iHeartMedia on Tuesday swapped signals, moving its hip-hop station the Beat to 96.1 and top 40 station Power to the weaker 105.3 signal.
The Beat, which has been at 105.3 since 2020, is basically getting a promotion by being placed on a 100,000-watt signal, the strongest allowed by the Federal Communications Commission, allowing the station to cover all of metro Atlanta. Other 100,000-watt signal stations in town include 92.9/The Game, Star 94.1, news/talk 95.5 WSB, 97.1/The River, B98.5, Q99.7 and V-103.
The hip-hop station first debuted in 2016 on 96.7, a signal out of Fayetteville that starts losing power when it reaches downtown. In 2020, iHeart promoted the station to 105.3, which emanates out of Peachtree City and covers the heart of the city of Atlanta.
Now that the Beat is on such a powerful signal, it can more directly compete with Audacy’s V-103 and Radio One’s Hot 107.9 as well as Streetz 94.5, which is on a smaller signal and run by scrappy entrepreneur Steve Hegwood. This also brings the Beat’s nationally syndicated New York-based morning show The Breakfast Club to a larger audience in Atlanta.
Credit: iHe
Credit: iHe
In the monthly Nielsen ratings in February, V-103 landed a 4 share, ranked ninth overall with Hot not far behind at 3.7 (10th). Streetz 94.5 at 1.4 (20th place) was just ahead of the Beat at 1.2. (21st). Among 25-to-54 year olds, V-103 remained ahead (5.5), followed by Hot (4.3), Streetz (1.9) and the Beat (1.8). With 18-to-34 year olds, Hot was the most popular hip-hop station (5.7), followed by V-103 (4.5), Streetz (3.5) and the Beat (2.8).
Power, in the meantime, is taking the downgrade. The station competes directly with three other pop stations in town but is currently a laggard. In the most recent book, B98.5 was by far the dominant radio station at 7.3 (third place), followed by Star at 3.0 (13th place), Q99.7 at 2.5 (15th place) and Power way back at 2.0 (20th place).
Over much of its 12 years on the air Power positioned itself as the hipper, younger sounding top 40 station in Atlanta but struggled to find a viable local morning show. In 2021, it gave up, opting for the syndicated Jubal Show out of Seattle. Ryan Seacrest, who was born and raised in metro Atlanta, is based out of Los Angeles but airs a syndicated show that is also heard on Power in the mid-days.
Jeremy “Otis” Maher, who has had a long run at 94.9/The Bull, has added duties as locally-based afternoon host on Power.
