A POX on PYX

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Fri, 31 Jan 2003 08:26:42 GMT
by Bill St. Clair

[I was just told by one of my office mates that this was an April Fools Day joke. Got me]

PYX 106 (pronounced "pix one-oh-six") is one of the local classic rock stations, broadcasting out of Albany, New York. I drive 40 miles to work every morning, which takes about an hour. I usually spend about half my trip listening to Wakin' up with the Wolf, a morning drive talk show featuring Bob "The Wolf" Wohlfeld (host), John Mulrooney (comic), and Ellen "Z" (news and sexy voice). Yesterday, Wolf told us that they had all been notified to report to the manager's office, individually. He thought that this might mean the end of their show. He was right. This morning there was a Spanish language show in their place.

PYX was recently bought by Clear Channel Communications. When the purchase happenned, Wolf thought they might be out, since the new management never asked to talk with them. Well, it took about a month, but now they're gone. I can't fault the management for noticing that there is a need for a Spanish language station in Albany and doing market research to discover that they can make more advertisement revenue from the new format (remember, in American media, the advertisers are the customer and the listeners/viewers are the product). What I do fault them for is being a typical slimy large coporation in the way they did it. The civilized way to shut down Wolf's show would have been to give them a month's notice, so they could find a new sponsor. The paranoid, despicable, large corporation way was to call each of them into the office, alone, and break the news right after their unbeknownst-to-them last broadcast. Clear Channel hasn't yet added PYX to the list of NY stations on their web site, but they also own WXCR, the other classic rock station in the Albany area; another reason for killing PYX.

Wolf, Mulrooney, Ellen, I wish you good luck in finding a new sponsor. And a Pox on the management of WPYX.

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