Gainesville's character has changed a lot in 30 years. For at least the past 25 years, the city has been run by Sophomores (sophisticated morons). That is to say, people who have a lot of social engineering theories but very little practical experience. Generally, they believe that automobiles are evil, so they have avoided road repairs or improvements, opting instead to remove lanes of traffic to make the city more pedestrian friendly. The resultant traffic problems have caused numerous business failures in the affected areas and caused growth in the outlying areas. About 60% of the land has been bought by the government, so the remaining property has to be taxed at the second highest rate in the state after West Palm Beach. We are actively building a 2 billion dollar, boondoggle, biomass power plant that is expected to drive up lumber prices all over the southeastern USA and will increase energy rates locally making GRU the most expensive utility in the southeast. I could go on for hours, but you get the idea.
Crime is still pretty low, but the city encourages vagrants and transients to come and stay here. In 1990, a homeless man named Danny Rolling made national headlines when he murdered five college students, for fun, over the course of a week. Gainesville has seen limited growth and remains primarily a support system for UF and for Santa Fe college. Between the two schools, there are now more than 65,000 college students here, up about 50% from the 1980s. Ocala, supported by diversified industries, is now bigger than Gainesville and is projected to continue getting bigger. Business, outside of the University, is discouraged in Gainesville, though peripheral cities like Alachua and Newberry have thrived as a result. Both Alachua and Newberry have annexed large tracts of land with an eye towards eventually replacing Gainesville as the seat of power.
In radio, quite a lot changed in the '80s and '90s. In 1981, WGVL, the album rock station, switched to CHR. It was an instant hit and the AM stations were broke within two years. About the same time, WRUF-FM switched from beautiful music to AOR, a format that survived for 30 years until WRUF-FM switched to country recently. WXJZ, currently a light AC/jazz blend, signed on as WMFM at 100.9 at the same time. In the 1990s, WBXY (99.5) and WNDT (92.5) came online locally. In Ocala, WNDD (95.5) was added. Today, there are no local AM stations playing music. There is quite a bit of variety on the FM dial. There are now more than 10 local FM signals and many rimshots available in the market. Country, classic hits, talk, AC and CHR/Urban comprise the top formats. Many of the smaller stations struggle to stay alive. If your audience share is a 0.4, it's hard to sell spots.
