Driving across Minnesota one late night in 2007, scanning the radio stations around Mankato I came across a radio station playing Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, a novelty song I hadn’t heard in years. This part of the state has either country or religious programming, so I wanted to hear what the next song it would be. It was, you guessed it, Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport, which was the next song, and the next song. Every few minutes I’d swap back to the station and it was still playing.
Of course they were doing a format change, using what I’ve found out is known as Stunting. Some of the other mentions earlier are listed in that Wikipedia Stunting link as well.
About 8 years ago, the main Dallas-area classic rock station (KZPS 92.5) decided to go to this interesting format where each hour of programming was sponsored by a single corporate sponsor, who got flogged pretty relentlessly in breaks between songs and station ID breaks, and IIRC, got like 5 straight minutes of ad time at the top of their hour.
In terms of programming, they went to a more Texas-centric format, with a lot of Texas country and similar stuff from Texas artists- not necessarily all country, but anything rock-ish, or folk-ish was fair game too. So they played stuff like Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jerry Jeff Walker, Lyle Lovett, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ Top, Old 97s, Slaid Cleves, Gurf Morlix, Rev. Horton Heat, Joe Ely, Fabulous Thunderbirds, and the like.
It was actually quite cool, but apparently it didn’t work too well, because it was only that way for a short period before it went back to regular ads and gradually back to standard classic rock.
Stations changing from English to Spanish is not an uncommon occurrence in Los Angeles, but one station pulled an instantaneous change right in the middle of the day, no warning whatsoever. It sure generated a lot of free publicity, with people on the news complaining that they’d stepped out of the room for a minute, and their radio station disappeared.
Everyone is familiar with Top 40 radio, but 29 Palms California used to have a Top 10 station. It usually took about an hour to cycle through. I was in stationed up there in late 1987/early 1988, and that meant about half of Michael Jackson’s Bad album, and a lot of Tiffany. A few years later they changed to a normal rock station.
Around 1991 or 1992 a radio station in Dallas, the Eagle whatever the call numbers were, did the same thing as they were switching formats. They played “Hotel California” non-stop for a few days before announcing a new format and playing that kind of music. It was kind of bizarre.
While driving through Austin I tuned into a radio station that seemed to play a little bit of everything. This was the 1990s and on that particular station I heard contemporary songs, “Summer Lovin’” from Greece, and other show tunes, and songs from other decades.
In the early 2000’s there was a couple competing “We play anything” type stations in the Chicago area. The first one was an actual local station with local talent but they suffered from terrible frequency placement on the dial. They ultimately had one frequency for the north suburbs, another in the city and another for the southwest. They were collectively “Nine FM” because they were all 9-.-- on the dial.
Later, a more corporate, national station (“Jack FM”) with the same supposed format opened up. They had no on-air talent at all, essentially being an iPod set to shuffle.
With the arrival of the second station, Nine FM – which used to play a big variety of stuff from 50’s hits onward – tightened up their format to become a more generic “Hits of 80s, 90s and today” style station. But they went under regardless. Jack FM eventually got some on-air talent but they folded before too long as well. I sort of think Nine FM could have had a chance if they had a single frequency to advertise and hadn’t been pushed out by the big money station.
We also had a short lived 80’s station in late 1999-2000. All 80’s stuff, old Chicago radio talent from the 80’s, 80’s trivia, retro-commercials sometimes, etc. It only lasted a year and a half – the novelty of hearing Pac-Man Fever or Rock Me Amadeus again wears off pretty quick.
There was a wonderful, quirky little one-man radio station that broadcast out of a tiny town on Colorado’s eastern plains that was active when I first came to Colorado. He refused to play anything but deep cuts from rock and blues albums - no hits - and played no commercials at all, just an hourly station identification. It was basically the radio station I would have designed had I been in the business.
Sadly, one morning a few years ago, I turned it on to find Christian music blaring out of my car speakers. WTF??? Turns out the owner had quietly sold the station to a church outfit and ceased broadcasting one night at midnight without a word to anyone.
Back in the early 90s a radio station in Fort Wayne, IN was going through a format change. I don’t remember what they were changing from or what they were changing to. But I do remember that for several days they played one song only: “Louie Louie” by the Kingsmen. They played it over and over again. I think it had to do with the fact that “Louie Louie” may have been banned in Indiana in the 60’s. Or at least strongly discouraged.
Closest I ever heard was also a format switch, and the station played the same comedy bits for three days continuously. I thought it was a great idea the first two days.
Word went around my high school one week in the late '70s that a granpa music station (easy listening) was going to change over to a rock format starting with the next Monday’s drive time show. Sometime over the weekend, they started playing Debbie Boone’s You Light Up My Life nonstop.
Around 6:00 Monday, with Debbie still playing, they left a mic open and you could hear everyone coming in and talking mundane stuff. Then, 7:30, 8:00 or so, they opened up the rock format in a spectacular Johnny Fever style. Can’t recall the first song or what they said, but it was a cool experience.
“This American Life” once did a segment about a radio show that is broadcast for prisoners. The prisoners’ loved ones would call in and air messages for the person behind bars, knowing (or hoping) that they would be listening. I guess the idea was that they weren’t allowed to call them on the phone so this was the easiest way to communicate if they couldn’t come visit in person. It was actually very touching to hear the excerpts: lots of mundane family updates, tearful protestations of love, and I think even notifications of death and divorce.
I think that was only on Fridays and Sundays. Which was still bad enough, when the manager at work insists that nothing else shall play on the PA sound system.
kexp in Seattle.
They recently spent 12 hours breaking down Paul’s Boutique by the Beastie Boys. They played a song from the album, then played in order all of the songs that were sampled on that song. I think the total was 115 sampled tracks on that one album.
Also in the 90s, a station going through a format change in South Florida also was all “Louie Louie” for a few days. But, they played covers by other bands too. In fact, the only one I really remember is a marching band version of the song.
