ext_13442 ([identity profile] txtriffidranch.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] realthog 2009-08-03 01:46 am (UTC)

I'm really not surprised. Considering age and general levels of education among NewsMax readers, miracle cures find fertile ground. (And to be fair, the Huffington Post has the same exact problem. Everyone expects miracle cures, especially for conditions that are just part of the human condition as we age.)

Otherwise, glad to be of service: considering how big the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex is for radio and television, I'm usually pretty close to Ground Zero for some of the bigger scandals and scams. Part of the reason why CheapChannel's name is mud is due to how it treated its competition. At the beginning of 2002, one of Susquehanna Radio's stations in Dallas changed format to heavy metal and changed its name to "93.3 The Bone". The format was wildly popular, and The Bone rapidly stole a lot of listeners from ClearChannel's two AOR stations. Rather than, say, play more than the same 60 songs per day, or reevaluate the fallacy that somehow Elton John, Phil Collins, and Billy Joel are "classic rock", ClearChannel decided that there was only one option, and that was to buy up every last URL on a variation of "the bone 933" and forward the traffic to its Dallas-based classic rock station. Not only did this cost ClearChannel a lot of business when word got out, but then it was stuck with a gaggle of domain names it couldn't use and that Susquehanna wasn't willing to buy back.

In any case, Dallas radio is in much worse shape than in markets where ClearChannel didn't dominate everything. Things got so bad that ClearChannel reverted one Spanglish station back to its rock format after five years, mostly because at least the mulletheads were willing to listen, even if it was the same exact playlist the station had back in 1984. As opposed to other markets, the Jack FM format station is doing quite well, mostly because it's the one station not overloaded with overly paid and ego-bound deejays yammering all day. (I have to admit that I listen to Jack in the morning as I'm getting ready for work, but mostly for the advertising. One of our old stations used to be a great guide for dying nightclubs: if a new club advertised on "The Edge", it was probably doomed. With Jack FM, those ads are a great guide for doomed real estate scams, banks, and cult movies. For instance, I knew the film Serenity was going to implode the moment Jack FM started running ads trying to convince someone other than the Cat Piss Men to see it, and remind me to tell you about the fiasco called Fed-Con, which also advertised there.)

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