It has been too long since I put thoughts into words, and I need to rectify that in the waning months of a Minnesota winter. So I'll start with a short and sweet submission.
The mighty Pohlad family has done it again. They own a radio station in the Twin Cities, 96.3 FM, and they use it to broadcast Minnesota Twins games, a team the family happens to own. The Pohlad geniuses have tried a few different formats while owning the frequency, and each time they change the format, they do worse. It doesn't help that they interrupt the music 160+ times per season for nine innings of baseball play-by-play, as well as pre- and post-game commentary.
In typical Pohlad fashion they botched the "flip" of their station to the new format at the beginning of the year. For about five days they broadcast an automated feed counting down the time until the station debuts. The automated feed also quoted memorable lines from movies, songs and commercials. There were other assorted comments in the mix as well.
I read that at one point the automated program started playing tunes late one evening. I can't vouch for that, but 24 hours before the promised debut of the new station the automated voice went into a prolonged loop of "welcome to the new format." Can the Pohlads do anything right?
The new station is called Go 96.3, or something like that. It's where modern music is going, allegedly. You can verify it for yourself on their slick website.
Radio is a fraudulent industry, that's not a secret. And 96.3 is proof of it, in case you doubt it.
The station was playing a lot of classic rock in 2014. They'd mix a few different decades of music together, but mostly it sounded like a classic rock station. It was dull and unimaginative.
Now this station, with many of the same clowns in place, is really really really excited about modern music, local music and where music is going. Weeks ago they didn't give a minute to such music, now they can't get enough of it.
It's not a crime to like more than one genre of music, and most of us do. Programmers and jocks need paychecks, so they'll play and promote whatever they're told, and they might not be fraudulent in doing so. But it rarely plays well when a station changes formats and the people in charge of the music are suddenly as excited about modern music as they were about classic rock. That's why you see air staffs dismissed when the format shifts dramatically.
This wasn't a dramatic enough shift at 96.3, evidently. Sure, they casually disassembled portions of their old staff prior to and after the flip to modern music, and they have brought in some new blood. They were fortunate enough to pick up a castoff from 89.3 The Current, the nauseating public radio station that 96.3 is now trying to emulate. But they kept key pieces of the on-air staff in place for whatever reason, which serves as a reminder that the new 96.3 isn't about where music is going, it's about chasing after the precious few dollars that are out there in commercial broadcasting.
Five years ago the Minnesota Twins moved into Target Field with a solid franchise that succeeded in spite of its pitiful stadium. They got their new ballpark, funded in large part by the taxpayers, and have quickly watched the wheels come off the franchise wagon. That boosted payroll the new stadium would permit the team to spend on players each season? Thanks for the laugh. The Twins are back to doing things on the cheap and finding out that there is a limit to how cheap you can be. Hard to catch a decade worth of lightning in a bottle twice in a row.
I have no idea if the Pohlads are as cheap when it comes to running a radio station. But they've proven one thing, they're equally inept.
When old man Pohlad died several years ago I joked that we'd finally learn whether or not you can take it with you. (Carl was notoriously cheap as the owner of an MLB franchise.) I think we learned that he couldn't take it with him, but apparently his sons have yet to figure that out. The irony is that they keep dumping good money after bad in an effort to become radio kingpins in this market.
