I only listen to ESPN, and I never really know, ever, what they’re going to do at any given moment or if the broadcast is live, delayed or a repeat. They often have random games too that I didn’t even know were on. Sometimes I get the morning show in the afternoon, or the afternoon show on ESPN2. I usually just turn to them randomly and if they’re talking about something interesting, I leave it on, but otherwise turn it off again.
Oh, that reminds me of another format change where the radio station played episodes of sitcoms for at least a week. Audio only, of course. They played Cheers shows in the mornings on my way to work and it was actually pretty entertaining.
My brother told me about a Sirius (I think) channel that plays vintage comedy - Phyllis Diller, “Who’s On First”, that kind of thing. It was his commuting soundtrack until he got a job where he could bike to work.
103.5 did something like that when they went from WFYR (an oldies station) to WWBZ The Blaze (a hard rock station) in 1991. For the 44 hours of the transition, they played one song: “Rock Rock ('Til You Drop)” by Def Leppard.
I’m kind of surprised that Christian Rock is a format at all, let alone a fairly popular one in some areas.
It has been for quite some time.
Some of the stations even have things like “Metal Night” on the weekend.
I hardly ever listen to the radio, but on Sunday I was in a rental car and as I came into town I discovered that there is a station that plays Frank Sinatra type swing music. Kind of cool.
Also, on one stretch of dead road all that came in was 3 Christian stations (one or two were talk, at least at the time) and SIX country stations. One was actually decent as it was Merle Haggard type stuff and not songs about pickup trucks. Actually, driving for several hundred miles I noticed that the same-genre stations tended to be around the same point on the dial which I thought was weird, although handy to help avoid.
Yes, I found one somewhere in the Southwest a couple years ago that just basically played rock with no overtly anti-Christian messages, except one song that expressed solidarity with the Christian struggle – and was metalcore.
In the late '90s when I lived in Indianapolis, there was a local high school with their own radio station. They had no format at all. Just played what they liked. 90’s pop, '70s rock, country…whatever the student in the booth at that time wanted, or had available. Occasionally the gym teacher would take over. Somebody would read the news headlines in an unpolished monotone, stumbling over the words. No commercials. During spring break, they programmed a tape that looped all week, unless it got hung up.
You never knew what you were going to hear. I loved it.
Amateurs. Maximum Louie Louie. The link only highlights the beginning of the Louie Louie rivalry between KFJC (Los Altos Junior College radio station) and KALX (UC Berkeley) radio stations
“Doc wasn’t having any of it. But, maybe it would be fun trying. That was the start of the big event. Richard Berry joined in for the event For the event, Stretch Riedle tracked down Richard Berry, and he agreed to take the train from LA to Los Altos Hills to be a guest and talk about the record. He brought is daughter Christi with him. Whe Richard arrived, he was surprised to find television people already at KFJC scoping out the terrane. We ushered him off to an instore promotion at Tower Records in Mountain View, where he was swamped with fans and collectors, one of whom got his autograph on the only 78 RPM copy of the original release of “Louie Louie” he’d ever seen. Richard was overwhelmed. He had been languishing in obscurity, training to do computer work to overcome his unemployment, and on welfare. Jack Ely flew in too Saturday, while Stretch and Phil Dirt were on the air, a friend of a friend had contacted Jack Ely, who called in for an interview. Richard Berry was hustled away from his fans to talk with Jack on the phone. They’d never met. In closing out the call, Jack commented that he wished he were at the event. Phil said “there are flights all day…come on down. Fly into San Jose and we’ll pick you up.” Jack paused, and said “OK!” Arrangements, and he arrived Sunday morning.”
The rest, as they say, was history.
I was on air at KDVS (the UC Davis radio station) for 5 years. We did tons of weird stuff but rarely for more than one shift.
In the mid-sixties, when FM was relatively rare, there was a suburban Pittsburgh station with a Big Band only playlist. This was way before this format became common.
WNUF was owned by a former record promoter with a huge collection of 78s who wanted to hear them on the air. Quite a few Pittsburgh area DJs got their start on that station. They also had to put up with the boss coming in with a stack of records he wanted to hear.
Mid-Eighteen sixties?
I remember that! I couldn’t tell you what station it was but I do remember the several days straight of “Louie Louie”.
Closest I’ve seen to that was when a station here switched format from rock 'n roll to Spanish language stuff. The day before the switch they played Wall of Voodoo’s Mexican Radio non-stop.
Oops! Meant before FM broadcasts were very common. To have an FM station playing 78 RPM records was an odd combination.
One local station sometimes does, but they mostly play classical music.
I was considerably more surprised to hear the announcer say at the end of one piece “composed by Tony Banks” and wondering if it was THAT Tony Banks, from Genesis. Yep, it was. 
That would be 98 rock in Tampa. They kicked it off with 24 hours straight of Stairway to Heaven. That was truly an unusual format. As I recall, they didn’t keep up the purity thing for too long and definitely had some other artists before they changed the format officially.
I was in the Air Force, stationed just outside of Madrid, Spain, in the late 80’s and early 90’s. I remember one station that advertised itself as “Classic.” They played only classic rock and classical music. It was actually pretty good.
As an aside…KZAP is back on the air now, as a low-power FM station (and using the call letters KZHP, because a station in Chico, CA now uses KZAP). The signal can only be picked up over-the-air within a couple miles of the transmitter in downtown Sacramento, but they’re online at http://k-zap.org/