Posted by Bud on March 01, 2010 at 20:17:02:
On May 22, 2009, the major media news was that Clear Channel Radio's WNUA-FM flipped from its longtime Smooth Jazz format to a pop music format aimed at Chicago's Hispanic community and named the station Mega 95.5. The station slowly added a strong on-air staff and has seen it's monthly ratings steadily rise and somewhat cut into Univision & SBS's audience share. One would think Clear Channel would be happy with these results. That may not be the case, however...
On February 25th, Clear Channel purchased the domain name: ElPatron955.com. A couple of days later that domain address began pointing right to Chicago's Mega 95.5 website.
Clear Channel has one other "El Patron" radio station, Atlanta's WBZY-FM is called 105.3 El Patron. It has been around for a little over three years and is a regional Mexican format. Is Clear Channel Chicago looking to to change Mega's pop format into one for an older Hispanic crowd after less than one year?
"El Patron" (which roughly translates to "The Boss") would have a very different audience then what Mega now has built. It would comepete head to head with the #1 Hispanic station in town, Univision's WOJO-FM, as well as with SBS' La Ley. It would seem strange to start all over and try to take on an established market leader, but this IS Clear Channel we are talking about. Logic never enters into their programming decisions.
It should be interesting to see what happens at Mega 95.5 over the next few weeks...