Network Decay/Influences On Other Media: Difference between revisions

 

== Websites ==

* [[Gaia Online]] may qualify. Originally an anime-centric roleplay site, its focus has shifted towards general entertainment and pop culture, much of the quality of the site's features has dropped considerably, and a great deal of new items and features require the purchase of Gaia Cash, a virtual currency bought with real money, which is a sharp turn to a site that was for the most part free and losing much of their fanbase in the process.

 

* [[Myspace]] resorted to a [[Retool]] in Fall 2010 due to fewer and fewer people using the site, having lost most of them to [[Facebook]]. The new CEO proclaimed that [[Myspace]] is no longer a social network, but "Social Entertainment", revamping itself into an entertainment site and alienating the few people who still used the site. This included a new logo, new homepage and a new profile layout. They were about to force everyone to upgrade their profiles to the new layout (considering how many [[Myspace]] sites are [[Mirror-Cracking Ugly]], this was considered an improvement) when the uproars of [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks]] caused them to back down and allow users to change their profiles back to how they originally looked, glitter GIFs and all. This still hasn't stopped people from abandoning the site, unfortunately, and it was sold for a pittance to a group which includes an ad agency and [[Justin Timberlake]].

** Adding new ''indie'' titles were somewhat justified, what with the titles carried being mostly retro throwbacks. Upping the maximum to $19.99 (except for The Witcher 2) is also somewhat defensible, as only a few titles<ref>Five, as of April 2012</ref> are above $9.99, and most of them can be covered under 'indie game or recent bundle of newish sequel to older game'. Adding [[Assassin's Creed (video game)|Assassin's Creed I]], on the other hand...

* [[Image Boards|4chan]] was intended to be a place to discuss Japanese comics and anime, an American counterpart to the popular Japanese Futaba Channel ("2chan") imageboard. However, these days many consider it to be more of a [[Memetic Mutation|meme]] and [[Troll|trolling]] site due in thanks to the infamous /b/ board. It is not uncommon for a fan of anime and other Japanese media to say they wouldn’t touch the site with a 10 foot pole, and with the stuff that goes on there, who would blame them? They still have plenty of discussions about Anime and Manga, and an untold amount of Anime memes have originated from here but a good amount of people that came just for the memes are unfortunately advocates of the [[Animation Age Ghetto]], and as a result, there are a pretty strong hostility towards anime and Japanese around 4chan these days.

 

* [[TV Tropes]]. This paragraph comes from that wiki and is kept for historical interest. (Of course, All The Tropes was forked from TV Tropes long after TV Tropes was no longer devoted solely to television.)

** Despite the name, this site no longer focuses on television. Over the past couple of years, it has added movies, books, board games and video games to its lineup. Lately, it's even been moving away from ''tropes'', adding [[Useful Notes]], [[Audience Reactions]], [[Trivia Trope|Trivial Facts]], [[So You Want To/See the Index|writer's tools]], [[Just for Fun|humor pages]], and [[No Real Life Examples, Please|with a few exceptions]], [[Real Life]] examples and material. [[Tropes Are Not Bad|Of course, this wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing]]. What's happened here is more expansion than decay; since we're not dealing with a finite number of time slots, we didn't have to remove any of the original material to make room for the new stuff. Given that most TV tropes originated in literature, mythology, and theater, such expansion makes sense. It gives perspective on the tropes.

* The [http://www.imfdb.org/wiki/Main_Page Internet Movie Firearms Database] is a lot like TV Tropes in this regard, except more wiki-like, [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin|it started with films instead of TV, and the focus is weapons instead of tropes.]]

* [[YouTube]] was originally meant to be a medium for people to broadcast self-made videos (hence the motto, "Broadcast Yourself"). Then people started uploading copyrighted material so that others could watch their favorite shows and movies anywhere without the hassle of commercials or having to buy the DVD. Today, it seems most people go to [[YouTube]] for mostly clips or episodes of mainstream commercial shows, while the site deals with lawsuits from companies like Viacom, with [[YouTube]] accused of letting copyrighted material be posted to increase the site's exposure. This led to the creation of Vevo, which is backed by the industry and specifically caters to music.

