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I’m Officially Done With WCBS-FM - My Thoughts and Memories of the Station.

MTNProductions said:
As I am recording the last show with my favorite pal, Scott Shannon from the Blythedale Children’s Hospital, I’m going to talk about why I am done with WCBS-FM along with my thoughts and memories about the station.

After 4 decades of listening to the station, CBS-FM is not going to be the same anymore, everything is different. Now they are playing all 80’s with less 70’s, and then the 90’s, and of course, some from the 2000’s which were not my cup of tea. I’m not a fan of artists that played on the station like OutKast where they played “Hey Ya”, the Black Eyed Peas called “I Got A Feeling” and of course, Taylor Swift’s “Shake It Off” where they played during Scott Shannon’s final week on the show.

I was a CBS-FM loyal listener for a very long time, and now, after Scott Shannon leaves the airwaves today, I’m moving on to another radio station. I will be removing WCBS-FM from my favorites on my Audacy app, and I will be listening to a different radio station instead of CBS-FM.

My parents used to listened to CBS-FM back in the 1980’s and 1990’s, and we used to drive around when Bob Shannon was on at the time. That was my favorite memory for me.

I love the oldies, and I love the music from the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s and I love doo-wop music a lot, and I’m going to listen to “Doo-Wop Drive” with Allan David Stein on WMTR later tonight where they’re playing doo-wop the way that Don K Reed used to played them on CBS-FM every Sunday where he hosted the “Doo-Wop Shop” for 27 years, and I was a fan of Don K Reed.

For decades, we listened to some legendary DJ’s like Harry Harrison, Ron Lundy, Bill Brown, Bob Shannon, Bobby Jay, Norm N Nite, Dan Daniel, Dan Ingram, Day Taylor, Mike Fitzgerald, Randy Davis, Max Kinkel, Marc Summers, Ed Baer and Cousin Brucie, and of course, Joe McCoy, the then program director for CBS-FM. Those were the good old days. And now, Scott Shannon will be on my list of past DJ’s.

CBS-FM was one heck of a rollercoaster for me after all these years. If you are a longtime CBS-FM loyal listener, there are a lot of stations where you can get your oldies fix. There’s phone apps and Alexa devices where you can listen to like WROW’s “Magic 590/100.5”. The link is down below.



And of course, there’s TuneIn where you can get oldies stations from elsewhere outside of CBS-FM. There’s iHeartRadio where you can listen to 50’s music on iHeart 50’s, iHeart 60’s and iHeart 70’s, and then, there Pandora and Spotify as well.

Before I’m going to post Scott Shannon’s last show on WCBS-FM, let’s go back in time to 7/10/72 where CBS-FM kicked off it’s first week on the air as the “Golden 101” where they were playing 50’s and 60’s oldies. I wasn’t even born in 1972 when it first came on the air.

This is just my opinion, but feel free to leave it in the post below. I’m not going to offend by this, and I am recording Scott Shannon’s last show on CBS-FM right now. After his final show, I’m going to post his last show later today, and that would be it for me. I’m not going to listen to CBS-FM ever again.
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I totally agree with your insight on CBS-FM. Do you remember those large holiday weekends, the top countdowns, A to Z's....etc... about 10-15 years ago? Once those were eliminated, I stopped listening. Weekends were and still are a great time of the week to showcase your music library.
 
tvk5195 said:
A few years ago, I played a doo-wop record on a 1950s turntable I recently purchased to see if it worked. My dad told me to turn it off. I turned it back on a few minutes later. He stormed into the room and said, "I told you to turn that crap off! The only people who listen to that music are either dead or should be!" He isn't wrong.

I do wonder if at some point, 50s/60s oldies will return to the airwaves in the form of non-profit operations, sort of like classical music. I have no clue how anyone can sell ads on a station that plays music for a demographic 65+. It must take a lot of convincing. Props to those sales people.
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The Kenston School District in Bainbridge, Ohio, has operated WKHR 91.5 as a non-comm adult standards outlet since 1990, staffed entirely by volunteers. It’s outlasted pretty much every remaining commercial station in the format in the entire state. It’s also an anomaly as I’m not sure their success can be replicated elsewhere.

