The migration of hit music from AM to FM has been going on at least 25 years. It's to the point now where AM radio in most cities is talk, sports and/or religion, with few if any music stations. One of the best AM music stations I listened to after all the AMs in Cleveland went to talk formats was WKBW in Buffalo, New York. They even had a former top-40 disk jockey from Cleveland (Jack Armstrong), who had been on at least two Cleveland stations in the 1960s. I remember him best on the former WIXY radio (1260, now WWMK Radio Disney), and later 50kW WKYC-1100 in Cleveland (now newstalk WTAM), from 1965-'74. I'll never forget how he used to scream at the top of his voice "Big Jack YOUR LEADER!" every chance he got. It amazed me that he didn't lose his voice from all that yelling.
When WKBW (KB-1520) finally went all-talk a couple years ago, they let Armstrong go; where he wound up, I may never know. Maybe he found work at a little 250-watt station in a small Southern town; that wouldn't surprise me, as he did work for at least one station in the Carolinas after leaving Cleveland. However, since most big-city stations today are automated, the demand for live DJs is not as pressing as it was in the '50s through the end of the 1980s, so I think Armstrong may well have retired after he was fired by the Buffalo station.
Add to this the fact that many of the few live DJs there are left will voice-track their shows on several different stations, and we now know why AM radio is dying a slow death in most of the US--and the FM stations in those areas, especially those FMs operated by Clear Channel and CBS Radio (which, combined, own some 90 percent of all American FM radio stations) are following suit as well. Clear Channel operates, among others in the Cleveland area, the "classic hits" (what was formerly referred to as oldies) station, and it would not surprise me one bit if their one afternoon DJ, who seems to be on the air almost continuously from three p. m. until midnight, is live during the first four hours of his program and voicetracked the rest of the time.
I don't listen to the station (or
any Cleveland FM station) much anymore, preferring, rather, to listen to Internet radio (which has a
much wider variety of music than today's terrestrial FM or AM stations) and my own music collection, so I'm only guessing, but I think a lot of their programming after the jerks on the morning show (Lanigan and Malone, 5:30-10am weekdays) leave the air (thank heavens they are off the air for the day by the time I get up in the morning) may well be voicetracked or otherwise automated, as the DJs do not give time checks as they once did, and the comments they make on the air (what little they are allowed to say between songs) are not, by and large, IMHO, worth listening to.
Commercials? The classic-hits station, probably like all stations today, runs seemingly endless strings of those obnoxious things several times an hour, which is one reason I don't listen to the station much these days. I have never actually counted how many songs this station (or any of the CC/CBS Radio O&Os--owned and operated stations--in Cleveland) actually plays in an hour; however, it might be an eye-opener if I did so some day. As a stab-in-the-dark guess, however, I would say most stations in this area play perhaps 30-40 minutes of actual music, if that much (!), with commercials filling in the other 20 minutes or so.
Sheeeesh! I know radio stations need to run a certain number of commercials an hour to stay on the air, but for crying out loud, this business of running strings of them every hour is too much. The day the FCC decided to deregulate radio broadcasting was the day that agency made a huge mistake, IMO, and when commercial radio started going down the drain as well.
I could not believe what happened to Cleveland's Music of Your Life station a few years ago. The format was on a 10kW day/5kW night station for years; then, when the FCC decided to give AM stations the option of increasing their day or night power (or both), with directional antennas if need be, the Cleveland station immediately applied for and received permission to raise its daytime power to 50kW. The night power was and still is 4.7 kW. However, shortly (very shortly) after this station increased its power, it dropped the Music of Your Life format and replaced it--with ESPN.
The MoYL format then disappeared for good from the radio dials (AM and FM) in northeastern Ohio--well, I guess it's not quite that bad, although it is as far as
commercial radio stations in my area are concerned. There is a small FM station operated by a school district in Geauga County, Ohio, however, about 20 miles south of where I live, that plays big band and 30s-50s standards. The station is WKHR-FM, 91.5 MHz, and the station has an excellent signal everywhere in Lake and eastern Cuyahoga counties of Ohio; they also have an Internet audio stream at
www.wkhr.org for folks listening over their computers at the office or at home (the stream sounds excellent when listened to on a good stereo system), or who live in areas the station's over-the-air signal does not reach. The only things I wonder about with that station are their student DJs, all of whom are far too young to remember any of the music they play over that station; after all, just about every track played over WKHR was recorded decades before these young people were born.
I can't help but wonder if these kids aren't all but bored to tears, having to listen for hours to music (through headphones in the studio) that is almost certainly decades older than they are. I wouldn't be surprised if, at the end of their air shifts, these kids immediately turn on their car stereos to the loudest FM rock station they can find (or they plug in their iPods to their car stereos and run the volume so high the thing can be heard outside the car for blocks around, with the windows closed), for the ride back home; after all, today's commercial FM radio stations play music today's teens and young adults can relate to. I honestly do not believe high-school or college radio DJs are required to listen to their school's radio station exclusively, after hours, as DJs at commercial stations often must because of possible problems with conflicts of interest, advertising restrictions, etc. if they listen to any other local radio station than the one for which they work--even after these folks are finished for the day or on weekends. Hmmmm.
