Busy Week For Mid-West Family

• Mid-West Family Marketing & Media announced a pending realignment of several brands serving Southwest Michigan and South Bend, IN.

According to management, these moves, reportedly going into effect this week, “are meant to consolidate stations with similar music formats, refine their respective station focuses, and find cost efficiencies.” Several stations will be changing location on the FM dial, and others are changing format — let us attempt to sort all this out for you to the best of our limited abilities:

Country WYTZ will move from 97.5 to the more powerful 50,000-watt signal at 99.9, currently occupied by Alternative WQLQ (Live 99.9). Concurrently, WQLQ and its Alternative format move to 98.3 and W241AD(96.1) serving South Bend, displacing AC WCXT (98.3 The Coast)/Hartford MI. Former Coast listeners will be directed to AC sister WNSN (Sunny 101.5)/South Bend.

And there’s more: “Quality Rock” 107.9 The Lake (WYTZ-HD2/W300EJ)/Benton Harbor moves to WYTZ’s former 97.5 frequency and takes on new WRRA-FM calls. Sports-Talk WSBT-AM 960/South Bend, formerly carried on 96.1, is expanding its coverage and will also be heard on W291DK (106.1)/Benton Harbor MI, and WQYQ-AM 1400/St. Joseph, MI.

“It’s a lot of change, and it’s probably overdue,” said Dave Doetsch, Chief Operating Officer of Mid-West Family Marketing & Media. “This reflects the changing ways people consume music, the mobility of our audiences, and the evolution of music itself. We did a lot of homework and external market research before launching this — a pretty substantial change. I’m proud of our team that has prepared for this change, I’m really excited for advertisers who are going to find greater value for their dollars, and I’m excited to present all of this to the listeners. At the end of the day, they have choices in where and how they consume content, and we’re putting our best foot forward to win their loyalty.”