WWWW has again become a thing of the past. 106.7fm in Detroit
has debuted a new format: Rockin Hits of the 80's, 90's and 70's as
"Alice 106.7".
I've been tuned in for about the past hour now, and yes, it is
high pop rocking tunes, indeed centering on the 80's. Rock from
Joe Walsh. Tunes by Billy Joel. Rocking chart toppers from Prince
"When Doves Fly" is on right now) and Blondie.
Anybody know when the change occured? Gone is the W4 Country.
It is all slicked up, highly self promotional and even insulting
like other Detroit Stations--ie, "Commercial free music coming up as
soon as we finish playing these commercials" --Duh!
They just might get some else's button on the radio.
Would this leave "Young Country" 99.5 as the only Country music
outlet for the Detroit market? If it is, there is a big gap on the
dial for that audience. 99.5fm just is not the strong, all metro
covering signal that 106.7 has. I wonder if we will see other changes
on the dial, these things seem to happen in clusters.
q
34 responses total.
((( winter agora #131 <---> music #233 )))
When Doves Fly? The hell you say.
Do doves fly before or after they cry? Perhaps we can arrange a country music station swap with western Michigan, which (in my opinion) has an overabundance of mediocre country stations.
You can take some of our excess from up here, too. Also, a friend of mine from South Carolina has often complained about the preponderance of country there, so you could probably have some of theirs as well.
Some of us *celebrate* when another country station falls.
Actually, it changed to Alice several months ago....and it's not an all together bad format at all.....they ahve a really nice range of music.
I'd really welcome a country station that played country music which I consider good, but I'm not holding my breath.. It's not as if I've encountered such a thing in any of the other popular musical formats - why should country be any different?
W4 disappeared as a country station in early January. For those in the eastern Washtenaw/western Wayne County area, my favorite country station is actually an am station that has been broadcasting country music for 30 years. WSDS at 1480 has a magnificent playlist, and very personable DJs.
Alice is pretty good, and I listen to it more than IQB or RIF now. Of course, this doesn't mean much since the ratio of Planet 96.3 to Alice or any other station is about 19027:4. =)
I was driving home from work, listening to W4 Country, when the announcer (Michael J. Fox) came on, and said some light, flowery things. He then played "The Dance" by Garth Brooks. And the radio stopped playing music. For the next couple of days there was a steady tone at 106.7, then they came out with their "80's, 90's and 70's" format. It's all robot music; no DJs, except in the morning during the week (I guess). What a disappointment. I just this week found out where "Young Country" is on the dial, and so I'll listen to it occasionally. There's also a country station in Adrian -- out of range for most people in Ann Arbor, but good for anywhere in Lenawee County.
I was somewhat impressed by Alice for about the first month or so they were on the air. Good music, commercials no more obnoxious than any other station, DJ's either weren't there or didn't talk much (I don't remember which). But after about a month, it started to go downhill. The promotional period was over. The playlist got padded with a lot of junk I'd never heard of, let alone heard. It's still on my presets, but I don't actually listen to it much, and not for long when I do. Young Country is okay... they're sort of the 95.5 of country music, overplaying about ten songs and throwing in a few of last weeks overplay list for good measure now and then. A good 80% of my radio listening time goes to NPR.
95.5 of country music...I love that. =) NPR is my savior when in the U.P. On the Seney Stretch and a stretch of US-41 between L'Anse and Houghton, the seek will go all the way around the band (fun to watch when bored to death on the Seney Stretch). You can, however, find NPR if you play with the tuner yourself. Yes, I have a tape deck,but it's broken. =) (like my spacebar)
Yup...I forget which NPR station it is that you can get there, but I often listen to it, too. (Maybe it's 103.5?)
Whatever happened to WiGGLe?
re #13: (it's WNMU, and it broadcasts on WAY too many frequencies... two
in the Marquette area alone [102.3 and 90.1, if you must know].)
There's also Michigan Tech's public radio station, on 91.1. Actually, I think 91.1 is actually a translator from another frequency, but I'm not sure. It covers well the area between Marquette and Houghton after you lose WNMU. It's a Minnesota Public Radio feed, for political reasons. (If it were CMU Public Radio, MTU would be getting their feed from NMU, their arch rival school.)
(*ahem*... WNMU also gets feeds from Minnesota Public Radio [Prairie Home Companion & a finance show that put out the joke book I read at work, for two], plus feeds from Wisconsin Public Radio & Michigan Public Radio. my understanding is that MPR does mostly news, as does WPR. there's also the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, but I'm not sure of what makes that up.)
The Planet doesn't impress me at all, but I'm amused that now we've had a "decade change" (believe it or not, they seem to), they've begun playing some music with guitar amplification again. Specifically, I have managed to hear Smells Like Teen Spirit and some plugged in Bush and Pumpkins tunes on there. Returning to their roots? A bit, perhaps. 80's music is officially flourishing, again, as a retro concept.
