Another Stealth Radio-Format Change

Los Angeles country fans—I don’t share your music preferences, but I do feel your pain.
The Associated Press reported today that Los Angeles’ only country music station, KZLA-FM, owned by Emmis Communications, abruptly changed its format to pop on Thursday. Not even the DJs were given an advance heads-up, let alone the bereft listeners.
As my fellow-sufferers who mourned the sudden demise last year of WCBS (New York City’s only FM oldies station) know from bitter experience, the broadcasting bozos use these stealth tactics so as not to give loyal listeners a chance to interfere with the national conspiracy to make every radio station sound the same.
The worst radio format change I’ve endured was the insulting choice of “Roll Over Beethoven” to “celebrate” the 1974 demise of New York City’s greatest classical music station, WNCN. (Irate classical music lovers engineered a temporary return to the former format, but the station ultimately succumbed.)
David Dubal‘s bracingly idiosyncratic “Reflections from the Keyboard,” Wednesday nights at 10 p.m. on WQXR, is our last link to those glory days of New York classical radio.