Longtime Philadelphia ROCK station, WYSP, a CBS affiliate, has modified its Modern Hard Rock format to fit some kind of Post-Classic Rock, Hair Farmer-friendly, ’80s demographic.
Hair bands are the thing at rock station WYSP (94.1), which this morning retooled its format, expanding its play list to include more songs from the 1970s and 1980s.
Now billed as “94YSP The Rock You Grew Up With From the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s,” the station will play more from such artists as AC/DC, Def Leppard, Guns N Roses, Ozzie Osbourne, Pink Floyd, Van Halen and Aerosmith. The station will continue to play more recent artists such as Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
The article, from the Philadelphia Inquirer, notes that the station’s new slogan, “The Rock You Grew Up With,” was trademarked by CBS. I wonder if similar CBS hard rock stations have or will soon also change to this format. I wonder how old school Classic Rock stations will adjust now that this new format will be skimming off the “fresh cream” of their programming.
Feel free to sniff and puff up your chest with pride in your satellite radio subscription.
It should be “The Rock You Grew Up With…Last Week.” Is it really a format change if you’re playing all the same acts?
Recent bands like “Nirvana”. That’s some messed up math. The Clinton era doesn’t feel recent.
The Rock That Is About Not Growing Up But That You Pretended To Grow Up With Anyway
When I was on vacation last week. The only decent radio station we could get in the car billed itself as “Heritage Rock”
Grooming the next generation of “Classic Rockers,” so they can ignore everything except catalog music to maximize record label profits in this dire times.
It’s the same thing, over and over. Do people chew gum they find on their nightpost fifteen years after they first chewed it and claim it the best ever, too?
I am gloating over my satellite subscription, though. I didn’t have to listen to any local stations for a whole week to, from and at Cape Cod. I really used to love radio, but it’s so bad now. I hope it just dies.
Hertiage Rock??? What do they play, “Born Under a Bad Sign”, “Born in the USA”, “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone”…?
I don’t think i want to pay for the radio. I LOVE Howard Stern. I love lots of choices. I love good programming. I’m just never gonna pay for the radio. I live in Philadelphia, and I can pick up 3 AMAZING college stations. Drexyl’s WKDU 91.7, Princeton’s WPRB 103.3, and if I’m desperate, UPenn’s 88.5.
There is great radio without commercials in my town. Also the itunes radio “tuner” is pretty fucking great. The fidelity can be low, but no lower than my home FM tuner, or a cassette. I also don’t like the idea of buying more fucking hardware. I have a turntable and a computer. that’s all i’m getting. i don’t have any cable.
Rock on, Shawnkilroy! I’m with you. I must say, with just a few precints voting, the satellite radio poll is showing a surprisingly low percentage of satellite subscribers.
I drive 34,000 miles a year and I love my satellite radio. I never listen to Howard Stern, but the political talk is much more interesting on Sirius, because the homegrown shows don’t have hard commercial breaks. I’ve heard 45 minute interviews, without a pause. It’s really cool.
I have access to excellent college stations, WCSB and WRUW. There’s two more, but they aren’t as cool as those. The thing with those stations is that twenty miles away, they don’t come in. Sunday is the Slovenian Polka Music Day, the twee pop shows blow, the thrash metal shows are funny now and then, but three hours at a time?
With Sirius I can listen to the same station for 1000 miles. I can pick from three classic rock stations, I get The Underground Garage (which I am happy to pay for), I get a cool college style station, a funky Country station with Mojo Nixon for a DJ, and best of all – no one tries to sell me a car, Diet Pepsi, Will Smith’s latest movie or anything else when I’m listening to radio. Three years of it has made those commercials for six minutes every eight minutes unbearable.
Plus, I’ve got a remote. I don’t even listen to anything I don’t like on my radio!
I object on grammatical grounds. Their motto should be:
The Rock up with which you grew.
What 2K said. Plus a blues station, reggae station, “outlaw country”, a station for each decade, alt, punk, “left” and a station or two that mixes all of that… And all with either wonderfully great or wonderfully awful DJs. And “awful” as in non-professional, which makes them great.
We drive L.A.-PHX twice per year and L.A.-SF at least twice and it makes the drive so much easier.
I think you have to love radio. Love that you don’t what’s coming up next. Love the personalities that set it up and tell stories. Love that you feel a part of community with similar values that is having a shared experience. Love Kim Fowley.
I equate radio with music in the car and that’s where my Sirius is. Do I wish it were free? Sure. But it isn’t and I’d pay 2 or 3x what I pay.
Shhhhh.
2k, you can still afford to pay for radio after buying gas to drive 34,000 miles a year?
But seriously folks … what happens to radio if people really do start spending less time in the car? If most people are like sammy and “equate radio with music in the car,” would you as a radio programmer or satellite radio executive just write off the home (or mobile but not driving) listener?
Love Kim Fowley.
hahaha me too!
Work covers the gas for most of that mileage. Of the 34k, I bet 2500 of it is personal. Once I’m home, I’m good. I don’t want to go anywhere else.
I agree that you have to love radio. I really do, and some of my fondest memories are of lying in bed with my pillow speaker (like the old, crappy earbud, but flat so you could lay it on your pillow and be comfortable), getting in weird stations I’d never heard. That’s how I found out about college radio. I was listening to WBWC when I was really young. I think they had 5 watts and were barely audible off the campus of Baldwin Wallace. I loved hearing songs I’d never hear anywhere else. Then WNCR and WMMS came along and the stuff they did in the middle of the night was even weirder than my one college station.
I loved the communal effect of WMMS way back in the 70’s, because you knew when you were hanging with one group of people on their Camaro’s that when they played that strange set of Zappa, Alex Harvey and King Crimson that your friends on the other side of town were sitting on Camaro’s digging the same thing. It made for a sense of community that just doesn’t exist these days.
Kim Fowley’s show is amazing. It’s a hilarious blend of killer rock, self promotion and chest thumping that shouldn’t work, but it does.