** Ironically for this topic, many of those clips are of programs and promos of other networks taped off air pre-decay, such as [[Game Show]] Network, Nick and TV Land (Where else can the youngsters of today learn about Twip?)

* [http://www.dvdizzy.com/index.html Ultimate Disney] originally consisted of simple lists detailing which [[Walt Disney]] movies became available on DVD, and in what collections. Later, the website also contained reviews of some of the DVDs. It also gained a forum for discussing Disney titles of the past, present, and future, as well as some miscellaneous topics. However, when Disney started releasing fewer of their titles on DVD, Ultimate Disney registered an alternate domain, "DVDizzy", for hosting reviews of other studios' movies and shows. All of Ultimate Disney's content absorbed into DVDizzy after a few years. Fortunately, not only do the authors continue to promote and review Disney-owned movies and shows on DVD (and Blu-Ray), but ultimatedisney.com still redirects to dvdizzy.com, and the Disney-themed part of the forum still has a spot on the top of its index page.

 

* [http://www.youtube.com/user/illumistream Illumistream] used to be a general health channel on [[YouTube]], and they still do ''some'' general health advice videos. Then they started introducing a sex health segment. Fair enough. Then they started focusing more and more on sex health, to the point where it seemingly became their main focus. Hey, it's still health related, so it's still fair. Then they started doing more and more videos on steamy sex confessions with little visible or tangential connection to actually health advice or even sex health advice, almost as if their whole intention now is to turn into a softer-than-softcore version of Penthouse or something. Oh-kay... But wait! They have appeared to have learned the error of their ways and in the past several months returned to being a sex health/general health channel, with about an equal emphasis on the two!

 

* How about [[Google|Google Street View]]? It started as a service to allow Internet dwellers to explore the roads of their own home, and of other cities and countries, including far-off nations such as South Africa, Romania or Brazil. Then in 2009, they started introducing landmarks, including parks, stadiums (the [[World Cup]] being the whole reason for South African updates) and other points of interests. After 2009 and 2010, which had spread to nearly 30 countries, Street View began catering more to landmarks, taking an apparent focus to museums (the Internet equivalent of [[Adored by the Network]]), and not even updating roads, except for a brief unadvertised update to France and Brazil, until they introduced a Channel Island and Monaco, which were the only two new places to be introduced in nearly a ''year''. This might be the side-effect of the [[Unwitting Instigator of Doom|Wi-Fi Capturing Case]] though, as not only are road updates relatively neglected, but their last two updates was the official introduction of Google Places (indoor business photos) and a whole bunch of parks already collected. Note that Google Street View stays out of Total Abandonment and Slipped due to the fact they still offer roadside views, and the occasional, but rare, actual road update, and that park updates usually include in-park roads.

 

 

== Radio ==

* The death of [[Radio Drama]] due to the rise of television in the 1950s can be seen as an example of this.

** Many modern rock stations have begun to play indie rock to attract back listeners, and it's worked pretty well. (It also brings things full circle, inasmuch as "modern rock" is basically a more commercialized version of what was once known as "alternative rock" or "college rock", i.e. the original indie rock.) Others have switched to "active rock" stations (which play harder rock in addition to classic rock), which have also worked pretty well, too.

* The AM band used to be the only way to listen to radio, which meant that there used to be far more AM music stations. However, in [[The Seventies]] and [[The Eighties]], most music stations switched to FM, which has a much higher audio quality, and those that didn't found themselves hemorrhaging listeners and shutting down. As a result, countless AM radio stations decayed out of necessity, switching to the news, talk, and sports that now dominate commercial AM radio... and many of ''those'' are themselves moving to FM because many people, especially young people, often have receivers that only get FM without any AM at all.

** Radio [[Disney]] uses the AM band almost exclusively for their radio stations. [[Fridge Brilliance|It's a brilliant marketing tactic]] — the lower audio quality (and their demands for record companies to give them ultra-clean versions of songs) means that listeners will have to actually buy the music in order to hear it as it was meant to be played. It does help, though, that Radio Disney is among the biggest pushers of HD Radio, which provides at least FM-quality sound on AM, and is found in the newer cars of parents which are right down their marketing wheelhouse.

