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YouTubeLooks like another Columbus radio station went "oldies". As of 5:00 pm on Friday, July 30, WJZA became one-half of "Rewind 103.5/104.3: Columbus' Greatest Hits."
Columbus Underground Messageboard » General Columbus Discussion
WJZA flips format
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crimson123
Columbus, Ohio
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Posted 1 year ago # -
Rockmastermike
CORNspiracy HQ
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dear god I hope they keep Fritz on sundays!
Posted 1 year ago # -
catnfiddle
Giant Corncob District
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crimson123
Columbus, Ohio
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Couple of observations.
First, by my count, we now have FOUR explicitly oldies format radio stations in the Columbus market: 93.7, 103.5, 103.9, 104.3.
Second, the timing was .... kinda odd. The format switched over at 5pm on Friday. Three hours later, Dave Koz (one of the smooth jazz personalities who hosted a few shows on WJZA and helped get the smooth jazz format on stations around the country, as I understand it) was slated to play at the State Fair. Probably coincidental I'm sure, but almost seems like a poke in the eye that his format was yanked a few hours before he went on stage.
Posted 1 year ago # -
crimson123
Columbus, Ohio
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I guess the formats are technically listed as:
93.7, 103.5, 104.3: adult contemporary
103.9: classic hitsThere's presumably a lot of overlap in the formats and music among these.
Posted 1 year ago # -
frisk
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Way to go C-bus! Listening to smooth jazz/chill/jazz music doesn't automatically make a person cultured, but the fact that a large majority of our radio dial now consisits of country, christian, and classic rock music stations doesn't say a whole lot about our city. Pretty soon the entire city will be enclosed within one giant Wal-Mart. Git'r done!
Posted 1 year ago # -
JimL2
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This station's mix is insane. They played Maxine Nightingale's "Right Back Where We Started From" followed immediately by Blondie, and then Don't You Want Me by the Human League, and I swear I heard "Money For Nothing" three times today.
I guess all of those songs were released within 10 years, but it was still a jarring audio stew.
Posted 1 year ago # -
catnfiddle
Giant Corncob District
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Tuned in on Saturday night just to see what had replaced the station. It was "Never Gonna Give You Up". Yes, Rockmastermike and I were RICKROLLED in my own car!
Posted 1 year ago # -
frisk
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Walker wrote>>
Wait... are you saying there was a public vote on this? I must have missed it.No, I'm saying that if people in this city had more interest in listening to that type of music, companies would have been more willing to advertise on the station, there would have been more ad revenue, and that may have precluded this. The public's interest is what ultimately drives this type of business, and I think it's sad that not enough people in Columbus liked it enough to keep it going. That being said, I'm not oblivious to the fact that many smooth jazz stations all around the country are going away exactly like wjza did. Heck, maybe my problem isn't only with Columbus!
Posted 1 year ago # -
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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frisk wrote >>
Heck, maybe my problem isn't only with Columbus!I think the problem is more with the demographics of traditional radio listeners rather than any sort of regional/geographical population.
I think more and more people are switching to satellite radio in their cars, mp3 players/ipods/iphones to listen to their own playlists on the go, and browser-based online stations at work or home. That's cutting into traditional listenership across the board, and I think some of the less mainstream or niche genres like smooth jazz are going to be the first to suffer from them (and already are, as you said).
So I think it has less to do with a lack of culture or appreciation of smooth jazz, and more with a change in how people are listening to it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
JimL2
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Yesterday I tapped the following note out on my cellphone: "what postmenopausal secretary pool programmed this station? Is there really a demographic who think 'sunny 95 is nice, but not nostalgic enough'?"
And then I almost slammed into a chevy, because I was texting while driving.
But it's weird, because like I alluded to earlier, you get yacht rock followed by INXS followed by Donna Summer, Let's Dance then If I Can't Have You, then Pour Some Sugar on Me. I started to develop a theory that the reason the station was going for three weeks without commercials was because the program manager was actually a complex Markov chain that had been fed the phrase "all the greatest hits of the 70s, 80s, and 90s!" and needed some time to refine its formula without interference.
"Beep boop 4/4 time. Boop bloop 118-135bpm. Buzz dorp major key."
So that was my theory. HOWEVER. This morning while doing my daily research of Oingo Boingo, I realized what was actually going on. This radio station is being haunted by the ghost of the late John Hughes.
Not John Hughes' soul, as we usually think of it in the West, nor his actual personality, but the idea of John Hughes, the dasein of John Hughes' worldview, some fundamental artistic truth that he strove (but failed, as all artists must fail) to capture indelibly in his films.
Before I go any further I should say that I hate the work of John Hughes--hate it--any single one of his films is so terrible in my opinion that it would make me want to punch the director. I only found out after he'd died that he was responsible for the great corpus of terrible, terrible 1980s/90s movies that came to define everything wrong with that time period. So if you're a big John Hughes fan, you can probably discount this theory of mine. (Unless you're a big John Hughes fan and you also love the new R-R-R-Rewind 104.3, in which case: hah.) But it's all there.
Mind-bending non-sequitors, floated in a pathetic attempt to seem irreverent and wacky ("go ahead, take a bite! we're not fattening!"). Lyrics with the emotional depth of a De Stijl painting. Phil Collins. It's like Ferris Bueller is looking through his old High School yearbook. This radio station is beige sofas, pastel wall prints, and a man wearing an apron doing women's work [lol!].
But I'll probably keep listening, because it's great. You get Motown abutting glam metal which crashes straight into CCR. No rhyme or reason or self-conscious apologizing, the station commands you to turn off your brain and be soothed by these songs you've heard a million times but would never, ever purchase. It's like a musical frankenstein, if his monster was a masseuse who knew all the words to "Hit Me With Your Best Shot."
It's exactly like that.
Case closed.Posted 1 year ago # -
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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JimL2 wrote >>
Before I go any further I should say that I hate the work of John Hughes--hate it--any single one of his films is so terrible in my opinion that it would make me want to punch the director.I thought you said you loved Baby's Day Out...
Otherwise, excellent review!
Posted 1 year ago #
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