From the MCRFB news archives:
NEW CALL LETTERS SOUGHT: WJR-FM Getting Joseph, ‘Hot Hits’
NEW YORK — When consultant Mike Joseph arrives in Detroit the first week in July, he’ll be taking his “Hot Hits” format to WJR-FM, which petitioned the FCC for a call-letter change to WHYT-FM on June 8.
Joseph confirmed Thursday that he would “monitor and research” the Motor City market for WJR, but it’s premature for him to commit to a new station sound. The Capitol Cities property is now a beautiful music outlet in the Detroit market.
Joseph normally lives in the market he’s consulting for a six-month period. But he says the length of his stay in Detroit will be “open ended.” The consultant last worked on the city scene in 1963, when he engineered a one-book turnaround for WKNR-FM, which simulcast the Top 40 sound he instituted for WKNR-AM during that time.
WJR-FM general manager Roger J. Longwell was in Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky, Ohio on Wednesday, and was unavailable for comments on Joseph’s hiring. But WJR-FM sales manager Roger G. Sisson confirmed that the station had petitioned the FCC for new call letters and that other Motor City stations have been notified.
Joseph’s arrival “proves again that Detroit is the most volatile market in the country,” according to Elaine R. Baker, vice-president and general manager of WOMC-FM (104.3), an adult contemporary Metromedia outlet in Detroit. “I suspect the stations in the market will take a wait-and-see attitude.”
Baker says she doesn’t anticipate a format change at WOMC at present, although she notes that “aggressive management always look at new possibilities. But we’re adult contemporary and that’s where we are today.” Asked about any possibility for change “tomorrow” at WOMC-FM, the station executive replied, “I don’t have a crystal ball.” END
(Information and news source: Billboard; July 3, 1982).
