Posted by Allan Sniffen on August 06, 2007 at 09:32:37:
For the last three weeks, everyone has been singing the praises of "bringing CBS-FM back". It's been a good thing for the station, its fans and NY radio.
But... nothing is perfect.
Consider the "Radio Greats" specialty programming from last night. Had virtually any other station brought Wolfman Jack back by re-creating one of his shows, the response would have been almost totally positive. Consider that's what "WABC Rewound" does and also what satellite radio does.
Not so with CBS-FM. While there were many who enjoyed last night's show, there were also critics. The "CBS-FM" call letters invoke memories of its past... and in this case that means "The Reunion Of The Rock and Roll Radio Greats" that the station ran multiple times starting in 1984. As it turns out, last night's show was from Wolfman's June 1995 appearance on CBS-FM (just a week before his death).
I thought it was a good idea and well executed. But many of you felt otherwise primarily because it wasn't a live show and Wolfman wasn't as big a name in NY radio as he was on the West Coast.
I understand that many of you want to hear former CBS-FM DJ's and, maybe, a couple of others. There's nothing wrong with that... but don't make your universe of potential shows so small that nothing else is included. Wolfman has a place as do others, many of whom never worked at CBS-FM. Some of them are, unfortunately, deceased. Does that mean they should not be brought back via recordings?
Again, this is a consequence of so many preconceived expectations based on using the "CBS-FM" moniker. The station is trying to invoke its own impressive past by referencing it. That's fine... but it's not without a lot of people thinking it should be the same... from the music to the DJ's to the specialty programming to the reverb to most everything else. I would suggest to you that you need to be more open minded. Don't dismiss change because it's change. You'll end up shutting out a lot of things you might otherwise enjoy.
In this case, it was only the first show. They'll be more... and this was fun. Evaluate it as such!