As a life long fan of radio, I know how attached you get to your favourite stations. You get familiar with the personalities, the schedule and the genre of music. When your favourite radio station flips formats, it can be jarring to fans.
Last Friday, Country 93.5 out of Hamilton stopped playing country music and started playing oldies. I wrote about the switch, and thousands of Country 93.5 fans found the entry. As of this writing, 258 comments have been left, almost unanimously calling out Corus and General Manager Suzanne Carpenter. Country music fans in the GTA are pissed.
I chuckle to myself when I think that I'm now the go-to place for country music fans to voice their displeasure at the format change, because new country is probably my personal least favourite genre of music. I can't stomach the crap.
The Hamilton Spectator even covered the format flip today and included quotes from this blog.
As soon as the last country song died on the station, listeners crowded onto online discussion boards to voice their disapproval. At torontomike.com, a fan with the screen name Sheila moaned, "The last thing this area needed was another Rock station ... Talk about bad judgment."
Jared T declared, "Country 95.3 was a fantastic radio station and a great refuge from the kind of radio 95.3 has now become."
If the lack of country music in the GTA has you down, join the support group at http://www.torontomike.com/2009/11/country_953_quits_country.html.
Yee haw!
