"Jack"ed Up Radio

I don't like to comment too much on past employers. In the radio business your past employer could very well be your future employer. That's the way it goes as stations are bought and sold. However, the folks at Infinity Broadcasting are idiots. They seem to have no sense of what certain stations mean to people.

Here in Pittsburgh 4 stations are owned by Infinity. KDKA, they lose Rush and try to be a hip young station and continually prove they have no idea what they are doing or who their audience is. Y-108, they are doing well because they have not touched the station for a few years. 100.7 is now bits and pieces of past radio stations. B 90 uhm I mean K something or other. Let's just call it "format change imminent FM".

Well now they have done it. They have crossed the line and gone way too far. I have always been a fan of oldies music. It took talent back then to make a record! My start in radio was in the oldies format and I have been honored to meet many of the artists and original DJ's who made the classic hits. The beacon for American rock and roll has always been WCBS in New York. Not anymore.

WCBS-FM, the top oldies station in the nation for more than three decades, stunned its legion of listeners by abruptly switching formats this weekend. Goodbye, Buddy Holly and the Beach Boys. Hello, Duran Duran and Jet. (Pardon me while I puke)

The station switched to an oldies format in 1972, initially as a bastion for the doo-wop sounds of the '50s. Although the playlist changed over the years, WCBS-FM always remained the outpost for classic Top 40 radio in the nation's largest radio market. It was also the home to many of New York's legendary Top 40 DJs, including "Cousin Brucie" Morrow, Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram and Norm N. Nite. Radio formats came and went _ disco, punk, hip-hop, talk, sports talk, but WCBS-FM remained unchanged.

The station's new format is called "Jack". What's JACK you ask? The rules guiding a Jack-formatted station are simple: Unlike a typical radio station, which regularly plays 300 or 400 hits of a particular genre, programmers on Jack stations select 700 to 1,000 songs of completely different genres. Then, they sequence them to create what radio programmers call "train wrecks" -- Billy Idol will follow Bob Marley, Elvis after Guns N' Roses, and so on. And Jack stations often (but not always) use a smart-alecky recorded voice, rather than a live DJ, to make short quips between songs. The station's owner, Infinity Broadcasting, made the same format shift Friday at its Chicago oldies station, WJMK-FM, where classic Top 40 had aired for the last 21 years. (Have they No Shame???)

At 5 p.m. Friday, just as Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind" faded out, WCBS listeners heard a voice announce, "Why don't we play what we want? There's a whole world of songs out there." The first song played on the new 'CBS-FM: "Fight for Your Right" by the Beastie Boys. A whole world of songs and they pick that one!

Prior to that moment, there were no indications of any imminent change at the station. Earlier in the day, morning show host Mickey Dolenz _ yes, the former Monkees drummer _ celebrated his 100th show with the station by hosting a live broadcast from B.B. King's Blues Club on 42nd Street. (How cruel can they be? Was there a pink slip in the middle of the cake?)

It's the day the music died again. This may a be sign of things to come. Could JACK be coming to the Burg? While Jack stations are generating a lot of buzz right now, it's still too early to tell how well they'll do in the long-run. My prediction.... as long as we still have idiots programming these radio stations sales of ipods and satellite radio will continue to grow.