Monday, June 13, 2005
Mike FM
There's a new radio station in Boston, "Mike 93.7 FM." Their slogan is "We Play Everything," and they emphasize that slogan over and over in little snippets between songs. The promotional material says that their library is a few times larger than any other station in the Boston area, and they claim to play all the songs randomly, so that it's just like hitting the shuffle mode on your MP3 player.
I actually kind of like the station, but I have some gripes with its marketing scheme. Don't come talk to me about how you play "everything" when all you play is 80s and 90s popular rock. I don't recall hearing anything released this century (though I admit my popular music knowledge isn't acutely honed), and oldies are very rare (and usually limited to enduring acts like Elton John).
They have one ad where someone "calls in" to ask if they play football. They admit that they don't play football on the radio, but that's the one exception to things that they play. Ha ha.
But there's no country, no reggae, no rap, no R&B, no hip-hop, and certainly no Indonesian gamelan ensembles. I can understand that they don't play Indonesian gamelan (and jazz, and bluegrass, and symphonies, and opera, and chamber music, and a cappella, and percussion ensembles, and martial music, and avant garde music, and non-American music, and Hawaiian music, and gospel, and blues, and concert band music, and.....), but there are a lot of kinds of music that you can find on other radio stations that Mike doesn't play. Why do they say they they play everything when all they do is play a slightly wider variety than the stilted non-variety that other stations play?
I actually kind of like the station, but I have some gripes with its marketing scheme. Don't come talk to me about how you play "everything" when all you play is 80s and 90s popular rock. I don't recall hearing anything released this century (though I admit my popular music knowledge isn't acutely honed), and oldies are very rare (and usually limited to enduring acts like Elton John).
They have one ad where someone "calls in" to ask if they play football. They admit that they don't play football on the radio, but that's the one exception to things that they play. Ha ha.
But there's no country, no reggae, no rap, no R&B, no hip-hop, and certainly no Indonesian gamelan ensembles. I can understand that they don't play Indonesian gamelan (and jazz, and bluegrass, and symphonies, and opera, and chamber music, and a cappella, and percussion ensembles, and martial music, and avant garde music, and non-American music, and Hawaiian music, and gospel, and blues, and concert band music, and.....), but there are a lot of kinds of music that you can find on other radio stations that Mike doesn't play. Why do they say they they play everything when all they do is play a slightly wider variety than the stilted non-variety that other stations play?
Comments:
What, is this a whole family of masculine names taking over our radio stations? I wonder if they're all run by the same radio conglomerate. Does Jack FM use DJs (Mike FM doesn't)?
Nope. No DJs. Just a very random mix of music. For example. The other day I heard Ton Loc, Def Lepard, Cindi Lauper, and Erasure in succession. Where else could you find that kind of weird line-up?
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