Sacramento will drop Howard Stern

Yesterday, October 25, Howard revealed on his show the plan that Infinity Broadcasting has for replacing Howard when he leaves terrestrial radio mid-December. There will be a regional split with David Lee Roth (yes, the former Van Halen frontman) handling most of Stern's east coast affiliates and Adam Corolla of Loveline and Man Show fame handling most of the west coast.

A couple of related links: Businessweek; NYTimes

Unfortunately for many of the music DJs on Stern's WXRK home in New York, Infinity will also be making a format change to primarily talk. To add insult to injury, those DJs only found out about this change by listening to Stern's show yesterday. Here in Sacramento the Stern affiliate 93.7 KHWD began running radio ads yesterday announcing it will be changing to the "Jack" format, which is an automated DJ-free system that apparently plays 80's and 90's music. The switch will occur after December 16, Stern's last live broadcast day. They appear to have already begun with the music because the things they've been playing are not typical of the station which is primarily alternative and rock. The Sacramento station's web site is pretty pathetic about the change: one line of text in the left margin that says "Welcome to Jack FM." I'm not sure how the change will affect our local Sacramento DJs, but it can't be good.

I'll be making the switch to Sirius satellite radio by the end of the year. Primarily it's for Stern, but also it's for the creativity, music, news and other services satellite radio provides and makes available without the limitations of the reception of local airwaves. The state of terrestrial radio and the FCC are the topic of another post, so for now, I will rest.

UPDATE, 11/6: the Sacramento station's web site, link above, has been updated but is just a splash page with an "under construction" message and suitably corporate logo. I've been trying to find an archived copy of the old pathetic Jack FM announcement on that site, but so far no luck.