No More Lazer 103 ???

[Matt Heebner]

I just talked to a guy here at work and he said that Lazer is playing old country tunes right now. I went to the website and it is not there. You get redirected to a page that says something about "the hog is coming" and a count down timer with about 22 hours left on it .
Anyone know what is going on   I know some of you former radio guys can probably  get some inside information on what is going on.
Gregg....Tom .....any  insider information on this ?


Matt

[oz]

I was at the State Fair yesterday and got a "The Hog is Coming" sticker on my car with a rubber pig nose.

I did hear Bob and Brian this morning though...

[oz]

I'll have as many details as are available on Lazer's format change later today on //www.jsonline.com and in Tuesday's Journal Sentinel.

 --Tim Cuprisin

 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sent: Monday, August 15, 2005 11:40 AM
To: Timothy Cuprisin
Subject: Lazer 103

Tim,

What's up with Lazer 103?  They are playing country music and their website is gone.  I'm surprised because I thought they were very successful with their current format. I did hear Bob and Brian this morning.

[oz]

From the OnMilwaukee.com forums:


They're doing an exaggerated version of Jack today for a stunt. No way will there be polkas in regular rotation...But it looks like they've switched to the Jack format.


You Don't Know Jack

But you will. It's the automated format that loves the '80s and loses the DJ. And it's taking over radio

By JOEL STEIN

A promo that ran last week on Los Angeles' 93.1 Jack FM consisted of a real caller yelling into the station's voice mail that he hated the station so much, it made him want to stick a hot poker in his ears. A few weeks earlier, in New York City, an angry Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a very bad word because 101.1 Jack FM replaced his beloved oldies station. (You'd think the guy could afford a satellite radio.) Steven Van Zandt of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band said it was like replacing the Statue of Liberty with a blow-up doll, which he meant as a negative.

All that passion is being aroused, oddly, by possibly the catchiest, most democratic radio format yet invented. Jack mixes up a lot of '80s music--some classic rock, a slew of one-hit wonders, a few oldies, a touch of Top 40 and a tiny bit of rap. It has surgically removed everything that is annoying about radio. In most markets, Jack is just music--no weather, no traffic, no song IDs--and is completely automated, so there aren't even any wrongheaded DJs to endure. At 1,200 songs, the playlists are three times bigger than average, so it doesn't grate with repetitiveness, and the commercial breaks are noticeably shorter. If families still sat around the radio in happy little nuclear units, they would spend the night rocking out to Jack. In the year since it was introduced in the U.S., Jack radio has spread to 17 stations and spawned such copycats as Bob FM and Dave FM and has invented a format so widespread, it already has a name: variety hits. No concept has overtaken the nation's dials so successfully since the morning zoo hit in the early '80s.

So why does Jack inspire all the bile? It's not as if it were one of those seemingly hipster products that was actually created after much consumer testing by a conglomerate. Jack has a lovable indie backstory, starting out as one guy's website. In 2000, Bob Perry, a former DJ and station manager who had moved to Connecticut to be near his wife's aging parents, started fooling around with Internet radio. He got some cheap software that allowed him to randomize song order, causing "train wrecks"--ballads followed by headbangers. He put it up as jack.fm and slid in some promos revolving around a fictitious cowboy named Jack who made fun of the DJ clichés he had heard his whole life. "I started ripping in music and said, This is cool, and this is different," says Perry, 45. "We said we could probably sell this to some little AM station somewhere."

Instead in 2002 he sold it to an FM station in Vancouver, where it got so huge, it quickly was bought by five other Canadian stations; in April of last year, a station in Denver bought in, and Jack metastasized. Former Vancouver DJ Howie (the Hitman) Cogan, who voices most of Jack's taped promos, is now repped by William Morris, while Perry has become a sought-after station consultant. "My involvement with Jack now is, 'Oh, look, the check just came in,'" he says.

Some of the reasons for Jack's surge are self-evident. Listeners like shorter commercial breaks and more songs. And Jack is centered on the '80s, which is still fascinating kids in high school and college. But the programming is shrewd in the way it affirms the identity of its listeners. At its heart, Jack is a nostalgia station for Generation X, but it disguises that fact with carefully selected obscure tunes (Walking Away by Information Society, Pop Goes the Weasel by 3rd Bass) that make listeners feel erudite and hip. Then there are the laconic, faux-rebellious promos. On Los Angeles' 93.1 Cogan recently announced, "If you're easily offended, maybe we're not for you." Immediately after which, the robot DJ segued into In a Big Country, a song so inoffensive, it is enjoyed even in small countries.

Perry brags that unlike previous '80s-based stations that only played rock, Jack mixes the broad array of metal, R&B and synth that truly represented the era. In high school cafeterias, the differences between those genres once defined which lunch table you sat at, but now any song from the era brings back muted, whitewashed memories of youth.

Perhaps therein also lies the answer to why Jack's ratings in many cities dip after its first two months. It soon dawns on the Gen Xers that their cool, eclectic music collection is actually the new American songbook, just as their snarky cynicism is the generic spawn of David Letterman. Worse yet, the big news being hidden behind Jack's robotic wall of attitude is this: Jack is the new oldies. Therefore, we all must be getting old.

[sp44again]

Jack Radio

Link

[Neilium]

http://brewcityradio.com/wwwboard/wwwboard.html

More info there for you guys to check out.

http://www.1029thehog.com ??

http://lazer1069.com ??

We will have to see what happens at 10am tomorrow. At least Bob and Brian are still around.

