In the proud tradition of radio stations “flipping” in the most dickish of manners, we have this entrant: Clear Channel and KPOJ 620 AM.  Once word gets out, the scheduling of the change is moved upward to the middle of programming. Evidently a bit like this.

So, I log on about 4:20 PM. Somehow find this story at the WWeek announcing the change was two days out. Well. I turn on the radio, tuned to 620, of course, and there’s Randi Rhodes as clear as you please.
And then I read the update: just to be whoever it is that they are, they decided to move the changeover to Friday. Which was, at that point in the proceedings, right now.
And, five minute later I was listening to FOX Sports Talk 620.

I had the sense a few weeks’ ago that KPOJ wasn’t long for the world.  Just a sudden flash of a thought.  But I had a hard time figuring out what they could possibly put in its place.  Surely there isn’t anything that’d up the station’s mediocre ratings.  And there isn’t.  So it’s been replaced by (drum roll please) Fox Sports.  This figures.  I believe this follows the pattern of how Clear Channel has dispensed of its liberal radio stations in each of its markets — I’d just as soon that Clear Channel revert 620 to its perpetual Elvis loop of an oldies format that it had between its two talk formats before KPOJ.  There was the great question floated by media observers when a second sports radio station came in: can this market handle two sports radio stations?  And the answer was a solid: Ugh.  But at least “The Fan” has team broadcast rights they could log time behind.    The logic in Clear Channel’s move here seems a bit like: it’s cheap, and you can hold a spot on the dial down that would otherwise go to some other competition to our other stations — and maybe someone will trip over this and confuse it with the sports talk station nearly next to it on the dial.

After years of observing these matters of media company decisions, my guage has become along the lines of this … it’s not politics, it’s not the dollar, it is the logic of a kind of  big box cookie cutter one fits all stichery.

I can put any number of caveats on 620 AM.  Some of its broadcasting was unlistenable… in the same way I find Republican broadcasting stations unlistenable.  It becomes a solid block betwen noon and nine that I don’t have to bother with this dial spot.  The rest you can go in and out of as you please, I suppose.  I always found the old argument of “Conservatives have Limbaugh; Liberals NPR!” bemusing — there wasn’t really any way to get at its equivalence gag.  But maybe there’s truth therein — how can you go back in and bother with so much of congratulating one another for holding the same opinion, and coming in just a bit too solidly behind one of the two political parties?

So now where are we?  Carl Wolfson will probably be back somewhere, I’m guessing.  But radio is dead as a medium — and in some regard not really worth saving worth saving.  You have pandora for music; podcasts for this sort of news and commentary.  Stick in a fork in it; stick a dead bird on it.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 15th, 2012 at 10:42 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.