By Jeff Moss
DetroitSportsRag@GMail.com
March 15, 2016
The February Arbitron radio ratings are in and the news is as bad as ever for Detroit Sports 105.1. The Greater Media property continues to put up astoundingly horrific numbers for an FM station.
WMGC-FM followed up on its .9 rating in January with another .9 number for All Persons 6+ in February. What is even more shocking is 105.1 STILL cannot attract a male audience; their rating among men is a 2.2, which is “good” for 15th in the market.
Think about that for a second. A SPORTS station cannot convince MEN to tune in!!! MEN!!! Imagine a Girl Scout not being able to sell tagalongs and thin-mints at the Duke University “Fat Farm.”
That’s Detroit Sports 105.1.
They can’t get MEN, for Christ’s sake!!!! To listen to a station devoted to the Tigers, Lions, Wings and Pistons. I am speechless.
It would also appear that program director Dave “Dead Man Walking” Shore’s decision to replace Drew Lane with Matt Dery and Drew Sharp, move Sean Baligian to AM Drive and Rico Beard and Ryan Ermanni to middays has been an unmitigated disaster.
Who could have ever predicted that people wouldn’t want to listen to a career update guy, an unrepentant plagiarist and repeated ratings failures?
Oh, right. Everyone!
This station has been around for over 2 1/2 years and they still can’t convince MEN that they are a viable alternative to the “Guy Talk/Caller Driven” format on 97.1.
This website turned 13 years old over the weekend and in that time we have been the definitive source for Detroit sports media news. Over the DSR’s existence, nothing has been more shocking than the programming decisions made by Greater Media and their continued refusal to shake things up in the face of audience ambivalence.
Or to just just call it a day and flip formats.
Even after having 31 months of data at their disposal, original contributors Ermanni, Beard, Marc Fellhauer and Dery (after his non-compete ended) are still employed at WMGC.
Imagine if Bobby Jindal and George Pataki were still in the GOP Presidential race. That’s the level of tone-deafness among Greater Media executives when perusing THESE numbers and STILL employing those original contributors.
We’ve been saying for over a year: how long can this go on?
The answer appears to be indefinitely.