Death To The Oldies Stations
Two major market FM Infinity Radio (formerly known as CBS) stations
have dropped the oldies format and moved on to what's known as the "Jack" format.
It happened in NY(WCBS-FM) and Chicago (WJMK). It
happened at 5PM in New York, 4Pm in Chicago. In New York it was
the end of a 33 year run for WCBS-FM with just one format.
Jack is one of those calculatedly-designed-to-sound-eclectic formats,
always pops up mid-decade. It isn't necessarily "Jack"everywhere, what with Bob, Ben and Dave popping up in other
markets. Chicago already has a version of it, known as
Nine-FM. Infinity now has "Jack" running on eight of their
stations.
Ten years ago it was the Buzz format. Before that there was one
consultant selling it as "the eclectic format." It mixes rock
music from the past three decades, reaching back a little more for some
songs. Mind you, this definition of rock is very wide: it
includes Beastie Boys, Steely Dan, Tom Waits, James Brown, Queen, The
Bangles, Lenny Kravitz, REM, and, of course Brooooooooce (as he's known in the NY area).
This format always starts with a wide playlist, usually narrows that
down over time. It really is the same old same old, although for sure
there are some radio people new to this genre who think this is the most
exciting and new concept to hit the airwaves since "Punk Weather" broke
(you know the slogan, a scarily deep voice delivers the imagining
sounder: "Hailstorms. Nothing But Hailstorms.")
The cool groovy modernspeak tag line is that "this is the station that
sounds like your iPod on shuffle." Back when this was a different
version of the same basic format, about a decade or two ago, it was
"imagine your whole record library on one radio station, not just the
same ten songs over and over." Nowadays people don't have records, much
less libraries.
There was a variation on this theme not too many years ago, more female
oriented, with radio stations called Alice in many cities.
Soft rock from three decades, givng home to Joni, Carly and company,
alongside Sarah, Jewel, Tori, and a bunch of whining male singers who
sounded very deep and emo.
CBS-FM was once among the top billing radio stations in NYC. Times
change, the station's demos aged, and management (what a kind word) saw
fit to make the move. This was no inexpensive tactic - the AFTRA
buyouts on the air staff's contracts surely cost a pretty penny. So CBS,
er, I mean Infinity, clearly saw a need for major changes, a new
approach, and a major shift. Doing this simultaneously on their FMs in
New York and Chicago sends a message loud and clear: they are serious,
this is no stunt. Then again, it might just be a flanking move, at least
in New York. More on that in a moment. (we call that a tease in Radio).
There are as yet no announcers, just some canned voiceovers with overly
cool disaffected positioning statements. According to on-air blips
(done by an announcer with a totally different on-air feel than the Jack
voiceovers) the CBS-FM (and in Chicago, the JMK-FM) oldies format can
still be heard online. While this may be true --I don't know,
apparently some setting I loaded into Firefox prevents me from hearing
it-- it is hard to imagine that this will be much more than a music
stream with jingles. This simply doesn't seem the moment that Viacom,
er Infinity, er, CBS, goes into webcasting, er, streaming audio --with a
for-profit initiative. That would entail a completely different set of
circumstances, a commitment of dollars and a carefully developed plan.
I suspect that in New York Infinity will make a move with the staff and the format .
. .shifting it to WNEW-FM. Once the bastion of free-form rock radio,
then a miserably formatted rock station, then a gaggle of formats that
changed faster than most people change their socks, and now a shlocky
sort of light-pop-disco-adult contemporary sound. And one that scores
very low in the ratings, thus garners only a small percentage of the
available ad revenues for radio in this, the biggest of all markets.
(yes, purists will note that radio revenues in LA often outpace NY --
but NY is still the largest market in the country, with the greatest
audience reach)
Perhaps those salaries of the air staff will end up being paid by the
WNEW division of Infinity -- with a big announcement stating that NY so
missed its Oldies station that public demand brought it back. New
location, same jocks, same music. Might be a good enough stunt to
breathe some life into it. Then again, going with the Jack sound on
WNEW might have made more sense. And leaving WCBS-FM in the same
place, with some better branding and advertising to promote the product,
might have done the job. Could be, though, that research shows the
CBS-FM image to be so very stale and unattractive to the lower
demographics that a major change of this sort was called for.
I just hope this means Cousin Brucie will finally be off the air for
good, and if the CBS-FM sound does return to the dial at 102.7 (WNEW),
that they can pay Dan Ingram enough money to return to a regular shift.
That would get this member of the 45-54 demographic listening, and on a
regular basis, too.
The bottom line seems to be this: oldies just got to be too old.
And those who like what used to be called oldies don't relate the term
oldies, or to most of the older music played on what used to be known as
oldies stations. Or maybe that isn't the case, and I just don't
know Jack.