Max Knows Music

[HGN2001]

Before BEN, before Jammin' Gold, and after WFLN, there was "Max".

This video is a bunch of extracted IDs taken from a CD sent out to radio advertising agencies when the format flipped to Max.

Maybe you'll get a kick out of this blast from 20 years ago or so.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL0_zcINdtc

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

Max and Alice are living a quiet life in retirement, while their baby Ben has grown up to play anything he feels like.

 

[Miguelito]

Oh, 95.7 under the brilliance of Greater Media. What a laughable series of disasters.

Even though I was like 20 years old or something, I was really unhappy with the decision to kill WFLN. And when what it became was Max 95.7, I just made it worse. There just wasn't a need for a "Y100 Lite," which they quickly learned. Thinking they could make it work, they hired Barsky, only to flip months later to Jammin' Gold. Now that was a format I enjoyed, even though there was never any doubt it was going to burn out really quickly. And when it did, they did the unthinkable: They basically turned Max back on but called it Mix. (The definition of insanity is repeating the same actions over and over again and expecting different results.) "Modern AC." I mean, what in all the hell?

If I remember correctly, the only reason Greater Media ended up putting something decent on 95.7 was because they thought CBS was about to put "Jack" on 98.1 (as they'd stupidly done in NYC with WCBS-FM).

 

[andreajesus]

If I remember correctly, the only reason Greater Media ended up putting something decent on 95.7 was because they thought CBS was about to put "Jack" on 98.1 (as they'd stupidly done in NYC with WCBS-FM).

and we know what happened when NYC got "Jacked".....

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

Max was making some inroads when the powers that be got caught up in jammin’ oldies fever. If there was a mistake, in hindsight, it was that switch. Max was making some headway with its target audience, and while I’d always doubt Barsky as a component, a more female friendly modern approach might have had more runway left. Mix was a bit of a confused situation in a crowded space with no real ground to claim at the time.

The Ben move turned out to give them a long-term steady performer. Nothing bad in that.

 

[atthestars]

Max was making some inroads when the powers that be got caught up in jammin’ oldies fever. If there was a mistake, in hindsight, it was that switch. Max was making some headway with its target audience, and while I’d always doubt Barsky as a component, a more female friendly modern approach might have had more runway left. Mix was a bit of a confused situation in a crowded space with no real ground to claim at the time.

The Ben move turned out to give them a long-term steady performer. Nothing bad in that.

Wasn't the story that Greater Media heard that Clear Channel was going to flip Star 104.5 to a Jammin' Gold type format, so they went quick, and pulled Max midway through a song without warning to get "Jammin' Gold 95.7" on the air first? So Clear Channel had to regroup, and eventually launched Alice?

 

[AbrahamJSimpson]

Wasn't the story that Greater Media heard that Clear Channel was going to flip Star 104.5 to a Jammin' Gold type format, so they went quick, and pulled Max midway through a song without warning to get "Jammin' Gold 95.7" on the air first? So Clear Channel had to regroup, and eventually launched Alice?

So the legends say.

 

[nd2023]

On a side note, 95.7’s HD2 “Club Ben” has never updated its playlist since 2007, since it went HD in the first place. They have never played anything newer than the summer of 2007 for as long as I’ve been listening to them since they went HD. The playlist today is identical to the playlist in the fall of 2007.

 

[davideduardo]

If I remember correctly, the only reason Greater Media ended up putting something decent on 95.7 was because they thought CBS was about to put "Jack" on 98.1 (as they'd stupidly done in NYC with WCBS-FM).

That urban legend does not seem to ever die.

The fact is that within a year of switching from Oldies to Jack, CBS FM had superior 25-54 numbers to what it had under the very old leaning 60's core music format.

The only reason Jack was dropped is the fact that CBS saw what could be done with classic hits in the upcoming PPM based on the very preliminary PPM test ratings in Philadelphia. Seeing how classic hits could perform with the meter, they did not want to loose the window of opportunity in NYC to anyone else. So they switched to yet another format and, of course, did very well in the PPM when it debuted.