One of those stations WKHR outlasted was WCLV “Classic Pop 1420” (later renamed WRMR), which came about after WCLV-FM founder/owner Robert Conrad purchased the intellectual property of WRMR 850, whose format was to be displaced in favor of WKNR’s sports format as the result of a complex asset/license swap Conrad initiated. In justifying purchasing a format and music library with aging demos—WRMR 850 was in the top 10 in the 12+ toplines throughout the 1990s but nearly invisible in the 25–54 demo—Conrad said, “…the people who grew up with Bach aren't around anymore either.”

WRMR was ultimately sold back to its previous ownership in 2004, having become a financial liability for WCLV.
 
tvk5195 said:
A few years ago, I played a doo-wop record on a 1950s turntable I recently purchased to see if it worked. My dad told me to turn it off. I turned it back on a few minutes later. He stormed into the room and said, "I told you to turn that crap off! The only people who listen to that music are either dead or should be!" He isn't wrong.

I do wonder if at some point, 50s/60s oldies will return to the airwaves in the form of non-profit operations, sort of like classical music. I have no clue how anyone can sell ads on a station that plays music for a demographic 65+. It must take a lot of convincing. Props to those sales people.
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This music is featured on both LPFM stations as well as online stations. When I ran a high school radio station, we featured several such syndicated shows. Many posts have explained why this music no longer works on commercial radio, and I agree with their assessments.
 
CTListener said:
The differences between classical music and doo-wop are many, but chief among them is that classical music draws on centuries of active composition and performance, while doo-wop was a brief popular music fad spanning small parts of two decades. It's extremely unlikely that doo-wop will even be remembered, let alone performed or broadcast, once the baby boomers (the youngest demographic alive when doo-wop was current) are gone, while orchestras and smaller ensembles will still be playing the works of the greats of the 16th through 20th centuries to appreciative audiences and making them available on commercially produced recordings.
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With all due respect, what you're saying about Doo-Wop is what's going to be said about Hip Hop in probably less than 20 years and was said about Disco 40 years ago.

I agree with you though that Classical is here to stay. This music is ancient and brand new at the same time. For those of us that follow Classical music it is not "nostalgia" because the compositions are unique and at the same time ageless. The artists performing these works interpret them in their own way, and it always seems fresh. And certain recordings of many works are considered definitive and have yet to be truly rivaled. Much of this is also true of Jazz.
 
It is crazy the lasting power of stuff like hey ya! "Whats cooler than being cool....ICE COLD!!!! Alrightalrightalrightalrightalrightalright" Doesnt that get old...sheesh!
 
Classical music is performed all over world in live concert via symphony orchestras and chamber music groups. IMO, that's what helps keep the music alive. Same thing to a lesser extent with jazz.
Classical music receives funding from philanthropic arts groups and government-sponsored foundations. For example, the symphony comes to Sun Valley, Idaho, each summer, due to local philanthropic foundations and local patrons of the arts. Sun Valley is a small town, but everyone turns out for the symphony. JMO.
 
But the baby boomers combined with some of generation X contained huge numbers of people. Yes, they are dying off, but if I recall correctly, at its peak, the baby boomer generation was 75,000,000 people. That's a huge generation, who had children, so generation X is also large ( not quite as large as the baby boomers).

There are a lot of potential listeners out there, I think. A commercial radio station which depends on ad revenue may not be able to sell enough ads, but there should be some other way to get funding.
 
Classical music and jazz mainly exist thanks to the financial support of its fans. They support the radio stations, they support the local symphonies, they support jazz clubs, and everything else that keeps the music alive. That kind of financial support is what would be required for other genres to last as long as classical and jazz.
 
TheBigA said:
Classical music and jazz mainly existSan thanks to the financial support of its fans. They support the radio stations, they support the local symphonies, they support jazz clubs, and everything else that keeps the music alive. That kind of financial support is what would be required for other genres to last as long as classical and jazz.
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Yes, exactly. That's how the symphony is able to come to Sun Valley, Idaho each summer. That's a small town with tremendous patron support for the symphony and for the arts. Vail, Colorado has the same situation - lots of generous contributions for classical music.

