Guilford Patriots Might Be Leaving the Country/WFMX 105.7 Has Left the Country(Now WMKS/KISS FM)

If the Guilford Patriots Palomino baseball club is able to win the East Zone Tournament coming up this weekend up in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, the Pats will take their aluminum bats to the Palomino World Series down in Puerto Rico. The Pats are no strangers to the World Series competition but this year’s work will have to be all done on the road. (Team Pictures can be viewed here.)

The Pats defeated Lynnhaven, Virginia up in Chesapeake, VA last weekend to claim the Palomino South Region title. The Pats knocked off Lynnhaven twice by the 4-1 and 5-3 scores to advance to the next round at the Wexford High School up in Pittsburg. The GP squad was lead by the pitching of Nick Rogers and Jody Calloway and by the coaching of Johnny and Justin Smith.

Guilford will play their first game up in Pittsburg this Saturday at 4pm. We should have results of Saturday’s game no later than early Sunday afternoon and should the Pats keep winning they would be up in the Steel City at the Wexford High School for a total of 4 days. We ought to be able to get a detailed report of the entire tournament since I have been following this Pats team since 1985. **** The Patriots plan to leave Greensboro at 8am on Thursday morning, practice up in Pittsburg late Thursday afternoon, then go watch the San Francisco Giants and Barry Bonds play his old team the Pittsburg Pirates on Friday night. Justin Smith will fly out of Greensboro at 2pm Thursday afternoon. ****

If the Pats can pull it off up in PA., they would go on to Caguas, Puerto Rico the following week for the World Series and it would run the whole first week of August. The Pat have never won the World Series, but they have played in it at least five or six times over the past 20 years. They have traveled as far away as California for the Series and John DiGorgio, father of former Pat player Ian DiGorgio, tells me that was some kind of crazy trip. The Pats have also played in the Series close to home over in Stoner-White Stadium at Jaycee Park. Good luck to the Pats and let’s hope their pitching holds up.

The Patriots may be leaving the Country, but it’s a fact, WFMX 105.7 has left the Country for good. We are talking good old Country Music here. WFMX was a Country Music staple for many years. The station was located in Statesville but you can hear it here in the Triad and also in Charlotte. The 100,000 Watt blowtorch as some of the radio insiders like to call the big power players, can send the signal all over the Country.

WFMX played current Country Music and they played many of the Classic Country tunes that made the Americana blend of homespun ballards so popular with the diehard Country audience. WFMX also carried all the NASCAR races and even boradcast the Nextel Cup qualifying on Thursday afternoons before the big Sunday races. They had a show that I used to like to listen to on Sunday nights called Rick Jackson’s Classic Country.

WFMX is gone and now that Clear Channel has seized command of WFMX it will be known as WMKS/ KISS FM. The new format will try to duplicate what 97.1 WQMG has been doing for several years after they dropped the POWER 97 theme and became Smooth Rhythm and Blues with the Tom Joyner Morning Show and the very popular Silent Storm Show on weeknights. WQMG also carried a retro show on Saturdays that brought back “Working at the Carwash”, “Right Back in Love Again”, “Purple Rain” and many other soul tunes including all of Roberta Flack’s greatest hits. (Remember “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”?)

WQMG 97.1 was the overall Top Rated #1 station in the most recent Arbitron rankings. WQMG is owned by Entercom Communications and now that Clear Channel has taken over WFMX they want to steal WQMG’s audience and try to move 105.7 up in the ratings. Two years ago Clear Channel switched it’s Classic Country station 94.5 to Hip Hop and went after Entercom’s 102 Jammz. Clear Channel couldn’t overtake 102 Jammz so this year they converted 94.5 to a Hispanic Format. Now Clear Channel is going to try and go head-to-head with 105.7 taking on 97.1 WQMG.

