And they DID eventually end up as Rhythmic AC & Alternative Rock!

I just found this little blurb that I wrote back on August 9, 2006. I just thought it was kinda funny. Things seemed so simple then. haha. It was the day Clear Channel fired the airstaffs of WJJZ and WSNI. We knew that WJJZ was flipping any minute but we were not expecting anything to happen to Sunny 104.5. Within hours of the staff dismissals, the rumor mill was in overdrive.

What’s becoming of WJJZ is Philly radio’s worst-kept secret: Rhythmic AC (a la Movin) anchored by Whoopi Goldberg’s new morning show. But what’s allegedly happening to Sunny 104.5 is asinine: Alternative-leaning Rock.

I understand that WJJZ’s Smooth Jazz audience has flocked to the other Adult Urban stations in the city…so the change to Rhythmic AC is necessary. But there’s no way I’ll ever be convinced that any form of Rock will make Clear Channel more money than Sunny is already making! After all, just like Adult Urban, there are several other Rock stations in the city and they’re already duking it out for listeners. Even if 104.5 were to get a fraction of the Rock audience, they’re a less advertiser-friendly demographic. That equals lower revenue.

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I was wondering if I ever wrote any follow-up thoughts. So I dug around a bit and I found something I wrote on August 23, 2006. Yeah, it seems I had some thoughts. LOL...

What a complete and total disaster. Leave it to Clear Channel.

Philly’s 106.1–touted as the Rhythmic AC the the city is desperately in need of–is nothing more than a series of decidedly un-rhythmic trainwrecks. Last night, they played a song called “Higher and Higher (Your Love Has Lifted Me)” by a woman named Rita Coolidge. Go onto iTunes or Rhapsody or whatever and listen to a sample of the song. It is not Rhythmic in any way, shape, or form.

In the same twenty minutes, they also played “With or Without You” by U2, “I Could Fall In Love” by Selena, and “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” by Pat Benatar. All are good songs; none are Rhythmic.

The song they’re playing most frequently is Natasha Bedingfield’s “Unwritten.” They’re also spinning the hell out of KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together,” Kelly Clarkson’s “Behind These Hazel Eyes,” Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated,” and Daniel Powter’s “Bad Day.” None of these–not one–is a Rhythmic song.

Clear Channel owns many stations in the market, including Q102, WDAS-FM, and Power 99. The reason Philly’s 106.1 is so terrible is because they don’t want it to hurt their other stations. And the only reason they launched Philly’s 106.1 was to stop some other company in town from launching a Rhythmic AC because another company could do it right–and it would hurt Q102, WDAS-FM, and Power 99.

In order to create this awful station, they needed to do away with Sunny 104.5–another station they owned in town. They had to get rid of Sunny because Philly’s 106.1 plays too many of the same songs. (A real Rhythmic AC, of course, would have shared very little of Sunny’s playlist.)

So in order to protect Q102, WDAS-FM, and Power 99, Clear Channel destroyed Smooth Jazz WJJZ and created an unlistenable mess called Philly’s 106.1, which required killing Sunny 104.5. You may ask yourself what format ended up on 104.5’s massive signal. Well, I’ll tell you: It’s called Rumba 104.5. It’s a strictly Spanish-language station and it plays strictly Spanish music.

A Spanish-language station is not suitable for a full-signal FM station in a market like Philadelphia. The market’s population is only about 5% hispanic. And God only knows what percent of that small group even listens to terrestrial radio.

As a result of Clear Channel’s greed, Philadelphia has been denied any chance for a good Rhythmic AC and we’ve lost two great stations (Smooth Jazz WJJZ and Sunny 104.5) with loyal fanbases.

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