*** Speaking of Radio Disney, they too suffered network decay. When launched in the late 90s, they catered to kids of all ages and the kid-at-heart, with a night slot that played lullabies, a late night slot that played oldies with a mix of kids music and lullabies right up to morning, and an afternoon preschool block. Those are long gone, they now only play music of interest to tweens and teens..

* FM stations simply do not have news departments anymore unless they're public radio or from a local broadcaster who actually gets what the word "broadcasting" means. So you either get no news at all or it told to you in a sarcastic style which hardly informs you.

* Don't get any Clear Channel listener started on having to sit such ridiculous branding such as the "[[Product Placement|Gordie Boucher Chevrolet of Waukesha Rides With You Every Mile Traffic Center]]".

* A temporary form of [[Network Decay]] is when certain radio stations switch to all or mostly [[Christmas Songs|Christmas music]] over the winter holidays. Not only are there people who don't want to hear so much Christmas music (or, in some cases, ''any'' Christmas music), but this also disadvantages people who happen to really like the radio station's usual format.

*** Kansas City inverts that line of thought then. There are at least '''two''' stations that go All Christmas every year and one of them is starting earlier each year to get a jump on the other one. Another station in Wichita actually sees its ratings '''increase''' when it plays All Christmas because its normal format isn't suitable for workplaces and offices.

*** [[Sirius XM]] used to throw out their disco channel from November through New Year's for Christmas music, but backlash from fans (yes, Virginia, disco fans still exist, and in surprising numbers) caused them to move it to the religious music section instead, where the disco fans said it had belonged all along.

** The demise of St. Louis's KFUO-FM follows a similar track. KFUO was started by the Lutheran Church - Missouri Synod as a [[Classical Music]] station in 1948, and [[Long Runners|remained that way]] until it was sold to Gateway Creative Broadcasting in spring of 2010. Gateway completely revamped the format, and the rebranded KJLY started broadcasting [[Christian Rock|Christian music]] that summer. [[Rule of Cautious Editing Judgment|Regardless of how one feels about the genre]], classical music fans were outraged at the loss of the only game in town. The local NPR station helped pick up the slack with an HD channel devoted to classical music and weekly broadcasts of the local symphony orchestra, but terrestrial listeners are still left high and dry most of the week.

 

 

** BBC Radio 2 and 3 often get accused of this: Radio 2 suffers the "oldies/classic rock" problem mentioned above, while Radio 3 (officially "classical, jazz, world music and arts") is [[From a Certain Point of View|frequently accused of "dumbing down"]] for classifying modern jazz, folk, or "experimental" music as part of their remit.

*** Radio 3 gets complaints when they play only one movement of a symphony, or just two acts of an opera, never mind playing a stand-alone aria.

** Radio 2 seems to be aiming for the "Too Broad To Decay" category, and is the last British national station trying to appeal to different demographics at different times of the day. You may get two hours of modern alternative music followed by a documentary about the history of barbershop quartets, then a biographical piece on some famous dead musician, or something else not quite niche enough to fit on Radio 3. Despite the predominance of classic rock and oldies during office hours, there's a surprising number of live sessions, and [[Terry Wogan]] is [[Dude, Where's My Reward?|widely credited]] with helping Katie Melua's career get off the ground.

* The network decay for commercial stations in Britain came when [[Global Radio]] (who bought out [[G Cap]], a [[Xtremely Cool Letters|hybrid of GWR & Capital Radio Group]] rebranded "heritage stations" into Heart (softer, more female music) or Capital (generic top 40, usually with [[Katy Perry]] in [[Stupid Statement Dance Mix]] format - note the station is named after 95.8 Capital FM). People were not amused. Personality-driven radio, which is common [[Eagleland Osmosis|in North America]], was common in Britain, until 2008, for [[G Cap]] until Global came in.

*** That said, people ''preferred'' the old [[G Cap]] style of presentation and it shows in the complaints leveraged against the stations on social networking.

