FRESNO, California — Q97.1 has ended the Greg & Dre morning show after a 25-year run, closing one of the Fresno and Visalia market’s longest local radio partnerships as the station moves a syndicated program into morning drive.
Greg Hoffman will remain with the station in middays, while Andre Covington is departing. The Dana Cortez Show will move into mornings, and Kimmie Marquez will shift from middays to afternoons.
The changes give Lotus Broadcasting a nationally distributed morning program while retaining Hoffman elsewhere in the schedule. They also end the daily pairing that connected Greg & Dre with Central California listeners for a quarter-century.
A test of local loyalty versus syndicated scale
The decision reflects a choice facing many music stations: maintain a locally built morning franchise or use a syndicated show that can provide established content, guests and production across multiple markets.
Syndication can reduce the burden of producing a complete local morning program, but longevity carries commercial value of its own. Personalities who have spent decades in one market often bring relationships with listeners, advertisers, artists and community organizations that cannot be transferred immediately to a replacement.
The first evidence will come from audience response, advertiser retention and the amount of Fresno-area information and interaction that remains in morning drive. The station has not publicly detailed whether Covington will remain in local media or what additional local elements will accompany the new program.