A fifteen month old email from Leslie Fram commenting on the The Buzz, has been making the rounds at Clear Channel, and was forwarded to me:
99X is the only true alternative station in Atlanta. Clear Channel will screw this up like they have before... OK, testosterone rock for meatheads. They will voice track this, no opportunity for listeners to call the station, nothing live. It's narrow too. If you wanna bang your head all day to Metallica, then this is the station for you. The nature of alternative is to win with both men and woman and we have that opportunity.
This email is made all the more embarrassing by the fact that The Buzz beat 99X in every day part, in persons 18-34 and 25-54. Lannie West, Leslie's husband/manager, made similar condescending statements about Buzz Program Director Chris Williams in an email to Rodney Ho several months ago when he wrote that Chris was fired from 99X because "management decided he was destroying a heritage Atlanta station."
The fact is that a morning show drives listeners. If people turn away from Axel and Leslie to listen to Whip, then they're likely to leave their dial tuned to 105.3. That doesn't explain why Aly and Chris beat Steve Craig and Matt Jones by even wider margins than Whip beat Axel and Leslie.
That 99X has a new morning show and that this is just one book are both good reasons to not count 99X out, but the Summer book should certainly be a wake-up call. That being said, It's ironic that Lanny's words may prove true: Chris Williams is destroying 99X.