** Localness, and, personality radio, was, and still ''is'' a very big part of British radio. Compare stations like 96.6 TFM, Metro-Radio, Hallam FM, The Pulse of West Yorkshire and GMG's Real Radio network, which are local for much of the day and only network at off-peak hours.

** [[The Breeze]] - owned by [[Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?|Celador]], is also criticised, for being bland and formulaic. To quote one radio forum: "Mark Walker - square peg, round hole. Should have been on 95.8 Capital FM breakfast instead of Johnny & Lisa." And that's saying something...

 

* Fresno station KFYE, which was a Christian radio station broadcasting Christian music, sermons, and stories from the Bible, suddenly turned into a "porn radio" station, which played songs overlaid with prerecorded moans and groans. After one year as KSXE, the station became a more generic Top-40 one, changing its callsign to KVPW. The station is now off the air after some disputes with another broadcaster.

* San Diego's XHMORE-FM More FM 98.9 zigzagged this trope. For those who don't live in either San Diego, CA, or Tijuana, Mexico, More FM was a station which was aimed to the northwest Baja California (in Mexico) and to the Spanish-speaking communities in San Diego, broadcasting pop music in Spanish like your average Top-40 station, called back then as "Radio Sensación". It gradually changed since its inception until 1994, when it became MORE FM, and it's considered [[Nostalgia Filter|its most memorable phase]], as it broadcasted Latin American Rock (and Oldies every Saturday Night), and it was a great way to know about independent Latin American rock bands which deserved more recognition than the same overexposed groups and musicians that swamped the remaining pop music stations in Tijuana (A good thing in Tijuana, since the stations there are either regional folk music or Top 40 clones) and San Diego. But in late 2003, due to the station [[Executive Meddling|being acquired by MEC Network,]] and the death of More FM's original owner, it changed now into a generic English-speaking Hip-Hop station, changing its name to Blazin' 98.9 without any warning, and alienating its former fanbase (which was a very bad decision, since as it was, it didn't have any direct competition and was one of the most listened stations in both cities, and as a hip-hop station it had to compete with two radio stations from San Diego which were already established for some time. The fact their presenters spoke in English, even when presenting in Tijuana drove the point further); And then again, it changed into an English-speaking branch of ESPN Radio somewhere in 2009, again, without any warning. Fortunately, Cadena Baja California (its owner before MEC bought it) transferred it back to its lineup, and brought back the usual Spanish-speaking rock in late September 2010, [[And the Fandom Rejoiced|announcing a string of concerts of Spanish and Latin American Rock Bands, more of the good ol' Rock en Español everyone loved and promotion for local rock bands, causing their former audience to shed tears of joy.]] Their only change from their 90's era was the fact that the oldies are now played all day during Saturday and Sunday, and these oldies are both in English and Spanish.

* Bakersfield's KKXX (FM 108), which from 1977 to 1988 was the market's #1 FM station, playing a broad variety of pop and rock music. That all changed when owner Buck Owens decided to drop the KKXX call letters and use the frequency for his country station, KUZZ. Not long after, another station at 105.3 FM dropped their call letters and adopted the KKXX call sign and format. This lasted only a few weeks before KKXX was completely re-tooled as "Power 105", and focused entirely on dance, R&B, and Latin freestyle, leaving Bakersfield without an actual Top-40 station for a number of years.

 

* A rare example of Network Decay coming full-circle. In the mid-to-late 1990s, three suburban radio frequencies were simulcasting from Arlington Heights (92.7 FM), De Kalb (92.5 FM), and Park Forest (99.9 FM) to achieve full-market range as a single station, albeit on three entirely separate frequencies. The station was broadcasting as "Energy", a format dedicated exclusively to dance/electronic/club music without urban/rap/R&B music. In the early 2000s, the station switched to Spanish-language format and the dance format went off the air. Cut to the mid 2000s, when the three frequencies changed format again from the Spanish format to "Nine FM", a wide-ranging format to compete with off-radio iPod playlists (billing themselves as "we play anything"). Later, Nine FM began broadcasting "Dance Factory", a late-night weekend format that rekindled the dance format from the late 1990s with many of the former DJs returning to spin. The broadcasting hours were expanded to 9pm to 5am nightly. Due to low ratings, 92.5/92.7/99.9 switched away from the "we play anything" format and became an FM mirror for WCPT, an AM progressive talk radio format. Despite the format switch, Dance Factory continues to broadcast nightly on these three frequencies every night as "paid programming" on the same three frequencies as precursor Energy did (helped by the death of [[Air America]] creating a dearth of progressive radio shows).

