In the radio biz, you usually hear about format changes after they are made, but not for WMCE.

Yesterday, Mercyhurst College released news that in February WMCE will change to a full-time jazz format. In my conversation earlier with Station Manager Michael Leal, the plan is to program a straight-ahead traditional jazz format, while keeping their weekend specialty shows. As for the classical format, it hasn’t seen growth. From the release:

However, station Director Mike Leal says the WMCE listening audience hasn’t grown in the past 10 years, leading him to consider strategies to increase the station’s appeal.

“We want to program music that’s not available elsewhere in the Erie market,” he said. “We didn’t want to duplicate what was already out there.” He says research shows that the radio audience for jazz nationwide has grown 6 percent over the past 10 years, so WMCE will soon become the first full-time jazz station in Erie. (Public radio station WQLN-FM does carry jazz shows, including “Jazz Flight” hosted by psychology department chair Rob Hoff, but is better known for classical music and talk shows.) With a new sound and a new look, the station will also begin using a new tagline, calling itself JAZZ FM – “Erie’s Jazz Station.”

The changeover to jazz will also give Communications students at the college more of a chance to participate in the programming and be mentored by the announcers at WMCE. The syndicated classical format mostly precluded that.