Gainesville Radio Declines

From time to time over the course of this blog, I've extolled different radio programs that some of my local Gainesville, Florida radio stations were broadcasting. 100.5-WHHZ "The Buzz" played independent/alternative music that I couldn't hear anywhere else. 99.5-WBXY, a talk radio station, had the Gregg Knapp Show. Knapp, at one time a local Gainesville morning talk show host, has built up a nationally syndicated show played on several stations. He is a conservative who employs reason, humor, and respect for dissenting callers to get his points across. 850-WRUF has, on weekday afternoons, the Sporting News Radio network. It replayed the morning broadcast of the Dave Smith Show. And Dave Smith has to be the funniest and most interesting sports talk personality around. On 97.3, WSKY "The Sky" would, starting at midnight, replay an hour from the previous night's Coast-to-Coast AM broadcast. This was fun to listen to as I drove home from work at that time.

I have mentioned each of the previous examples on my blog, praising this programming. So what happened?

WSKY decided to rid itself of the Coast-to-Coast AM replay, opting instead to play another hour of the Jerry Doyle Show. Doyle is just another of those right-wing conservatives who dishonestly portrays himself as being equally disaffected with both the Republicans and Democrats (as do folks like Michael Savage, Neil Boortz, and Bill O'Reilly). So instead, I now have to tune in to 1100-WTAM-Cleveland or 1200-WOAI-San Antonio to hear my Coast-to-Coast AM replay. Sometimes I can pick them up, sometimes I can't.

Immediately after I published my blog article praising Dave Smith to high heaven, 850-WRUF changed to broadcasting the afternoon Sporting News Radio program, with a different host. Competent, but not Dave Smith!

I tuned in to WBXY one early evening to find someone named Mark Levin in Gregg Knapp's time slot. At first, I thought the dude was just filling in for Knapp, but to my horror, I discovered that Levin's show replaced Knapp's. Mark Levin's views mirror Gregg Knapp's, but his style and demeanor are exactly the opposite: he's mean, arrogant, disrespectful of dissenting calls, shrill, and angry. Just the sort of person the right-wing conservative talk show listeners apparently want, I suppose (Levin's show is growing nationwide by leaps and bounds). Well, WBXY, you lost me on that one!

And finally, perhaps the biggest offense to me on my local radio scene is WHHZ's decision to alter their musical format (without telling anybody). Now they are playing the same stuff that they used to deride their rival 103.7-WRUF "Rock 104" for playing: Alice in Chains, Metallica, Papa Roach, Linkin Park, and so on. Not that I don't like some of what these artists have produced, but I can already get that stuff elsewhere! WHHZ will still throw in songs that were on their old playlist, but they seem to have largely shut out the new independent/alternative songs from airplay. WHHZ, if I want to hear "Rock 104" music, I'll tune in to "Rock 104", whose signal is much stronger and easier to pick up than yours! Fortunately, I have discovered that the exact same music that "The Buzz" abandoned is now being placed on Cox Digital Cable's Channel 915. And without commercials!