* Kevin "Pig Virus" Matheny, [[Howard Stern]]'s longtime antagonist in the 1980's ran full-service station WGN (under the nose of CEO Randy Michaels, who was well known for turning Clear Channel into the voicetracking machine it is today), long the home of [[Paul Harvey]], the ongoing soap opera of futility known as Chicago Cubs baseball (or more known as "The Pat and Ron Show" to listeners for announcers Pat Hughes and Cub legend Ron Santo), and the home of personalities that lasted '''decades''' on the station and never had a political agenda, from 2008-2010. During those two years since WGN owner Tribune went from a public company resistant to any change to the plaything of billionaire Sam Zell, listeners to "The Voice of Chicago" suffered.

*** As for the old Roy Leonard timeslot? It became the home of a pseudo-infomercial for Tribune's blog network where random bloggers blathered on and on about politics.

** The final straw was Matheny hiring convincted felon/former city worker Jim Laski as an evening show host, who had never had a minute on the radio beyond sound bites during his trial. He replaced David Kaplan and [[Long Runner]] ''Sports Central'', about the last place in Chicago where listeners could talk about any sports without being mocked or shouted down by the hosts. The worst thing was the pushing Milt Rosenberg and ''Extension 720'', the most intelligent and educational commercial radio show in any American market, to 10pm.

** Though it still leaves one question; [[Fridge Logic|Why is "The Lutheran Hour" only a half-hour long?]]

* Suddenly in June 2011 [[It Got Worse]]; Randy Michaels came back to town after his non-compete clause ended and decided to buy Q101 and The Loop after their company decided to flee Chicago; nobody else wanted those stations because Q101 pretty much died the moment management [[Self-Inflicted Hell|didn't renew Mancow Mueller]] and seems to be permanently stuck thinking it's 1996 playlist-wise, while The Loop now exists solely as a server on shuffle with a bunch of moldy 70's rock on it from St. Louis. Q101 is going all-news and has the most uphill battle in Chicago radio history (taking on #1 WBBM), while The Loop is pretty well doomed no matter what.

** The ironic thing? The ratings for 101.1 TANKED to 0.2..... a SHOCKING LEVEL for a major market commercial FM! Speculation is high on not if, but WHEN, the owners kill the news format! Adding salt into the wound is that a local AC station flipped to a simulcast of WBBM within days of the change.... and killed any potential that the news station has.

** Though fortunately, the old Q101 format returned on 87.7(WLFM-LP) in May 2012: http://chicagoradioandmedia.com/news/2476-alternative-music-on-877-fm-begins-monday

** This pushed the local talk focus to Live 105.3 with the likes of Pugs & Kelly, Russ Martin and "Big Dick" Hunter...until 2008, when parent company CBS Radio decided Dallas needed a third all-sports station and rebranded it as 105.3 The Fan, grabbing the Dallas Cowboys from rival 1310 and moving the Texas Rangers from sister station KRLD 1080, and canning all their current talent except morning host Jagger. The station has seen ratings go up recently, likely driven by the Rangers' 2010 World Series run and hiring popular host Gregg Williams after he was fired by the other two sports stations for drug use, but the price has been that localized talk radio is all but dead in Big D.

 

* In the late 1990s and early 2000s, 96.3 WDVD in the [[Motor City|Detroit]] area sold itself on having the audacity to ''not play rap''. It played a lot of Sheryl Crow, Nine Days, Three Doors Down, and their ilk. Now if you switch to it you're still unlikely to get actual rap, but good luck finding something that's not Nelly Furtado, [[Justin Timberlake]], or the latest Disney pop "artist".

