MAGIC 100.9 Albany, NY moves to 590 AM and will eventually leave 100.9

[MarcB]

Pamal Broadcasting has pulled the plug on talk formatted WROW 590 and replaced it with a simulcast of MAGIC 100.9 FM. 100.9 will relaunch with a new format in a few months.

WROW's website now forwards to http://www.albanymagic.com/

http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=898342

 

[RBW]

Everyone who was a talk-radio fan with 590 AM is absolutely FUMING that "easy-listening" music is now the replacement. Arguments are; "why would I listen to music on AM!!" -- then they call it "elevator music". One person said... "music on AM? - are you drunk"? -- referring to the decision by the PD. This is Sinatra, Carpenters, Nat Cole, Bennett etc..... plus a few more contemporary artists. Kind of a mix of Dial Global and Timeless. 8)

 

[vinyltapecd]

Anyone know exactly when 100.9 will stop broadcasting their soft AC format, and switch over to whatever junk they plan to replace it with??? I call it junk because NOTHING can be better than the music they have been playing all this time. I seriously thought they were one of the best radio stations in the country, and here they are, about to switch.

I noticed that their website has already been changed and it no longer says "Magic 100.9"...the front page has a big message saying that they are moving to 590 AM. Honestly, what is the point of listening to MUSIC on an AM station??? Even YouTube gives better sound quality, and at least it has a visual component to it as well.

 

[vchimpanzee]

Anyone know exactly when 100.9 will stop broadcasting their soft AC format

This isn't soft AC. It's what the radio industry calls standards. The board is misnamed.

 

[RBW]

This isn't soft AC. It's what the radio industry calls standards. The board is misnamed.

Yeah, it's kind of like a Timeless format, and it's been driving me nuts the way the paper and most news articles have referred to it as "lite music" or "lite rock". Not ONCE have they said that MAGIC airs a Standards format. Perhaps they feel if they referred to it that way no one would know what they meant. :-\

 

[vchimpanzee]

This isn't soft AC. It's what the radio industry calls standards. The board is misnamed.

Yeah, it's kind of like a Timeless format, and it's been driving me nuts the way the paper and most news articles have referred to it as "lite music" or "lite rock". Not ONCE have they said that MAGIC airs a Standards format. Perhaps they feel if they referred to it that way no one would know what they meant. :-\

WEZV in Myrtle Beach, SC also refers to themselves as soft AC. The man I talked to says if they call themselves easy listening it makes them sound like they're for old people or elevator music; well, guess what: THEY ARE. But only Arbitron agrees with them, and that's only because Arbitron won't let people not in the business tell them about a mistake. Everyone else calls it easy listening even though it's vocal-based and nothing like what most people call soft AC. Standards might be stretching it but I persuaded one web site to change it to that. After all, the same site was calling some Delilah type stations "soft AC" even though they're really not any more.

 

[passtheword]

This isn't soft AC. It's what the radio industry calls standards. The board is misnamed.

Yeah, it's kind of like a Timeless format, and it's been driving me nuts the way the paper and most news articles have referred to it as "lite music" or "lite rock". Not ONCE have they said that MAGIC airs a Standards format. Perhaps they feel if they referred to it that way no one would know what they meant. :-\

WEZV in Myrtle Beach, SC also refers to themselves as soft AC. The man I talked to says if they call themselves easy listening it makes them sound like they're for old people or elevator music; well, guess what: THEY ARE. But only Arbitron agrees with them, and that's only because Arbitron won't let people not in the business tell them about a mistake. Everyone else calls it easy listening even though it's vocal-based and nothing like what most people call soft AC. Standards might be stretching it but I persuaded one web site to change it to that. After all, the same site was calling some Delilah type stations "soft AC" even though they're really not any more.

Depends on what your definition of "soft AC" is. I grew up listening to the original soft AC format, which was a cross between the adult contemporary and easy listening formats...basically taking some of the lighter selections from the AC format and combining it with the easy listening artists, such as Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow, Anne Murray, Barbra Streisand, etc. Those artists were staples on soft AC's during the time, but mainstream AC's wouldn't touch them. We used to have both a mainstream AC and a soft AC back during the 80's. My brother used to argue that the two stations had the same exact format, but I told him they weren't the same and tried explaining the differences to him. Yes...there was some overlap between the two formats, but one only need to listen for about 10 minutes or so and would be able to differentiate between the two types of AC formats. Many of those stations were former "beautiful music" outlets that dropped the format for the more saleable soft AC format, which was commonly referrred to as "vocal easy listening"; the two names for the format were pretty much interchangeable. Today, of course, soft AC has evolved. The adult contemporary playlist for the newly revamped "soft AC" has been widely expanded, and the core easy listening artists have been completely eliminated. I call it "watered-down adult contemporary" and I can't listen to it myself. So, in a sense...WEZV could be considered "old school" soft AC, but from a contemporary defintion, it obviously is not.