It’s hard to launch any new spoken-word station from scratch, especially an all-news station. Even with the land rush to put News, Talk, and Sports on FM, many operators have the advantage of an existing AM asset, a ready-made programming source (e.g., ESPN) or at least other similar successful rollout (CBS Radio’s sports FM launches). And it’s no easier when your station is in itself a news story. Or when you’re readying a launch in New York as well.

Merlin Media’s much-publicized WWWN (FM News 101.1) Chicago hit the airwaves more than a week ago, beating, by a day, the announced FM simulcast of heritage All-News outlet WBBM-AM on WCFS (the former Fresh 105.9). WWWN isn’t yet streaming, (neither, at the moment, is Classic Rock sister WLUP), but the inevitable launch pains were well documented. Audio of one particularly awkward newscast, which dissolved quickly into silence, then dumped back to music, surfaced within hours. Time-Out Chicago’s Robert Feder, not a fan of Merlin principal Randy Michaels, gave it until Thursday, then called WNWN “a blundering, amateurish, woefully prepared mess.”

When we took our First Listen on Monday, August 8, more than a week after the launch, there were definitely clunky moments, most of them brief, but not a train-wreck of the sort reported the previous week. JoAnn Genette, heard anchoring solo during most of the segment we monitored, audibly strained to keep her place on several occasions. There was also one moment where an outside weather cast didn’t materialize. It sounded, in other words, like a week-old News station that had launched from scratch.

That said, FM News 101.1 was far more straightforward in its presentation than some of the advance speculation and stunting led many in the industry to expect. The Merlin Media team never publicly promised a revolution—or anything other than the evolution that has been taking place on-air for several weeks. That didn't stop the industry from trying to extrapolate based on the stunting that led up to Chicago's launch and is still taking place at this writing in New York.

Here, the former WRXP seemingly is phasing in its format with heavily written and produced newscasts that on some occasions recall what one used to hear on music radio two decades ago and, on others, have a mild version of that voice-of-the-listener exasperation (“can’t Congress and President Obama get it together on the budget yet?”) more appropriate to all-Talk than all-News.

Chicago, on First Listen, felt less stylized by comparison. Like New York, Chicago began with female lifestyle vignettes that brought with them expectations of a softer approach than WBBM. What we heard was softer than typical News radio, but not soft. There are elements of what syndicated music host John Tesh calls “intelligence for life”—features from a life coach and one on health as well as a promo for a recurring tech feature. There was a review of the just concluded Lollapalooza and a end-of-the-hour feature on a 67-year-old woman in a wheelchair who’d positioned herself outside the festival to hear the music. The difference was in the balance—the health/hearth/home stories wouldn't have been out of place on another all-News station, you just might have heard fewer of them.

And it was hard to be too feature-driven on a day when the Dow was plunging with every update. (Where the station differed from, say, WCBS-AM is in the lack of a standalone business feature.) And the station was not without police blotter news: a six-year-old girl killed in a drive-by on the first day of school, two other kids struck and injured by a taxi driver, a man’s body pulled from a lake. That handful of stories came in the :02 and :32 slots, after the major story of each half-hour newscast.

WNWN is using the liner, “It’s not AM news on FM, it’s Chicago’s FM news.” But what that might mean was left to the listener during the segment I heard. The more likely takeaway for many was weather and traffic (in that order) every ten minutes on the :5s.

Here’s the 40 minutes that we heard just before 1 p.m. on August 8:

12:54 – Weather;
12:55 – Traffic, followed by a tease to the next weather and traffic in 10 minutes;
12:55 – Four spots, national sponsors (a lot of the spots were likely network ads—I hear the same ones on 101.9 in New York—but most were big names);
12:57 – The 67-year-old at Lollapalooza story;
12:58 – A crossover between the outgoing anchor and Genette. They tease an upcoming bit about a just published Orville Redenbacher biography. “Please, no sex tapes,” says one.
12:59 – Two spots;
1:00 – ID, weather, several headline teasers (stock market, back-to-school, a sting of deadbeat parents, and Lollapalooza) followed by a stock market report with reports from ABC’s Aaron Katersky and an actuality from a local stock analyst;
1:02 – The drive-by and man-in-the-lake stories;
1:03 – A local reporter’s piece on the schools reopening, a military expert’s actuality on the U.S. helicopter shot down in Afghanistan over the weekend;
1:05 – Weather, “Real Time Traffic”
1:06 – Two spots, both national;
1:07 – A produced bumper (“FM News 101.9”), followed by a Lollapalooza recap;
1:08 – A follow-up story on neighborhood residents who are happy that Lollapalooza is over;
1:09 – A teaser for the 1:15 weather and traffic
1:09 – Four spots, all national;
1:11 – A recorded promo introducing the station’s tech reporter;
1:12 – More bad news about the Dow; a longer report about how Facebook encourages narcissism in teens;
1:13 – A report on the success of a newly opened local casino, the “not AM on FM” liner, and a teaser for three lifestyle stories;
1:14 – Weather and a sponsored traffic report;
1:15 – A standalone ad for the first local sponsor—an upcoming vegetarian festival sponsored by a local spiritual center;
1:16 – The produced health feature—why following diet guidelines are prohibitively expensive;
1:17 – Another produced stager, then a back-to-school report on child/teacher conflicts;
1:19 – What’s in your drinking water? Trace elements of sex hormones, among other things;
1:20 – The use of therapy dogs in the courtroom (to help underage witnesses), then another teaser on weather/traffic;
1:20 – Two more national spots, a produced bumper with listener actualities (“I’m very excited” says one about the new station);
1:22 – The Veterans’ Affairs bureau becomes more cognizant of women’s health issues; the Field Museum is enlisting the public to help find a long-lost plant in Chicago;
1:24 – One clunky moment—a tease for the 1:25 weather and traffic, then nothing until they start after a pause;
1:24 – Three more spots—one local for Navy Pier;
1:26 – The “life coach” feature. Therese Crowley talks about trusting your inner voice and omens such as hearing George Michael’s “Freedom” on the first day of a new job.;
1:27 – Another produced bumper. The Dow plunge continues. a report on Obama's response to the stock market’s travails;
1:28 – A Mexican military helicopter touches down in Texas by mistake over the weekend; the Orville Redenbacher bio (and, no, there’s nothing scandalous);
1:29 – Two national ads;
1:30 – Temperature and headline teasers, mostly financial, but also calls for a recall election in Wisconsin. Then back to Obama and more from another financial analyst;
1:32 – Kids hit by a taxi, a teaser for the 1:35 weather/traffic;
1:33 – Poll: Most Americans don’t believe in global warming;
1:34 – The London riots continue, an actuality from the London police;
1:35 – Weather (with the aborted Accuweather join, the anchor ends up giving the weather herself), traffic and then back to spots.

This article is part of the August 11 Ross on Radio newsletter. To see this week's other ROR articles, follow the links below:

Radio's Best & Worst: Country Wins In Boston, Hot AC Wins In Portland, British Radio Tries To Stay Safe And More

How Top 40 Became More Like WKTU, And How WKTU Became #1