I found out about this today because a local alt/rock station’s dj is from NoVA and couldn’t believe it when she was emailed by a buddy. I remember switching from DC101 in the am after the Greaseman signed off and listening to HFS for the rest of the day. DC101 was playing Freebird for the nth time while HFS was playing Souxsie, the Furs, U2, Gang of Four, the Buzzcocks, REM, Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedy’s, the Cult, Howard Jones, Talking Heads and I could go on and on. And who could ever forget the Weasel in afternoon (read rush hour) drivetime. Farewell, oh commercial college station, fair winds and following seas. XM or Sirius is starting to look mighty attractive.
Exactly, this is why I am pissed because all I have is a radio, and there are only four decent stations I can listen to… now there are only three.
I’m sorry, it just strikes me as… fucked up that they kill this old and beloved rock station for a FOREIGN LANGUAGE station! Come on, people, this is the United States and most of us speak English! :mad:
Tell me about it!
A couple years ago…back in spring 2001, 1050 CHUM - then an oldies station, and one of Toronto’s first rock stations - went ‘all-sports’.
By summer 2002, the oldies were back. Because the all-sports format wasn’t proving as profitable as they hoped.
So, don’t lose hope, the rock station might come back,
OTOH, 99.9 went from ‘mix’ to ‘rock’ in 2003, and shows no signs of changing back.
Meh, I always thought 98 Rock was better - but I’ve only been out here since 1998.
Happened to flip on 98 Rock in the car a little while ago, they’re gloating their asses off. Just dedicated a song to HFS - “We Are the Champions.” Apparently, they’re going around Baltimore to various bars and letting people trade in their HFS schwag for 98 Rock stuff.
What the hell does this have to do with anything?
I grew up in NOVA and I’ll probably listen to the new station on occasion. There is a large market here for Spanish language radio. Take a drive down Columbia Pike. There is a good stretch where most of the residents are Hispanic. If you go to Columbia Heights in D.C. the same holds true for now. I suspect the new station will have better ratings than HFS did for the last few years.
Having sold off their XM stock in '03, CC is no longer a major investor (looks like that corporate info page linked above badly needs updating) and have no say over programming except maybe for the ‘Nashville" “SUNNY” and “KISS” channels; it’s hard to say for sure. But there’s almost 100 other music channels on XM that CC has absolutely nil to do with. If even a whiff of CC influence makes you raise an eyebrow that’s fine; but IMO your decision should be ultimately be made by comparing XM and Sirius side by side with regards to equipment, sound quality and depth of playlists and content of non-music channels. It’s super easy to do some objective research and good luck to all of you who are making the escape from AM/FM hell. It’s abso-fuckin’-lutely changed my life for the better.
Satellite Radio: shitting on FM from a 10,900 mile height!
Two links that should help “clear” (oh, smack me) this up:
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/it?s=XMSR
http://www.xm411.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=9110
Oh yeah, DC HFS listeners: sorry to hear about this. Yep, it sucks out loud - literally - when your favorite station gets pulled out from under you with no warning. (Remembers with great sadness the sudden demise of Z-Rock in Phoenix ca. '95)
Infinity killed HFS years ago; this is just the burial.
[Johnny Carson] I did not know that! [/Johnny Carson]
That’s good to hear. I’ve got two workmates, one has Sirius, the other XM, They both love it.
It’s not worth it for me to get sat radio, my commute is all of 15 minutes. The car doesn’t even warm up.
Cheers,
Vega
Guys, how many times do I have to tell you? It comes down to MONEY. WHFS was probably no longer pulling in the ratings, so its owners decided to change it to a format where it would. Ratings translate into advertising dollars, you know.
In one of my broadcasting courses, we have to do a group project where we have to get a hypothetical radio station financed and operating. My group is seriously considering a Spanish-language station, even though none of us speaks that language. The reason is because there’s a market for it and advertisers who want to tap into that market. Advertisers want the ears of listeners, and stations want the dollars of advertisers. That’s all it is.
Just remember, kids, it’s all about the Benjamins.
Robin
I feel your pain, everyone. WFLN was the only commercial classical station in the Phila market, and was killed off 1997. Now that I live out of the Phila area, I saw the news on a Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer front page and called my Dad almost asking him to ‘say it ain’t so’.
There were great ‘album side’ radio stations and those with unique programming, but sadly they have all faded away.
