WHAT HAPPENED TO Q101 ON 101.1 FM?
The company that owned 101.1 FM (Emmis) sold the radio station to a new company. The new company never intended to keep Alternative music on the air on 101.1. Since we knew this, we offered to buy “Q101” from Emmis, before they sold 101.1 to the new company. We (Chicago-based radio syndication company Broadcast Barter Radio Networks) purchased everything except the FCC license and the broadcasting equipment (everything meaning the Q101 brand name, the likeness, the online property, all the website’s content and more). The other company bought the FCC license and broadcasting equipment, and paid over $100 million for 101.1 FM, WLUP, and WRXP in New York. They made the decision to change the format of 101.1 FM from Alternative to News and let the entire air staff go. We then purchased the “Q101” brand from Emmis in an effort to keep it alive, to broadcast online as an internet radio broadcaster with more choices and more ways for you to get the music you love. The thought to return it to the airwaves was always there but the costs are prohibitive for us so we’re keeping it all alive here.
UPDATE: After failure of the news format on 101.1, the company ‘rented’ 87.7 to put ‘alternative’ on there. They then played around [for a while] with 101.1 FM morphing its format to its final destination which became i101 [or something like that]. We in fact found some people enjoyed that 90’s based pop/dance hodgepodge of a format.
EDM America TV added the iParty 101 channel to serve those fans who lost what they were just starting to enjoy. The company that bought 101.1 and the other stations ran into financial trouble and had to bail, Cumulus came to ‘post the bail’ and now runs 101.1, WLS AM & FM as well as WLUP here in Chicago.
Nothing they do has anything to do with “Q101”.
WHY DID EMMIS SELL 101.1 FM?
Emmis used to be a private company. Like many radio companies, they began to grow. They bought more stations and then went public. Like many public companies, they found going public isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Their stations became corporate. They tried to go back to being private. That fell through. In order to go private, or be a profitable public company, they needed to shore up their balance sheet. One way to do this was to sell some stations and make some cash to pay some bills. They decided to sell 101.1 FM, WLUP, and WRXP to do this.