* 105.1 WXDG was, one day, completely overhauled into Jazz and R&B after being exclusively Alternative/Indie for quite some time, presumably as a result of these bands beginning to self-promote heavily through the internet and their net-saavy fanbases before anyone else leapt on the boat.

*** And the chain reaction goes on: In 2010, WNIC switched to a "hot" AC format, edging in on WDVD's turf. Results have yet to be seen.

 

* [[wikipedia:WPBZ|WPBZ]] in the Palm Beach County market was an alternative rock station called "103.1 The Buzz" since it went on the air in 1995... until December 5, 2011, when it suddenly and without warning switched to a format of top 40 music, or as it calls it, "today's best hits without the rap". [[They Changed It, Now It Sucks|Alt-rock fans weren't too happy, to say the least.]] Compounding the anger is that the annual "Buzz Bake Sale" concert festival occurred only a month before the switch, ''and nobody was aware of the change that was coming.'' The original format lives on in the HD Radio feed, but the damage has been done, and Palm Beach County no longer has an alt-rock station to call its own- the only rock station left at all is [[wikipedia:WKGR|WKGR, "98.7 The Gator"]], which plays classic rock.

* WHDR 93.1 was originally a classical station, then it flipped to dance music and became the popular Party 93.1, "South Florida's Pure Dance Channel." Then it changed to Hispanic music and finally ROCK. Many techno/trance/house fans became devastated until 2008 when Party 93.1 relaunched...on HD Radio. Granted, this is better than nothing.

* [http://www.realradio.fm/ Orlando's REAL Radio 104.1]. Currently under call signal WTKS-FM, it has, and still does, serve mainly as a talk radio station, with notable shows such as Monsters in the Morning. they in the past were known to play indie, alternative, and modern rock on weekends. In more recent memories, the weekend lineup is more or less classic rock.

 

 

* TOS was a popular hard/progressive rock station in Maine that was mostly listened to for the variety of entertaining DJs and hosts. After changing hands a few times in the late '00s, in late 2008 it was finally bought by the newly formed Blueberry Broadcasting, which completely changed the format to Top 40 with some 80s and 90s thrown in (originally, the only older music TOS played was by hard rock icons like Black Sabbath and AC/DC). Even worse, they fired all of their radio personalities, retaining only Tom O. and Mr. Mike, their morning show hosts (although their show is now heavily sanitized and word on the street is they're close to quitting). They even fired popular DJ Chris Rush, known for his publicity stunts and willingness to try new things and meet new people (including one stunt that actually resulted in him once ''having his jaw ripped off'' by a tow truck's hook by accident at a local fair, requiring him to have extensive reconstructive surgery to build a new one using one of his ribs). All of the fired personalities were quickly picked up by competing station WKIT (which is owned by none other than [[Stephen King]]), and as the ratings for TOS have fallen, WKIT's have gone up steadily since acquiring TOS' DJs.

 

* WQBW 97.3 The Brew has become a major victim of this trope. While they've remained consistent with their emphasis on '80s rock, they underwent several tweaks to their music format — while keeping their station moniker. The most recent of their tweaks was the excising of a large portion of their 1970s classic rock songs, and the addition of 1980s pop songs. Interestingly enough, the station continues to air "Rockin' '70s" on Sunday nights, along with "Rockin' '80s".

** [[It Got Worse]]. The Brew eventually began using the tag line "The NEW generation of Classic Rock". They even ran promos that made fun of the other classic rock stations in the city for playing outdated music, as if including songs by Billy Idol and Sting in their otherwise typical classic rock playlist somehow made them more hip and relevant. Needless to say, this cemented The Brew's status as the [[Butt Monkey]] of Milwaukee radio and [[Fun T-Shirt|t-shirts]] featuring a spoof of The Brew's famous beer-cap logo reading "Milwaukee Radio Sucks" became popular sellers.

** And on Memorial Day weekend they finally blinked and converted The Brew to a Top 40 format called "Radio Now" to take on the local Kiss FM station (here not owned by Clear Channel), mainly because a smooth jazz station with a lousy signal was threatening to switch over to the same "Radio Now" format and try to steal listeners from Clear Channel's other Milwaukee stations. A possible purposeful [[Self-Destructive Charge]] by the smooth jazz station, as their parent company also owns classic rock powerhouses WKLH and The Hog and were willing to pull a stunt to force The Brew to switch over off-guard.

