A Few Friday Thoughts

We'll start with the above photo. Honestly, I have battled cold sores (I hate that term, but there's no better option) for years. I got one at the beginning of last week and made sure to not shave. Tonight, I got rid of the facial hair.

I'm sure there are some who say, "keep it." Only my mom says to get rid of it.

My son used to take one look at me after a day or two without shaving and say, "Um, Daddy. That's got to go." He doesn't care anymore.

I've never been a big facial hair guy. In fact, I used to be a rigid shave everyday guy. I don't do that anymore.

Anyway. Nothing major. Just mentioning it.

*****

WPLJ radio said goodbye this evening.

Starting life as WABC-FM, the station changed its call letters to WPLJ (standing for White Port & Lemon Juice) in 1971. At the time it was a great rock and roll station with legendary DJ's such as my Facebook friend Jimmy Fink. Jim Kerr, Carol Miller, and so many others.

By 1983, the station had changed to a CHR format (also known as Top 40). For a little over a year, the call letters (foolishly) changed to WWPR because their slogan was "Power 95."

In 1991, the station brought in Scott Shannon, who had revolutionized Top 40 radio in New York with the Z Morning Zoo on Z100. I had actually heard Shannon on Q105 in Tampa around that time.

With Todd Pettengill, Shannon put a formidable radio show together.

However, the station shifted to a Hot AC format for most of the rest of its time. While that held to a certain extent for some time, it eventually began to feel like "soccer mom" radio, as had often been said.

I'm not sure when it happened but by the 2000s, I took PLJ off my trusty car radio presets. The music had become mostly stale and repetitive.

Shannon left in 2014, reappearing on WCBS-FM while Pettengill carried on until this morning.

Educational Media Foundation now owns the station and brought their K-Love religious programming to 95.5 FM around 7:02 tonight.

Just awful (my opinion, of course).

I'd been following this topic for several weeks, and honestly hadn't been emotionally involved. But listening to the final hour struck me hard, as another part of New York radio history went away. Of course, I realize some of it is of their own doing, but that didn't make tonight any easier as I listened.

Race Taylor was the final lead host (DJ), and he ended with a toast to the power of terrestrial radio.

That destroyed me.

I even allowed myself to tweet about it, and while it's received numerous likes, noted former radio host Tom Leykis decided to weigh in.

Thanks for your thoughts, Tom. Best of luck with your podcast or whatever you're doing. I refused to dignify it, but I'll say this: radio isn't dead.

Radio has a new life in a variety of audio formats of streaming, podcasts and, yes, terrestrial radio.

It's still needed but it's also evolving.

Tom Leykis isn't worth my time trying to debate on this topic, so I won't be traveling down to his level.

Incidentally, WPLJ's social media footprint was gone within minutes of their sign-off.

While I've seen this happen in recent times, it's a decision I see as foolish. Only the public gets hurt by not having that archive. I'm sure there's some business mumbo jumbo that brings this on, but it seems unnecessary to me.