Clear Channel spent 18 million to purchase 105.7 and they are in the process of moving the city of license from Statesville to Clemmons. Clear Channel has the big bucks to make things happen but their Triad holdings as a whole have not been able to beat Entercom. Clear Channel has WMAG 99.5, WTQR 104.1, The Buzzard 100.3, La Preciousis 94.5, and now KISS FM 105.7. Entercom has 102 Jammz, WQMG 97.1, OLDIES 93, 98.7 SIMON, AM1510 WEAL, and AM950 WPET.

Entercom has been kicking butt up at the top of the ratings with 97.1 WQMG and 102 Jammz always among the top 3 stations. Clear Channel sees the popularity of 104.1 WTQR falling and WMAG 99.5 also trickling downward. Clear Channel sees that WQMG is carrying the older(35 plus) African-American audience and since Clear Channel couldn’t steal Entercom’s younger 102 Jammz crowd, now Clear Channel thinks they can split up the loyal black audience that 97.1 WQMG has built up over the years by playing the black throwback music and by serving the community. Entercom has been taking the advertising dollars that Clear Channel wants and now we will see how loyal the WQMG listeners are.

What this market needs is a FM Black Gospel Station and it would be ranked in the top 5 in it’s very first ratings book and the FM Black Gospel Station would always rank in the top 3 in this market, just go ahead and take it to the Bank. Black Gospel on the FM dial succeeds in every part of the country where they have the guts to try it. WQMG mixes in some Black Gospel and KISS FM 105.7 will do exactly the same, but they need to go full-time Black Gospel. The Lord might just be calling us all home, so somebody needs to be getting the Old Gospel Ship ready.

In a few footnotes, I write about the Radio Stations on this sports website because the Radio Wars are a lot like Sports Competition. I’ve been in the Sports Wars and the Radio Wars and they both are very much fun to be around when you hit the heat of the battle. The Greensboro Grasshoppers picked a rare but nice road win on Tuesday down in Rome, Georgia. The Hoppers defeated the Braves 8-4 and the Hops hit the ball very well off of Major League rehab starter John Thomson and the Hoppers picked up 14 total hits against 4 Braves’ pitchers.

The Carolina Dynamo are set to be in the PDL league playoffs this weekend according to our greensborosports photographer Christian Lewis and there is also a big Soccer on the Shore Youth Tournament coming to town. Greensboro’s Newest Recreation Soccer League is ready for you. Contact the Guilford United Soccer Club at www.guilfordunitedsoccerclub.com. This is being billed as Neighborhood Soccer at It’s Best. They are members of the NCYSA and you can build your own team, practice near home, play against quality teams and enter some of the best tournaments available. Register your team now at www.guilfordunitedsoccerclub.com

One thought on “Guilford Patriots Might Be Leaving the Country/WFMX 105.7 Has Left the Country(Now WMKS/KISS FM)

  1. The real shame of the radio wars in the Triad is that the so-called “winners” often leave the listeners with an inferior product. Case in point: 790 the Ball is the last remaining sports station with the exit of 1590 ESPN radio earlier this year (and other sports-themed stations before that). Instead of entertaining sports shows like “Off the Wall Sports”, “the Big Mo Show”, and “The Andy Durham Sports Show”, we are left with the untalented musings of Bill Kimm of “The Kim Bill show”. Kim sounds like a guy who just climbed out of bed and jumps on the radio without a clue of what he’s going to talk about. He has the unmitigated gall to air RERUNS of his show and call it The “Best” of the “Kim Bill Show”. He also has the temerity to hype the BIG guests on his show, when they often include such “luminaries” as the girl’s field hockey coach at HP University or other no-names. Added to that, the station repeatedly plugs their radio remotes where they give away prizes and what they refer to as “Ball Gear” (which is nothing more than 50-cent key chains) when the remotes themselves are nothing more than two people seated at a small table in a corner with a glass jar. WOW.

    Maybe one day someone in this stinking town will start a radio revolution and get some real sports talk back on the airwaves!

Comments are closed.