{"id":10762,"date":"2012-11-15T10:42:10","date_gmt":"2012-11-15T17:42:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/?p=10762"},"modified":"2012-11-15T10:42:10","modified_gmt":"2012-11-15T17:42:10","slug":"clear-channel-does-that-in-the-dead-of-mid-evening-thing-with-kpoj","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/2012\/11\/15\/clear-channel-does-that-in-the-dead-of-mid-evening-thing-with-kpoj\/","title":{"rendered":"Clear Channel does that “in the dead of mid-evening” thing with KPOJ"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the proud tradition of radio stations “flipping” in the most dickish of manners, we have this entrant: Clear Channel and KPOJ 620 AM.\u00c2\u00a0 Once word gets out, the scheduling of the change is moved upward to the middle of programming. Evidently a bit like this<\/a>.<\/p>\n

So, I log on about 4:20 PM. Somehow\u00c2\u00a0find this story at the\u00c2\u00a0WWeek\u00c2\u00a0<\/a>announcing the change was two days out. Well. I turn on the radio, tuned to 620, of course, and there’s Randi Rhodes as clear as you please.<\/em>
\nAnd then I read the update: just to be whoever it is that they are, they decided to move the changeover to\u00c2\u00a0Friday.\u00c2\u00a0Which was, at that point in the proceedings, right now.<\/em>
\nAnd, five minute later I was listening to FOX Sports Talk 620<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I had the sense a few weeks’ ago that KPOJ wasn’t long for the world.\u00c2\u00a0 Just a sudden flash of a thought.\u00c2\u00a0 But I had a hard time figuring out what they could possibly put in its place.\u00c2\u00a0 Surely there isn’t anything that’d up the station’s mediocre ratings.\u00c2\u00a0 And there isn’t.\u00c2\u00a0 So it’s been replaced by (drum roll please) Fox Sports.\u00c2\u00a0 This figures.\u00c2\u00a0 I believe this follows the pattern of how Clear Channel has dispensed of its liberal radio stations in each of its markets — I’d just as soon that Clear Channel revert 620 to its perpetual Elvis loop of an oldies format that it had between its two talk formats before KPOJ.\u00c2\u00a0 There was the great question floated by media observers when a second sports radio station came in: can this market handle two sports radio stations?\u00c2\u00a0 And the answer was a solid: Ugh.\u00c2\u00a0 But at least “The Fan” has team broadcast rights they could log time behind.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The logic in Clear Channel’s move here seems a bit like: it’s cheap, and you can hold a spot on the dial down that would otherwise go to some other competition to our other stations — and maybe someone will trip over this and confuse it with the sports talk station nearly next to it on the dial.<\/p>\n

After years of observing these matters of media company decisions, my guage has become along the lines of this … it’s not politics, it’s not the dollar, it is the logic of a kind of\u00c2\u00a0 big box cookie cutter one fits all stichery<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I can put any number of caveats on 620 AM.\u00c2\u00a0 Some of its broadcasting was unlistenable… in the same way I find Republican broadcasting stations unlistenable.\u00c2\u00a0 It becomes a solid block betwen noon and nine that I don’t have to bother with this dial spot.\u00c2\u00a0 The rest you can go in and out of as you please, I suppose.\u00c2\u00a0 I always found the old argument of “Conservatives have Limbaugh; Liberals NPR!” bemusing — there wasn’t really any way to get at its equivalence gag.\u00c2\u00a0 But maybe there’s truth therein — how can you go back in and bother with so much of congratulating one another for holding the same opinion, and coming in just a bit too solidly behind one of the two political parties?<\/p>\n

So now where are we?\u00c2\u00a0 Carl Wolfson will probably be back somewhere<\/a>, I’m guessing.\u00c2\u00a0 But radio is dead as a medium — and in some regard not really worth saving worth saving.\u00c2\u00a0 You have pandora for music; podcasts for this sort of news and commentary.\u00c2\u00a0 Stick in a fork in it; stick a dead bird on it.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the proud tradition of radio stations “flipping” in the most dickish of manners, we have this entrant: Clear Channel and KPOJ 620 AM.\u00c2\u00a0 Once word gets out, the scheduling of the change is moved upward to the middle of programming. Evidently a bit like this. So, I log on about 4:20 PM. Somehow\u00c2\u00a0find this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10762"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10771,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10762\/revisions\/10771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}