 

* The WCBS-FM affair in New York. For over 30 years, 101.1 CBS-FM was an iconic oldies station, its DJs being local celebrities. Enter [[Executive Meddling]], and in 2005 came JACK-FM, a random music, jockey-less format that focused on the '80s-2000s and punctuated its programming with obnoxious comments by announcer Howard Cogen. To add insult to injury, the former CBS-FM DJs were fired on the day of the flip, without warning. The new station was universally reviled by New Yorkers, with many calling it "Jack Shit FM," and mayor Mike Bloomberg saying he would "[[Precision F-Strike|never listen to that fucking CBS radio again]]." It took two years for them to get the message, and in 2007, CBS-FM returned to an oldies format. Now, the only decay present at the station is that it's starting to play more '80s music and less '50s music, but that's true for oldies stations everywhere.

* 92.3 K-Rock in New York went through decay ''twice''. First, at the start of 2006, the station switched from its modern rock format (which it had run since [[The Eighties]]) to a talk format, with the new name Free FM. This left the largest radio market in the country without a modern rock station. Free FM, anchored by [[Van Halen|David Lee Roth]]'s morning show, was a disaster, and K-Rock was brought back on the air in less than 18 months, with [[Opie and Anthony|Opie & Anthony]] replacing Roth as morning hosts. So far so good, right? Well, in March 2009, the station switched ''again'', this time without warning (Free FM had been announced a month prior to the switch), to "Now FM", a pop station in the vein of Z-100. At least this time, New York had a modern rock station to pick up the slack, 101.9 WRXP... which itself switched from a jazz format in February 2008, leaving jazz fans with only [[NPR]] and a single AM radio station to listen to.

* 102.7 WNEW is a sad tale indeed. It started as an influential AOR station in the 1970s and 1980s. However, the station failed to adapt to the trends of rock, instead squeezing it's playlist. The station would often go into a format a year. To many NY rock fans, the station jumped past the point of no return when the station paid little attention to the death of Jerry Garcia, a far cry compared to their tribute to other rock musicians. Then, Opie and Anthony came on, and had a predominantly talk-based format. So, management torpedoed "The Rock of New York" in September 1999 for talk. The ratings stayed stagnant (I.e. pathetic) in the 1-2 range, outside of Opie and Anthony. Then, Opie and Anthony got canned due to daring people to have sex in St. Pats Cathedral. (The church even called for the revocation of the license.) The fact the station lost it's stars and got fined $750,000 is bad enough, but it's ratings went to 0.8, which, until 101.9 went news, was not accomplished by any other major FM frequency in NYC. CBS nuked the Talk format in January 2003 for a Top 40 stunt. Then, it went into a hybrid Talk/Hot AC format, under the name "Blink 102.7", with Lynda Lopez (sister to [[Jennifer Lopez]]) in the morning. Ratings still stunk, so the station canned all of it's DJs, and went to a basic AC format, still called Blink 102.7. Then it went christmas....... and then relaunched as a more upbeat AC format as Mix 102.7. THAT eventually degenerated into a Disco Format, which was actually pretty cool. However, people did not know it existed, so the station was nuked in January 2007 for ANOTHER Hot AC format that took potshots at WLTW, at which point, the station got out of the gutter and is now holding it's own.

 

* A mainstay for modern rock in [[Philadelphia (useful notes)|Philadelphia]] was Y100. Overnight, the station was switched, with no warning, to rap and R&B. To make it even worse, it was an existing station just moving to the more popular frequency... and it kept being simulcast on the old frequency for a few weeks. There was an uproar among the previous listener-ship, but no action ended up occurring. Fortunately, the morning show from Y100 was rescued by WMMR, its former competitor, and arguably the only modern rock station left in Philly.

* Another station that played most rock besides WMMR was 94.1, also called WYSP: playing The Rock You Grew Up With from the 70's, 80's, and 90's. However, the station was replaced overnight with [[Sports Radio]].

