Wednesday, 8/14

I can't believe Audacy has the audacity to do this.

If you're not a radio nerd, feel free to tune this one out. I'm going to rant about something that I'm sure no one cares about, except for one or two other radio nerds across the country. You're more than welcome to spend your time today in any one of a zillion better ways, including grabbing a cup of your favorite beverage and taking a walk in the sun we're supposed to get.

In fact, I recommend doing that instead of reading this rant. Really, I do.

But if you're still here, let me commence. Audacy is one of the two or three companies that has gobbled up most of the radio stations in this country. They own many of the biggest and most influential stations, and they're doing something with one of them that I would never in a million years even think of doing.

They're getting rid of the call letters WCBS.

When the Columbia Broadcasting System began in 1928 WCBS was their flagship station, and over the years was the originating point for many of old time radio's classic programs. Since the early 1960s it's been an all news station, and Audacity, already owning an all-news station in New York City, decided to swift the format to ESPN. And that's okay; we had ESPN on our AM station for many years, and it served a great nice in the market.

However, with the format change, they're also changing the station's call letters to something like WHSQ (which don't seem to stand for anything, although I could be wrong). The station's current, iconic call letters have been around for almost a century. They have been part of the radio world from Edgar Bergen to 9/11 and beyond. Why change them to something that's, in all honesty, kind of generic? You have a piece of radio history in your hands. Why not use those call letters, leverage them, to promote your new format joining a piece of American broadcasting history?

But nope.

Like I said, I realize that no one outside of a group of old time radio nerds (maybe, what, five of us nationwide?) cares about this. I'm also sure that, because it's an AM station, half of New York doesn't even know that WCBS is still around. But it's a part of (literal) American history. To see the call letters just shoved away like that is like losing a piece of a long-ago broadcasting legacy. It's Audacy's right to do it.

I just wish they didn't have the audacity to actually go through with it.

(jim@wmqt.ocm), hopeless radio (and history) nerd.