Bonneville Wins

[mikebatchelor]

A Chicago judge decided in favor of Bonneville in Sparknet's suit against them for using the slogan "70s, 80s Whatever we Want" on their VH stations in St. Louis, Phoenix, and San Francisco...

 

[uncamark]

> A Chicago judge decided in favor of Bonneville in Sparknet's
> suit against them for using the slogan "70s, 80s Whatever we
> Want" on their VH stations in St. Louis, Phoenix, and San
> Francisco...

And on their modern AC in Chicago, WTMX.

 

[radiospasm]

And I'm glad. Go Team Bonneville! I'm glad the judge used some common sense in this. People always want to copyright the English language as a whole... but, as the judge said, the slogan was describing the type of music these stations play...

Although I disagree with the somewhat-of-a-monopoly, the CC argument about "Kiss" and "Wild" and suing people for using those names is a LITTLE more understandable... Again, I still think CC is a bunch of cry babies for doing it...

But in this "playing what we want" case, the judge used absolute common sense, and hopefully the Jack (FM) Offs will go away and realize they don't own the world just because they named a format after someone, and threw in a very non-specific phrase at it too...

After all, aren't ALL radio stations "playing what we want?"

 

[uncamark]

> And I'm glad. Go Team Bonneville! I'm glad the judge used
> some common sense in this. People always want to copyright
> the English language as a whole... but, as the judge said,
> the slogan was describing the type of music these stations
> play...
>
> Although I disagree with the somewhat-of-a-monopoly, the CC
> argument about "Kiss" and "Wild" and suing people for using
> those names is a LITTLE more understandable... Again, I
> still think CC is a bunch of cry babies for doing it...
>
> But in this "playing what we want" case, the judge used
> absolute common sense, and hopefully the Jack (FM) Offs will
> go away and realize they don't own the world just because
> they named a format after someone, and threw in a very
> non-specific phrase at it too...
>
> After all, aren't ALL radio stations "playing what we want?"

Well, the "playing what we want" slogan is taking a shot of what's become a cliche in format changes, particularly at AC stations--the "We talked to thousands of people in [city] about what they wanted in a radio station, and we found out that they wanted their favorites from the 80s, 90s and today, with no rap, no hard rock and no lite and sleepy elevator music, in long commercial-free music sets--this is the radio station meant for you, [city]--welcome to the new [station name]." It's that kind "giving you what you want" attitude, based of course on auditorium tests, that Jack makes fun of, even if their music is just as tested as the other guys.