Listener-supported KUSC 91.5 in Los Angeles and KFDC 91.3 in San Francisco do well in this regard. JMO -- Daryl
 
TheBigA said:
Classical music and jazz mainly exist thanks to the financial support of its fans. They support the radio stations, they support the local symphonies, they support jazz clubs, and everything else that keeps the music alive. That kind of financial support is what would be required for other genres to last as long as classical and jazz.
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KING-FM and WCLV are two long-standing classical stations that were donated to nonprofits by their commercial ownerships. (WCLV’s road was more complex than KING-FM, selling off their full-market class B, purchasing a class A rimshot and an AM signal, setting off a complex station/intellectual property realignment; WCLV moved again to the class B 90.3 last March.) WRR was owned by the city of Dallas but operated as a commercial station until KERA took over operations last year. WCRB eventually was donated to WGBH and converted to non-comm after a frequency downgrade a few years earlier. WQXR was sold to WNYC, moved to a weaker signal, and also became non-comm.

Those are exceptions to the fate of many commercial classical outlets that either didn’t have the capability to donate IP or music libraries once FM stations mushroomed in value, making the formats incredibly difficult to continue as-is. At least when KFAC and WGMS changed formats, they donated their music libraries to the non-comm competition.

And honestly? Classical is a format that feels perfect as listener-supported. There will always be people willing to appreciate the genre and put up money to support it.
 
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MTNProductions said:
After a week and a half of waiting, I posted this one. For those of you have not heard of before, here he is. This is Allan David Stein as heard on WMTR back on January 3rd which was Tuesday morning.

This is the first show I listened to following Scott Shannon on WCBS-FM and Bob Miller on WBPM. The music is way better than WGNY-FM’s “Fox Oldies”, because it has the oldies from the 50’s through the 70’s, just like the way it sounded on the good old WCBS-FM when it was and still is “New York’s Oldies Station”. Allan David Stein is also the host of “Doo-Wop Drive” every Friday night playing Doo-Wop’s the way that Don K Reed played back in the “Doo-Wop Shop” days on Sunday nights. I love Allan David Stein a lot better than Bob Miller on WBPM, and I’m giving it as a new favorite. Take a good listen.

archive.org

WMTR: Allan David Stein - 1/3/23 : Allan David Stein : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

WMTR: Allan David Stein - 1/3/23
archive.org
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Thank you for making me aware of WMTR. Based on your recommendation, I listened to it thanks to Alexa last Friday morning. Allan David Stein has a fun show and shares his passion for entertaining music from the late 50s and early 60s. I enjoy personalities like Allan who also play fun music.
 
While listeners over 70 are definitely a tough audience to prosper from in radio, a few years under than and back into the 40s is profitable on a local level. What concerns me is all the “avoid 55 and up mentality” and the listeners in their mid-20’s and under are exactly how strong these days? The workable demographics really narrowed. Radio has to find a way...
 
The 55+ really needs non-commercial radio with listener support. For commercial stations, the ad agencies pretty much dictate things and in big cities those that might advertise don't get results because there are not enough listeners in the business trade area to earn a renewal. In a small town, maybe you can sell it but the business owners need to be in the demographic to buy.

In fact, most people that run businesses aren't going to buy classical. If they like classical, you'll likely be in luck. The same with jazz.
 
b-turner said:
The 55+ really needs non-commercial radio with listener support. For commercial stations, the ad agencies pretty much dictate things and in big cities those that might advertise don't get results because there are not enough listeners in the business trade area to earn a renewal. In a small town, maybe you can sell it but the business owners need to be in the demographic to buy.

In fact, most people that run businesses aren't going to buy classical. If they like classical, you'll likely be in luck. The same with jazz.
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Check out Chicago's 98.7 WFMT...Classical, commercial and reasonably successful for their desired audience.
 
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