Tampa Radio: Cox Turns-Over 97.1 FM To Listeners

Friday, Cox Media-owned radio station WSUN 97.1 FM in Tampa Bay is shifting its entire format to listener-controlled radio, now putting its audience in control of the songs that play 24 hours a day.

Telecrunch.com reports it’s the first station among Cox Media’s 86 U.S.-based properties to do so on both web and mobile, if not the first in the U.S. to experiment with the format. Is this what the future of terrestrial radio looks like? It just might be.

What the future of radio looks like is a question that radio stations everywhere – and not just here in the U.S. – are struggling with. After all, what hope does radio have when anyone can play any music, on-demand, any time they want?

The answer, as it turns out, may be to mimic those services their listeners are abandoning them for, and then attempt to add value.

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That’s certainly the case with Cox Media Group’s 97x, which today at 5 PM ET, is making an extreme shift to user-controlled programming for the first time.

According to telecrunch.com, the station had been building its new platform in stealth, in partnership with LDR Interactive (aka “Listener Driven Radio”) which today offers “crowdcasting” solutions for 160 stations worldwide. Its services range from simple music research (users voting for favorite songs) to full-on listener takeover of the radio station’s queue.

Most of these crowd-controlled stations are experimenting with the technology, however, offering users the ability to vote on a song or control a short block of programming. They aren’t turning the entire station over to the listener base. But perhaps they should.

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