Very sorry to hear about the surprise decision by your station, Walter,
but that seems to be the modus operandi of choice for these moves.  The
Philadelphia station which completely dropped CM some years ago also did
it without warning or consulting anyone.  It also seems to happen in the
pop radio world: the company which bought the frequency that the long-time
Philadelphia commercial CM station used has recently switched formats from
some kind of rock thing to some other kind (I can't tell the difference
between them, so don't ask me what) without a word to anyone, even the
staff.  They had to pipe in the signal from one of their stations in
another city for a few days, I understand, until they could install a
new staff.

Obviously they do it to avoid messy public fights which would look
bad.  Perhaps there's a bit of bad conscience involved, too; at least
I'd like to think so.  The really unfortunate thing is, as you point
out, they often duplicate news programming available elsewhere on the
dial--programming they have to pay for--and even then it is more profitable
to them.  This shows how little value the CM audience is, largely, I think,
because most people will just shrug their shoulders and turn to their CD
collections.  As has often been pointed out on this list, however, the
people who are really hurt by these moves are not established CM fans with
big CD hordes, but non-fans who might start listening to CM by happening
on the station.  But this is not the clientele that matters to the station
managers.  You could try appealing to their civic responsibility to put
the music before the public, but unless you can back this argument up with
money, I guess it won't impress them.

Jon Johanning // [log in to unmask]