson, “Billie Jean”

WROZ is planning a farewell week in advance of the format change, featuring former staffers and listener tributes along the lines of WPLJ New York’s sign-off. Ramone can be reached at [email protected].