WSYR's GM Hopes For Younger Demos

“War Room” reads the sign on the door of the conference room at Clear Channel’s office in Syracuse.

It’s corporate gray with an iPad on the table and a stash of booze in the corner.

It’s where Joel Delmonico, the company’s general manager, and his staff hatched the plans to expand the region’s second-oldest radio station from AM to both AM and FM, according Marnie Eisenstadt at syracuse.com.

On Jan. 2, WSYR began airing on 106.9 FM, as well as 570 AM. To do it, Delmonico killed the sports station on 620-AM and put there an urban-music station that used to be on 106.9 FM.

When they made the shift, the iconic radio identification of “five-seventy” — heard in Syracuse for 89 years — all but disappeared from the Syracuse airwaves.

“570” was rarely mentioned on-air. It wasn’t in the new station’s logo. After a reporter asked him about it, Delmonico said he planned to increase the on-air mention of 570. And he added the 570 back into the station’s logo.

But the rebranding of a legendary station shows the unsettled nature of local radio, and all advertiser-based media, these days.

Two weeks after WSYR’s simulcast began, the station cut the positions of news reporters Tiffany Latino and Michelle Clark, leaving one part-time news reporter. That dropped the local news and production staff from 10 to eight people, Delmonico said. Traffic reporters will handle more news and the station will share more news with the company’s stations in Albany and Rochester, he said.

Before the switch, WSYR’s average listener was 50 years old, and many are in their 60s and beyond, Delmonico said. He’d like to see that number go down to 40.

Read more here.

Tom's Take:  It will be interesting to see if the Delmonico gets the lower demos he wants.  To me 40 is a stretch.  WSYR AM was probably at 62 for a median age. He'll be lucky if it gets down to 52. After all as Rush says often content is king.  Not necessarily the delivery platform.