Infinity Doesn’t Know Jack

Satellite radio has the traditional radio corporations scrambling for listeners. There’s no doubt about that. With repetetive playlists, increases in the time devoted to advertising and annoying-as-hell DJs, terrestrial radio is shedding listeners fast. Who would have thought just a few years ago that people would be so fed up with the state of radio that they would actually pay for new equipment and a subscription in order to get away from the wasteland that is FM today?

Unfortunately, the terrestrial broadcasting companies still don’t get it. After losing more and more people to satellite, which seems to really know what listeners want, terrestrial has decided that the Jack FM fad will save them. What is Jack FM? Well, it defies explanation really… it’s more of a “we play whatever we want” format… with, of course, all the heavy commercials, repetetive playlists, and annoying DJs still there.

And now they’re gotten so desperate, that they took the nations #1-rated oldies station, WCBS-FM, and without warning, converted it… to Jack-FM. In the process, they pissed off and alienated the entire listener base that CBS-FM had built up over the years.

Way to go, Inifinity Broadcasting. I’m no fan of oldies by any stretch, as I prefer much newer stuff, but I had generally assumed that it made good business sense to convert the struggling radio stations that have no lsiteners into different formats, rather than taking a successful market and turning it on its head.