Losing My Edge.

102.1-FM The Edge Pulls Its Long-Running All-Local Sunday Night Block From The Schedule.

After almost five years of “The Local Edge” being a fixture on the Sunday night radio dial, 102.1-FM The Edge has pulled its local music-exclusive show from the schedule with no plans of bringing it back.

Notable for being arguably the only place where certain upstart area bands were ever likely to hear their songs being played on the air for the first time, “The Local Edge” took over the reigns in 2009 from a similarly formatted program that had aired in the same block and was called, simply, “The Local Show.” That show, hosted by Alan Ayo, had aired on the station since at least the early ’00s.

Mark Schectman, who hosted “The Local Edge” throughout the entirety of its run, remains with the station and will continue to host “The Adventure Club,” which had previously led into “The Local Edge” and which Schectman took over from previous host Josh Venable in late 2012.

That show, however, will be pushed back from its 9 p.m. start and moved to the 11 p.m. slot, where it will now exist in a one-hour block, rather than in the two-hour format within which it had previously existed. Schectman will no longer program that show on his own as he had previously, though. He will, however, continue in his daytime hosting role at the station, where he hosts the 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. block on weekdays.

“I’m hoping to now have more influence on what gets played during the day,” Schectman tells Central Track. “Honestly, I have been influencing that a lot already. I’m still the local guy and the new music guy. Now I can spread the good word during the daytime hours.

“It sucks because I loved those shows so much,” he continues, while also noting that dwindling ratings were indeed a factor of the Sunday night programming changes. “Without them, I wouldn’t have a day part right now. So I have to remain positive. I can still make a change up there [at the station]. And not just on Sunday night.”

Still, these programming moves certainly mark an end to an era — even as Schectman puts a good face on and tries his best to explain that radio just works this way, as he does in a recent post to his Tumblr page.

“Please understand that these things happen,” he writes in that post. “It’s a business. And I’m so lucky to still be a part of it.

“There’s still plenty of fun to be had.”