This past weekend I went up to see my family in Upstate New York. And for people who live in the metropolitan New York City area, Upstate is not anything north of the Tappen Zee Bridge. One thing about Upstate New York, back in the day the rock stations were some the best in the business. In Utica, WOUR, 96.9 could definitely give WNEW a run for its money in terms of quality of jocks and the quality of free form rock the jocks were allowed to play on the air. In terms of talk radio, you had 50,000 watts of power coming from WGY in Albany and WSYR in Syracuse, and the middle was filled with WIBX. All three stations carried Rush Limbaugh, when he first came out 30 years ago. All these stations also carried local programs and there were the awesome music shows like Rockline and Flashback.
Then radio in Upstate New York became “corporately owned, corporately ran and government approved” as Patrick Ryan correctly points out! The big corporations bought up all the little stations. And it was radio garbage! As I was driving through various small markets, I could tell which music stations were owned by the same company because they had the exact same 4th of July promotion of 4 songs by the same band in a row! And of course it’s the same songs from the same bands that you heard ad nauseum.
The talk stations weren’t much better. Of course you had the King of all Jerkoffs, Bill Keeler on WIBX, but the other shows were all syndicated shows that said nothing. The morning shows that the FM stations bring in is the same stuff that Opie and Anthony showcased on Jocktober.
Independent radio is the last thing standing in the was of radio becoming placed into media obscurity.Tell your local stations that you are tired of the garbage and you want hard hitting truth telling in your face radio! While stationed in Norfolk, I told “Classic Hits” The Fox that I was sick of the same 200 songs on the playlist. Some person said that their research told them that this is what the listeners want to hear. I was a listener and that’s not what I wanted to hear!
SEVEN FIVE RADIO 