Lansing Radio: WVIC-FM Gets Pushback From Alternative Fans

When Kaitlyn Pierce of Battle Creek tuned into radio station WVIC 94.1 FM Monday morning as she does most days and heard country music, she thought she was hearing a comedy program at first.

"I thought it was like a joke or an accident," Pierce, an alternative music fan, told The Lansing State-Journal Tuesday. She was confused because the station, marketed as "The Edge," changed formats at 6 a.m. Monday and become a country music station with new call letters: WWDK-FM branding as The Duke: Lansing Michigan's classic country radio station.

The station is one of 72 owned by Wausau, Wisconsin-based Midwest Communications.

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The station's Vice President and General Manager Patrick Pendergast said Tuesday that the change was based on a simple fact.

"It was a bottom-line decision to drop the WVIC alternative format and we understand that there are some unhappy listeners out there," Pendergast said. "It's always a difficult process."

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Pendergast said listener research had determined that much of the alternative music audience came from three zip codes in the Lansing area. The station's 40,000-watt transmitter is near Jackson; its signal reaches Battle Creek, parts of Grand Rapids, Kalamazoo, Lansing and Ann Arbor, according to a map at www.mwcradio.com. Its offices are in Holt, a Lansing suburb.

The Fall 2014 Nielsen radio ratings showed WVIC in seventh place among commercial stations in the Lansing-East Lansing market, with a 3.5 percent share of listeners.