*oink, oink*

-Neilium

[Tom Snyder]

From today's Business Journal:

Milwaukee rock radio station WLZR-FM (102.9) -- better known as "Lazer 103" -- will change its music programming at 10 a.m. Tuesday to a variation on the rock theme that eliminates current music in favor of more rock favorites of the past, Milwaukee radio executives said.

WLZR is taking aim at WQBW-FM (97.3), better known as "the Brew," which debuted in September 2004 with a 1980s-based rock and pop music format. "The Brew" has topped the Arbitron survey among listeners ages 25 to 54 for three straight ratings periods. Meanwhile, WLZR's ratings have slipped by 37 percent and its rank declined from second to seventh.

WLZR is running on-air announcements promising that starting Tuesday morning at 10 o'clock, "rock radio in Milwaukee won't be the same." The station's call letters will change to WHQG-FM, and it will be called "The Hog."

The station has used the "Lazer" nickname for more than 18 years and it's become "antiquated," said Tom Joerres, president and general manager of WLZR and four other Milwaukee radio stations owned by Saga Communications Inc., Grosse Pointe Farms, Mich.

Joerres declined to reveal specifics of his station's new sound before its Tuesday launch.

Clues to WLZR's format tweak are found on its Web site, //www.lazer103.com, which instantly flips to //www.thehogiscoming.com. "The Hog" Web site is running a series of one-liners that take shots at 1980s pop stars including Phil Collins, Rick Springfield, John Waite and Quarterflash. Those type of acts are played on "The Brew," which also carries rock music from the 1970s and 1980s. WQBW is owned by Clear Channel Communications Inc., San Antonio.

Milwaukee radio executives speculate that WLZR will stop playing current rock music and focus entirely on older rock, with a heavy dose of 1980s rock. The station's "Bob and Brian" morning show remains one of the top shows in Milwaukee during morning drive time but the rest of the week, "Lazer's" ratings are significantly lower.

Bob and Brian will continue on the station as will the morning show sidekick Carrie Wendt, Joerres said. The station will continue targeting adult men ages 25 to 54, an audience where Bob and Brian rank no. 1.

"We have this great morning show and the rest of the day we are lagging considerably and we're lagging more with 'the Brew,'" Joerres said.

Not surviving the format adjustment are longtime midday host Marylin Mee and afternoon drive time disc jockey Sean "Fish" Fisher. Mee will continue working for Saga in Milwaukee in another capacity that Joerres said he couldn't disclose. Fisher will be transferred to another Saga station in another market that Joerres said he also could not yet disclose.

Assuming WLZR drops the new music, it will leave WLUM-FM (102.1) as the only Milwaukee station playing rock by current artists. WLUM is part of the Milwaukee Radio Alliance. Bill Hurwitz, who runs the three-station group, called the format shift at longtime competitor WLZR "a birthday gift" for WLUM.

"It's a big day for us," Hurwitz said. "There are a lot of smiles going on here."

[Tom Snyder]

This just seems wierd...

Saga owns KLH, which is classic rock, so it doens't make sense for them to skew both stations to a similar older demo.

Saga is also extremely creative... for them to do an obvious rip off of a station that just kicked their butt... classic rock with a legendary Milwaukee product (Brew=Beer, Hog=Harley)...is just uncharacteristic of them. Unless they're just soooo full of themselves that they think that they can do it so much better than Clear Channel that people will leave the Brew for them. I don't see that happening.

With a format change, typically all the rumors turn out to be wrong, so I still wouldn't be surprised if this was a smoke screen.

We'll see....

[Matt Heebner]

This is quite interesting to say the least. Although I have almost completely abandoned FM for 24 hours AM sports ala WSSP 1250, it still is interesting to see a station  re-introduce itself after basically being the leader in the market.

I guess we will see what happens at 10 am !!

Matt

[StarvingForHDTV]

I hope they end up like Charlie in Madison.  I like that station.

[StarvingForHDTV]

LOL, it sounded like a marketing ploy to me.  Basically a name change with same old rock station.  So all the big fuss for nothing.

Or did I misunderstand what they said/did?

[oz]

It sounds very similar to the old music line up. I'm disappointed.

[murdoc]

I feel sorry for the DJ's that were fired.  Marilyn Mee who has been there for 18+ years as well as everyones favorite wacky DJ Fish were fired.  This information comes from my boss, who's wife is good friends with Marilyn.  Marilyn hopes to find a job with 102.1, and should be able to do so quite easily.  You can either thank or curse Marilyn for finding an unsigned band by the name of Creed, and being the first radio station in the US to air their music.  "The HOG" will be without any on-air DJ's for a few days as a new group of DJ's are brought in.  

After hearing "The HOGS" debut, I was unenthused, as it seems the music is coming directly from "The BREW".  There were a few newer artists thrown in (Alice in Chains, Red Hot Chili Peppers), but so far, it seems like Milwaukee has yet another 2 FM radio stations playing the exact same playlists.  Now if only "ROCK 102.1" would add the Godsmack, Shinedown, and Creed that "The Lazer" has left behind.  I do find the commecials on ROCK 102.1 funny in that, they come right out and say that 94.5, 96.5, 97.3, 99.1 and 102.9 all play the same music.  It looks as though I may have to reactivate my XM Radio subscription, just to hear some new music in this dang city.  That or I guess I could move to Madison where 94.1 WJJO rules all!

[oz]

In today's paper is says Mee is going to work at WKLH in the same time spot she was in at WLZR.

[sp44again]

Who cares? She wasn't good.