That used to be a country station I listened to. They did a middle of the day switch, too. I was listening to it in the morning on the drive in, and when I went out for lunch, there was The Max. I thought my radio presets got screwed up or something. My roommate knows someone who switched over to the other country station during a commercial, came back ten minutes later, and it had switched.
This is why I hate radio.
My Dad back east is very peeved about the WCBS switch. He’s played that station in his store for 20 years. (I remember when I was a teenager, him turning around in the middle of a sentance, pointed at the speakers and exclaiming “Hey! The Doors are not Oldies!” Sorry Dad, you are in fact getting old)
That was my reaction when I heard the local oldies station playing AC/DC. Anything just before I was born is now considered Oldies. I, however, will not be old until they play Pearl Jam on those stations. Until then, I’m safe.
I was disappointed that WQSR got Jack-ed as well. I live and work in the DC area, but often turned to WQSR when DC’s Big 100 got too repetitive with the same set of songs.
One more station to take off my pre-sets, if any Jack FM officials are reading this.
Found a ‘new’ station while toddling around the dial. 89.1. Non-commercial rock… might be a college station. Postpunk stuff, some Shonen Knife, some stuff I can only describe as a cross between trance and college rock.
Which tells me that either this is a coincidence (not!), or someone had advance knowledge of this format change (more likely). This news saddens me. I grew up with 77 WABC, Cousin Brucie, Harry Harrison, Ron Lundy, etc. I wish Bruce the best; unfortunately, I have already decided to go with XM for the ballgames. The Jack trend has not yet reached LV yet (as far as I know), although the two “soft rock” stations here in town have been hinting toward some kind of format change. I tend to split my listening time between the local “oldies” station and our “retro-80’s” station depending on my mood that day. I like many different kinds of music from different eras; I just don’t think I want to listen to them all at the same time. It’s just not how I listen to music. I predict that the novelty of this new format will wear off very quickly.
I’m not going to begrudge Bruce Morrow a living. I won’t go so far as saying he’s a hypocrite, but when Cousin Brucie (Real Player Audio link) - who did a guest retro broadcast on WABeatleC 770-AM this past Memorial Day Weekend - goes and says 2 days before the announced format change to Jack
Those sentiments border on disingenuous. I guess if you redefine community as the entire country and play 25 oldies in a row - you’re not really radio anyway…you’re redefined satellite radio.
I took part in one of those radio surveys The Gaspode was talking about a few years ago. We were given score sheets with ratings of 1-5. They played about 30 seconds of a song, then moved on to the next one.
Most of it was bland soft rock & pop. For about the first half hour of this, I was giving scores of 2 & 3, but then it got to the point where it polarized. I gave 95% of the rest a rating of 1, and anything I even remotely liked I gave a 5; I gave it a max rating because it was the lesser of 800 evils. I was getting really sick of hearing all the same processed pap and rewarded anything that sounded remotely different. I think I gave a 5 to Simple Minds “Don’t You Forget About Me.” It was that bad.
I talked with some of the folks around me, and they felt the same way. I don’t know if that’s typical of all sample takers, but I think that’s a major flaw of survey studies.
In addition to the Gaspode’s mention of surveys, the answer to the question, ‘Why Does Commercial Radio Suck’ was answered in the same post
For starters, anyone who in radio who classifies Squeeze’s ‘Tempted’ as “obscure”, whilst admitting radio programs are geared toward ‘people who aren’t interested in music’ pretty much says it all.
As a layman, I’d like to offer advice that’s contrary to this radio professional
I’ve been listening to radio for 20 years…Turn it off.
I’m surprised they didn’t keep you on. Around here, I admire how they will change from Top 40 to country and the DJs will switch and act like they know they new genre just fine. The alt college station has a DJ from the Top40 and country stations on in the morning and somehow he knows hard rock too.
When the Jack thing started, I was actually rather pleased because I’m weary of the whole classic rock genre, which seems to be based on single-worthy (i.e. hit) cuts from albums. It was good to hear stuff from all the way up into the 90s, things that had been on CDs that I bought that first year after I finally broke down and bought a CD player around '92. Then as I came to realize it was like an Ipod on shuffle, I was considerably less enchanted by it.
I only listen to public radio nowadays. Whether the music is classical, rock, jazz, or alternative pop, nothing beats a real live DJ who knows and cares about the music he’s spinning. And, of course, not having commercials is sweet.
That is cold, and truly sucks. But maybe, just maybe, he got his 100th show because some decent human being loudly protested having the format change before he got his 100th. In my mind, I picture some good-hearted person standing up and threatening to walk out if they screwed Micky that way. Yeah, I know, it probably didn’t happen, but I can dream.
With the oldies format? Really? Back to the 50s? Because just before CBS got “Jacked,” they stopped playing 50s music (except the weekly DooWop show) and were playing music only from as early as the 60s. I miss my 50s music. Thank God for Pandora.com.
Now I’ve got to reprogram them into my radio.
(I was born in 1964. But my parents listened to CBS, so that’s what I listened to in the car. I love the oldies soooo much.)
I was born in 1968 but there was a great oldies show on weekend evenings in our hometown. So yeah, anything 50s through 80s is cool. I start to lose it once it gets into the 90s.
Ironically, the country station that was converted to the same format at around the same time has also, very recently, returned to being a country station.