CHR and Weekend Mix Shows

[BS1012]

Has CHR radio in the US, in general, just given up on specialty mix shows and live club broadcasts? Perhaps I'm just spoiled because I'm used to decent quality shows like some of the stuff on WKQI/Detroit, B96 Chicago, RX 93.1/the Philippines or Kiss100 London for decent quality mix shows and club sets. But I've been checking out some of the streams using Tunein on my phone and I'm legitimately horrified at what I'm hearing.

Case in point: G105/Raleigh. They say they're "live" from some club downtown, but really it's got to be some awful prepackaged "mix" show, where random near full-length slow pop songs are tossed together with weird noises between them to simulate some sort of live club broadcast while the jock tells you every 20 minutes that the club is getting full and you should come out because they are “live.” They actually went from the Lumineer's Ho Hey to Eminem's Loose Yourself before the break, neither of which are energetic, interesting or should or would be found in a dance club or a mix show on a Friday night! It's so awful it's almost funny, except I know there's someone who doesn't know any better who is listening and thinking it's actual quality. Just ... incredible.

Even Channel 955/Detroit, which usually has grate shows that are (or were until a few weeks ago) legitimately live from real clubs, was airing some lame-sounding mix set on Saturday night, and when I checked another stream in Florida, it was the same songs. I'm pretty sure the Clear Channel stations just use the same show and music. Still, at least WKQI isn't afraid to actually mix on some shows and more importantly, play a wider variety of top40, hiphop and dance music than their regular rotation.

Does it all really sound this bad? Are there top40 stations left in this country that either have live and local mix shows on the weekends, or even better, actual live broadcasts from clubs? Or in general, has it come down to corporate prepackaged lame mix shows or programs like Open House Party and Saturday Night Online with Romeo?

[raydiodude]

Check out my station - 104.5 SNX/Grand Rapids. We have 20 hrs of mix show programming each week. We have a huge number of talented DJ's our area that we tap into. We have seven local residents (three spin pop/hip hop on Fri/Sat nights, the other four residents spin on our now 7 year old all EDM mix show called CLUB 104 Five on Sundays 9p-1a) The fourth hour of CLUB 104 Five is our "guest DJ" hour where we spotlight a different LOCAL EDM DJ each week. Since 2010, we've had 40 different LOCAL EDM DJ's on a rotation spinning dub-step, trap, minimal, industrial, gay house, even have a guy who DJ'd back in the day, gave it up when he had kids, now they are grown, he's 49-50 years old now but can still spin classic freestyle like no other)

Our weekly mix shows consistently score in the 20-30 share range 18-34. CLUB 104 Five (the EDM show) recently hit a 41 share.

We even do marathon mix show weekends (Memorial Day, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years) which is usually 40-50 hrs of mix shows over a three day weekend. All mixed by LOCAL talent with once exception being DJ Grooves. His mix is syndicated to about 20 stations and is LIGHT YEARS better than all the watered down, too overly "safe" crap out there. AND since Grooves was the only DJ who WASN'T local, over the years we've brought him in town to spin a few club gigs a year.

One of our annual marathon weekends is called the Spring Break DJ Takeover (we turn the station over to the local mixers) and it happens to be this weekend. We'll be in the mix Fri 5p-Sat 5a, Sat 3p-Sun 5a and Sun 3p-Mon 4a. DJ Schedule is here: http://www.1045snx.com/pages/snxmixers.html?article=10798393

Take a listen, lemme know what you think. I think you'll be surprised.
Have a great weekend.