With reduction of rules regarding how many stations can be owned in how many markets, you’re going to get glurge radio, because profit is what is all about-not what your ears want. Sad, but as Walter Cronkite put it, “That’s the way it is.”
What we really need, of course, is simply a whole bunch more radio spectrum, so there’d be room for a lot more choices on the dial. Move TV entirely to cable and satellite (with a certain amount of free spectrum on each, to replace the loss of free broadcast TV), then open up some of that spectrum for radio.
What the fucking fuck?!
Wash your mouth out with soap, girl.
Vega, I hear ya about the commute. Mine’s about five minutes now, so I didn’t bother to get sat. radio in my new car and got an XM PCR (uses any computer, does not require one to be online) instead so I can keep the music going constantly while at home. It’s a shame the PCR isn’t for sale anymore due to concerns that users were using DIY software programs to save songs as mp3s. Maybe Sirius has a version? Otherwise the Delphi SkyFi2 is pretty damn spiffy for at home use and Sirius should have a similar unit.
Wow, look at me huckstering for both companies! But hey, 'tis no skin off my nose if people choose to subscribe to a different service than the one I chose. Competition is healthy; it would be nice to see both Sirius and XM stay in business. Err, not to mention that I’ll do whatever it takes to avoid starting a Sirius vs. XM flamewar along the lines of those seen elsewhere online. Seriously, they can make some of the politically-oriented throwdowns on here look like a giggly preteen pillow fight. :eek:
The guy that has the Sirius setup bought all the toys to go with it. Like the guy in the commercial that takes the head unit from the car to the desk. It’s pretty spiffy. He has it connected to his home stereo and hasen’t listened to radio for months.
Heh, I’m doomed to not be able to justify sat radio. It would make my 40+ gigs of mp3’s obsolete. (All ripped from cd’s and vinyl that I own.)
Cheers,
Vega
That will only help if the same three companies don’t own all the new stations too.
I listened to WHFS in the 80s, when I lived in St. Mary’s County, and it was tremendous then. They’d play anything, and everything. Those days have been long gone.
Yeah! Those damn foreigners! First they take our jobs, and now they’re taking our radio stations!
I know you’re better than that, nyctea.
That aside, do you know why the radio selection in the DC metro area is so bad? It’s because the broadcast licenses are so expensive that no one is willing to take a chance on a station that might not make gobs of cash. If someone is willing to pay for a license for a Spanish-language station, they’ve got a damn good reason to believe that it’ll make gobs of cash.
Whoever invents a mobile internet radio player is going to be able to print their own money.
Shit, I didn’t see this thread when I started this one. My apologies.
This really sucks ass!
I grew up on WHFS dammit! I can still remeber Weasel introducing REM’s Chronic Town to my little ears back in the day!
I don’t know how I am going to manage my morning commute without The Sports Junkies, I really don’t.
No warning, no nothing! Just drop the needle on Salsa dance music, and shut down every WHFS-related website!?!
WTF!!!
:mad:
FTR, The Sports Junkies will likely be airing their same old sad schtick on JFK-1300 on the AM dial, another Infinity station.
Nyctea, RTF has alluded to it without giving the frequency, but tune to 103.1 FM tomorrow morning, I think you’ll find that it’s a lot like HFS used to be. IIRC it was started by an X-HFS DJ.
Yeah, well The Sports Junkies are a hell of a lot better than Kirk, Mark, & Lopez on Bawlmore’s 98 Rock, I can tell you that!
But thanks for the tip, anway. 
It was started by Jake Einstein, the same guy who started HFS. I used to love WHFS when I was in high school, but the station went to hell when Jake sold it. He bought 103.1 about a year later, and it took over the void that Clearchannel left.
The only problem with WRNR is that it doesn’t have great range (at least it didn’t as of 2 years ago… that’s when I moved out of Maryland).
Well, count me as another “I remember when HFS was in Bethesda” Doper. In fact, I remember when it was called WLOM. It was a great station back in the early/mid eighties. When it had no playlists, no stupid “99.1, WHFS” jingles, when you could hear anything from the Beatles to Black Flag, sometimes within the same hour. I used to sit there with a blank tape in my radio and just start taping every song, stopping and rewinding halfway through if I decided I didn’t like it, saving it if I did, and I’m extremely proud of the knowledge of really (and I mean really!) obscure music I gained from it.
That is the HFS I mourn the loss of.
And nyctea, your comments about speaking English are beneath contempt.