Well, they play "Alternative Classics from the 70's, 80's, and 90's". Supposedly. I keep hearing songs that are by no means "alternative", but oh well. So, you're going to hear the occasional Nirvana, Bush, Pearl Jam, etc since they were alternative bands of the 90's (and today in some cases). I prefer the stuff they play on Big Sonic Heaven...*true* "alternative"...when that term meant alternative and not mainstream. ;-)
The ad may be the same, but the format has changed slightly. A couple years before you arrived in town, The Planet moved from your basic alternative station to one that had a slightly softer sound, targetted primarily at women. They played a lot of contemporary alternative music, but "hard" stuff was thrown out the window. Now that the decade has changed, "hard" stuff is apparently considered to be something of a flashback. I went two or three years without hearing a sing Nirvana or Bush song on that station.
I've been listening to the Planet since 1996, so I'm aware of the changes. (Possible by my biweekly visits to town and Real Audio while in Kazoo). Nifty keen. =) Anyway, I think you're right about Nirvana etc now being "old alternative" instead of "new rock" (which is why they didn't play it).
All of this being primarily a reminder that what is played on the radio is simply bait for the advertisements. Stations play what the majority listens to, with the hopes that their advertisements will also reach that audience. (Most DJ's earn the bulk of their dough doing ads, as I understand it). It's very different out here, where country music stations are plentiful-- about 3 mainstream and 2 that I call "Hispanic country," i.e., stations that play banda, norteno, tejano, etc.
(Clueless Midwesterner Question: what are banda, norteno, tejano, etc?) (or should this be its own item?)
What is the Planet?
I'm not familiar with banda.. Norteno and tejano are music genres that started in the areas on either side of the Mexican/American border and have filtered into other regions in the USA. I tend to think of norteno as primarily originating in north-central and north-western Mexico (e.g. Chihuahua, Baja California) and tejano as being more Tex-Mex but I could easily be wrong -- my exposure has been limited here in the American midwest.
The Planet is 96.3 WPLT out of Detroit.
_Oh,_ okay.... For years I've been hearing that as WBLT, as in bacon lettuce and tomato, and thinking "damn, they must've been running low on letters to use". PLT makes more sense.
resp:25 right. I'll have to check on banda-- can't remember for sure if it's an actual style. The Hispanic stations do play a little mariachi, too.
Alice has been out here in the Bay Area for quite a while. Decent station...
I listen to commercial music radio in the car, because (1) my tape player doesn't seem to work right, and (2) I generally don't want to hear talk from the radio when I'm driving. I'm approximately *allergic* to radio commercials. I will not sit through them. Back when they came up with "20 song blocks", I noticed that 20 songs in a row would be followed by 20 commercials in a row, so it made a lot of sense to tune out as soon when the commercials started. Much as it may be romantic and polically correct to like "personable DJs" and despise "robot radio", what I want from the radio is music, no ads, no idiotic DJ patter. My station sequence (switch to the next when an ad or an idiot comes on) is 88.7, 93.9, 94.7, 94.9, 95.5, 96.3, 101.1, 102.9, 106.7. If the ads get really intolerable (e.g. a tour of that list finds no listenable music going on anwhere), then I flee to NPR stations like WUOM, WKAR, WDET, WEMU. In the morning, when commercial radio stations all have a heavy idiocy and heavy ad format, there is usually no point in bothering with anything but public radio. The proportion of radio time devoted to ads seems to be increasing, especially in major markets like Detroit. Detroit stations spend more time on ads than say Lansing stations. At home, when I'm not actually driving, there is almost never any reason to listen to commercial radio.
We had Alice here in st louis i believe...she didnt last to long and was replaced by extreme radio which is a hardcore metal and rock station...when extreme cropped up it had some sort of add campaign about killing alice and a woman screaming if i remember correctly, over all i dont think she lasted too long here
They had a radio station called Alice in Denver as well.
At least Classic Rock 94.7fm is not sending its audience on a search of the radio dial to find Alice, as they did many years ago then they where digging on 'Star FM'. I woke up someone at WCSX when I complained by saying "I didn't know you where losing in the ratings that bad to Star 97". Then having to point out, only the loser would be putting down the leader.
I hate it when radio stations insult other radio stations. The Bear (? I
think) had a bunch of ads mocking Arthur P. ("Coming up, three hits in a row,
on the flip side of this twenty-minute commercial break!"), and one of the
alt-rock stations (maybe the Planet) has that series "You don't have to sit
through this (burst of Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit, Staind, or Tool) to get to this
(start of next mildly-interesting alt-pop song)."
The problem with both ad series is, it made me want to listen to the radio
station they were mocking... I'd rather listen to Kid Rock and Staind than
Oasis and Goo Goo Dolls. I don't care where you were when we were getting
high. I wish there WAS a radio station that regularly played Staind and
Tool... RIF comes closest, but only when Art's at the helm, and then it
depends on his mood.
You have several choices: