Gainesville Radio: 100.5 "The Buzz" Switches Back to Indie/Alternative Rock Format

My radio listening time of late has been pretty much confined to when I'm driving.  Due to the lack of interesting musical programming, I have been generally listening to sports talk shows, on the AM band: Gainesville's 850/WRUF and 1230/WGGG.  The political talk shows on the other stations usually leave me cold, be they on the left or right side of the viewpoint spectrum, since they typically feature commentators determined to spin the news and manipulate opinions primarily for the advantage of one political party over the other.  And the music stations...what a disaster.  Rock 104 (WRUF-FM) switched over to a country and western format a few years ago and now the light jazz station is simultaneously playing the exact same electronic dance music as another (100.9 and 99.5).  I don't understand how the owners of these stations see any profit in that, but this broadcast radio industry IS peculiar.  And the local Public Radio station, also a few years ago, decided to dump its great classical music format in favor of excruciatingly boring news/talk.  But the biggest disappointment I experienced was when 100.5/WHHZ "The Buzz" abandoned its fantastic indie/alternative rock format in 2008 to be a (then) Rock 104 clone.  Ugh.  Still, after the latter switched to country, I occasionally surfed it on the radio to see if any good songs were on.  But gone were acts I enjoyed like Arcade Fire, Spoon, Gorillaz, Franz Ferdinand, The Vines, Metric, The Hives, Death Cub for Cutie, MGMT, Muse, and Kasabian.  It was this abandonment by them of my favorite music that led me to abandon broadcast radio and embrace the Internet for my musical interests.  By surfing around musical sites there, I discovered talents like Sufjan Stevens, Regina Spektor, and Andrew Bird.  So in a roundabout way The Buzz did me a favor when they switched their programming.  Still, I wished I had at least one local station that played my kind of music...

A few months ago I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the Jacksonville station on 102.9 had switched to a format that included alternative rock.  But that was nothing like a few days ago when, driving in my car, I tuned in to The Buzz on 100.5 and heard them playing the indie/alternative act MGMT doing their old 2008 hit Kids.  Immediately, I knew that they had switched back to their old, sweet format of independent/alternative rock.  And I was confirmed in this by subsequent songs.

So now, when I start fiddling around with my radio dial, the first place I go is 100.5 to see what they are playing...and only after that do I check out the sports stuff on AM.  Whoopee, happy days are here again on the radio!  Now if the good folks who own 99.5 and 100.9 would please just switch one of those stations to a hard rock format to serve the many local fans of THAT genre...