 

* WHFS, a long-running alternative-rock station owned by CBS/Infinity, suffered a very similar fate to co-owned K-Rock in New York. In January of 2005, WHFS' 99.1 slot changed to a Spanish-language station known as "El Zol". The call letters, meanwhile, migrated over to 105.7, which was at the time a talk radio station with a very similar format to New York's Free FM; to play on those call letters, they began broadcasting alternative rock on nights and weekends. Eventually, that too was dropped, and 105.7 switched to a sports talk format. It still exists on the HD Radio subchannel of the Washington iteration of "Fresh FM", but by far very few people own an HD Radio, and the famous [[HF Stival]] is now just another concert with the has-beens of the 90's playing turn of the millennium rock music which has been run into the ground by dull and unadventurous adult contemporary stations.

** WHFS has returned as of August 2011 on 97.5 in Baltimore on a translator with only city-wide range.

 

* The entire shortwave medium itself, thanks to [[The Great Politics Mess-Up]]. During [[The Roaring Twenties|the interwar]] [[The Great Depression|period]], Americans, fearing for relatives overseas (many Americans at this time were still first- or second-generation immigrants), bought shortwave radios en masse to tune into foreign news broadcasts. During [[World War II]], shortwave was the only place where people in occupied Europe could get news that wasn't filtered through [[Censorship Bureau|Nazi censors]], and the onset of the [[Cold War]] caused Western countries to keep funding their shortwave networks in order to broadcast to those behind the Iron Curtain. The Voice of America, the [[The BBC|BBC World Service]], [[CBC|Radio Canada]] and Radio Netherlands in particular became well-respected Western news sources, causing the Eastern Bloc to respond with [[The Moral Substitute|shortwave stations of their own]]. Meanwhile, non-aligned countries like [[Libya]] and [[Albania]] broadcasted their own ideological rants to anybody who would listen.<br /><br />But then [[The Great Politics Mess-Up|the Berlin Wall came tumbling down]], and suddenly the public need for shortwave broadcasting was nowhere near as great as it had once been. Around the same time, [[Media Watchdog|the FCC]] allowed religious broadcasters to operate shortwave stations. Before long, many of these religious broadcasters realized that there was a lot of money to be made in selling their shortwave airtime, and the shortwave bands were quickly buried under a tidal wave of [[Conspiracy Theorist|conspiracy theorists]], [[The Fundamentalist|religious fanatics]], "[[Right-Wing Militia Fanatic|Christian Patriots]]", and [[Those Wacky Nazis|worse]].

* Due to budget cuts, the [[BBC]] World Service isn't what it used to be. Citing the Internet, it stopped shortwave service to North America, then it cut most of its fine arts/entertainment programming. It now airs mostly all-news all the time. The other content it used to broadcast was usually borrowed from Radio 4, which is now available worldwide on the internet.

* WWCR was originally "World Wide Country Radio," broadcasting from Nashville, Tennessee. Then it became "World Wide Christian Radio," playing Christian/Christian Patriot programming almost exclusively, with the original country radio block being maybe an hour a week if you're lucky enough to find it.

* Similar to the above music examples, KUSW in Salt Lake City was originally a rock station, and then it very quickly became the shortwave arm of the Trinity Broadcasting Network and became KTBN. The station is now defunct.

 

 

== Film and TV Studios ==

 

 

 

== Record Companies ==

 

* [[Four AD Records]] started out as a small independent label without a niche. Then, after the success of the [[Cocteau Twins]], they started catering to mostly [[Dream Pop]]/ [[Shoegazing]] acts with a small number of other [[Alternative Rock]] bands (i.e. [[The Pixies|Pixies]]). Then, after Dream Pop and Shoegazing started taking a spiral in popularity, the label made their main niche [[Slowcore]] with bands like [[Red House Painters]] and American Music Club. Then around the 2000s, the label started struggling financially and had to branch out into other Indie Bands (i.e. [[The National]] and [[TV On the Radio]]). They still maintain their general Alternative/Indie branch, they just change their main emphasis ever few years as the times change.