Retro said:
Yes, it was almost 10 years ago come September. Greater Media through a big shebang on getting the station off the ground. But within 10 days, the party pooped and it became a standard/lame classic hits station instead. What are your thoughts on this failed attempt to become PD free?
It wasn't going to be "PD free", it was then-PD Buzz Knight's idea after he moved over there from running WZLX. It was essentially a Classic Rock format that included some "deeper" album tracks that were played on early progressive free-form album rock stations in the late '60s and early '70s, such as WBCN in its early rock years, that did not continue to be played on Classic Rock stations such as WZLX.
It lasted longer than ten days, it was called "Timeless Rock'n'Roll Classics", and it was on for at least a few months as I recall. It was also the last unfortunately short-lived radio gig for "Captain Ken" Shelton.
WROR had already been launched on 105.7 with a Classic Hits format about five years earlier. That shift to Classic Rock including "deep" late '60s/early '70s album tracks, while I was in the minority who enjoyed it, only alienated their Classic Hits listeners and drove them to WODS and elsewhere at the time, and failed to attract the "boomers" that grew up with the early WBCN as was hoped, who had mostly given up on commercial radio entirely decades beforehand. The ratings took a nose dive, and WROR had to go back to Classic Hits to survive (and, many years later, beat their main competition WODS).
The format was poorly promoted, but I don't know if better promotion would have helped much. The "masses" don't want to hear songs that had become obscure by mainstream standards that they don't know. That format may have pleased a few deeper music aficionados (like myself) who happened to remember the early rock years of WBCN, but it has been proven time and again that there are aren't enough numbers of those aficionados to sustain a major market commercial station. If there were, more Classic Rock stations would play more of those "deeper" album tracks.
I personally thought it was cool and I was disappointed when the brief "experiment" ended, but I know better than to ascribe to the "I like it, so everyone else should like it" mentality that I see posted here so often.
