WVEE - Current Format and Programming

Current Format and Programming

Musically speaking, V-103 is a unique station with a playlist consisting of a balance of current R&B, soul, and hip-hop songs along with throwbacks and recurrents of all aforementioned genres mixed in during most parts of the day (with the exception of Monday through Saturdays evenings from 6 to 10pm). Also from Sunday through Thursday nights, the station airs slow jams from current and old school R&B and soul songs from 10pm to 2am during its "Quiet Storm" program. Like most urban stations, WVEE airs a Sunday morning gospel programming until noon. On Sunday afternoons, the station airs a show dedicated exclusively to classic and contemporary soul music (particularly neo-soul) from noon to 3 p.m. It has maintained a very strict rubric to the urban contemporary format since its inception in 1976, which is rare amongst larger markets urban-oriented radio stations who have shifted to the Mainstream Urban or Urban Adult Contemporary formats; this approach has been protected by default only because WVEE has no counter-competing sister stations in Atlanta. Its programming pits it in direct competition with Urban ACs WALR & WAMJ/WUMJ, Mainstream Urban WHTA, and Rhythmic WWVA all at the same time. In recent years, the station will occasionally spin hit crossover pop songs, so it does also compete with WWWQ to a certain extent in this respect.

The station did have past competition in the late 1980s from WZGC when it had a short lived urban format, along with WEKS (now WALR) in the late 1980s. Later past competition in the mid-2000s came from Cox-owned WBTS (now WSBB) and WFOX (now WSRV), which were respectively rhythmic and experimental urban stations. No urban radio competitor, past or present, has ever succeeded at topping WVEE's ratings throughout the station's tenure.

In 2010, the station was honored by the National Association of Broadcasters with the Marconi award for Urban Station of the Year.

WVEE is the largest and flagship urban station under CBS Radio ownership, and the only CBS Radio urban in the top-10 American markets, although the company's other urban, Charlotte, North Carolina (WPEG), is also only in the Southern United States. As of 2012 both WVEE and WPEG are the only CBS Radio Urban properties remaining, as two other Urbans had shifted to Rhythmic: In Washington, D.C. (which is a larger radio market), WPGC-FM, listed as an urban on CBS Radio's website and CBS Radio, was a Nielsen BDS urban contemporary reporter from 1997 to 2012 when BDS returned the station to the rhythmic contemporary panel (WPGC had been a Mediabase Rhythmic reporter since that trades' inception) in part due to WPGC being a hybrid of both formats (also known as "Churban," describing a Rhythmic playing R&B/Hip-Hop hits catering to a multicultural audience) despite the D.C./Baltimore area fielded by WKYS/WERQ-FM (both under Radio One ownership). The other, WJHM/Orlando, switched formats from Urban to rhythmic contemporary in February 2012.