vchimpanzee said:
This isn't even a station that deserves mention on this board, except for the fact "soft AC" has been left in the board's name.
I looked at yes.com, and it doesn't even belong in the category with WFEZ. Although AC has gone so far overboard that I guess it doesn't belong under AC either.
I wouldn't want to be stuck with this station. It would be fine for background music in business, and I could argue it would be acceptable if my usual station (assuming there was one; with this kind of competition who'd want to start a new one if there wasn't one?) was doing sports or was on nighttime power, but the fact is a station a lot like this was so bad that when WEZV in Myrtle Beach went off the air, I refused to listen. I can't recall how long the outage lasted, but considering I was on the road and about to leave WEZV's range, any outage is too long.
I don't see why this station shouldn't be mentioned on this thread, although the term "soft AC" on this board is kind of misleading IMO since what is now considered "soft AC" today is much different, musically speaking, than what WFEZ and other similar stations are now offering. Which format are we actually discussing? I would surmise since the board has "easy listening" and "adult standards" in the name we are talking more about traditional soft AC.
Lite 95.9 sounds more like traditional soft AC sounded 25 years ago, the way I remember it, anyway. Many of those stations were former EZ/BM stations which changed over to all vocals and referred to their format as "vocal easy listening". I know that term was pretty much synonymous with soft AC, but I always believed that terminology (format description) was meant to appease the former BM/EZ listeners they were still hearing "easy listening". As far as the music being offered by both "vocal easy listening" and "soft AC" stations, there was little, if any, difference that I could note. Many of those listeners might have been under the assumption they were still listening to "easy listening" (just without the instrumentals), but traditional soft AC was much broader than easy listening. Soft AC was actually meant to be a hybrid format of easy listening and adult contemporary...taking the easy listening artists from the EZ/BM stations and combining it with some of the "lighter", less extreme music of the adult contemporary format. As such, the format might have been portrayed as "easy listening" when in fact, it really was not. Getting back to Lite 95.9 and why I believe it is relevant to the board...if we were able to roll back time and listen to Lite 95.9 back during the mid 80's, this is how any typical soft AC would sound at that time. Sure, there is 25 years of material that has elapsed since then, but if those songs were in existence 25 years ago, they would have been offered on just about every soft AC station across the country.
To me, many of the newer soft AC stations coming on the air now (such as WFEZ and "Carolina 92.1") sound closer to easy listening than soft AC. For one, certain artists offered on soft AC stations 25 years ago have been dropped entirely from the playlist (I mentioned "Bruce Hornsby and the Range" in my last post as one of those artists). In addition, the original soft AC format didn't offer a whole lot of newer material in the mix since it was predominantly based on older material. It seems the newer, traditional soft AC stations have all but eliminated most, if not all, the current material. I suppose some of that reasoning is due to the fact that much of the newer music today just doesn't have the "right sound" and would sound out of place on a traditional soft AC. Many of these stations, however, refuse to touch some of 90's material, even though there would be some tracks that would fit within the format. I've noticed, too, a lot more adult standards are now being offered on these stations than was previously the case 25 years ago. I have been listening to adult standards myself for about 30 years now, but I don't really care for this "mix" of adult standards and lighter AC. The same is happening on adult standards stations....much of the standards are being eliminated, big band music just about entirely gone, and what was originally referred to as "soft AC" is now being incorporated into the playlist. The current soft AC sound is too much like adult contemporary to me...there is no longer any "easy listening" aspect to it. It's almost as though the two terms "soft AC" and "vocal easy listening" are no longer one and the same and have "split" from one another: today's soft AC stations being the current version of soft AC and the traditional soft AC stations now more appropriately referred to as "vocal easy listening". That is why I feel that Lite 95.9 sound closer to the original soft AC sound than what WFEZ and similar stations offer. Where else can you hear "Don't Say It's Over" by Crowded House segue to Anne Murray's "I Just Fall In Love Again"?
