Wednesday, February 28th, 2007 at 4:07 pm in , , , . MAX, the format touted to surprise listeners with songs from many eras, similar to a format called Jack, hit the road at noon Wednesday.
It will be replaced at 7:50 a.
m. Thursday with The Wolf, a modern country music format.
This will be the Bay s second country station, along with San Jose s KRTY (95.
3) which doesn t reach well into San Francisco or parts north.
Listeners to MAX on Tuesday were shocked to hear the last song, Venus, by Bananarama, give way to a computer-voiced countdown clock.
The station had been country a couple of years ago, and was nicknamed The Bear.
[You can , or from your own site.] Max we hardly knew ye!
I came home this evening and had an email from MAX-FM saying I d like the new format even better.
What whacked mind would think that those who enjoyed 70 s, 80 s and whatever we feel like would like modern country even better?
The new format probably does fit Bonneville s sensibilities better, even if they are in the process of selling the station. That sound you heard at 7:50 AM was the sound of drivers all over the Bay Area frantically reprogramming their radio presets AWAY from 95.
7.
What a complete and utter betrayal. They take away a good radio station and replace it with Country?
Are they freaking kidding me? I feel like a friend just died.
At least 104.
9 is listenable again. My former 95.7 preset now points there.
When I woke up this morning to hear the switch, I was so deperately hoping for the first few minutes that it was a joke and that J.J. Maxwell would come on the air to announce that he was just kidding.
But, unfortunately, I realized that it wasn t a joke.
Like Matt, I found 104.9 and have pointed my former MAX preset there.
And, I too, feel like a friend just died. I hope Entercom realizes the error of its ways. I left the DC/VA area after two excellent radio stations were killed off in the same way.
If anyone s looking for me, I ll be at Best Buy after work buying an XM satellite clock radio. We are preparing a brand new radio station that we believe you will like even more than Max. As a loyal Max fan you are among the first to hear about this station.
While we can t tell you the name yet, this new station will be fun, energetic, Bay Area focused and unlike any other station in the area.
When I saw this email from Max yesterday I thought the worst that would happen with the transfer to Entercom would be adding annoying DJs. How wrong I was.
When we had Comcast we used to listen to their New Wave feed but soom found ourselves listen to Max more often, esp. since we could continue the listening while in the car. Not in a car often enough to pay for XM/Sirius - maybe time to go get a HD-radio set since I appear to not have won one from KFOG.
At least we will always have the memory of San Francisco, Emeryville - also known as Downtown Ikea (Did anyone think of saving any of these station IDs for posterity?) Gee, Ken, so sorry to disappoint you with my taste in musical genres.
I agree that there is plenty of good and bad music of all types.
But I m not going to apologize for my own tastes, nor for being disappointed that something I once enjoyed is no longer available to me.
One thing that struck me about the changeover: did anyone spend time listening to the computerized countdown? Yesterday s afternoon drivetime radio was so craptastic that I spent my 35-minute commute home listening to it.
Why? Because of all the sly comments sandwiched in between the time announcements. Things like:
What does KGO stand for?
San Jose, you wish you were San Francisco.
And various pop culture references/movie quotes.
It was clever.
I liked it. It led me to expect something . .
. different, like the website promised. To find out that a country format was the big surprise disappointing to me.
Seemed about as new and exciting to me as a Big Band format. A shame. The Max FM station was a nice option to have around.
The Wolf seems a major step back.
Instead of moving to country, they should have simply
1) We never repeat the same song in the same day is a good slogan. However, when doing the drive-home commute and hearing Eye of the Tiger four nights in a row, perhaps the time that those songs are played during the day could have been mixed up just a little bit.
2) 1960s? 1950s? Nope, never heard of them.
Our current research on pop and rock music points to primitive man clapping two stones together during this time.
3) Add more tunes from the current set of artists played. Why play Eye in the Sky , but not Don t Answer Me ?
Even better, play some non-hit tracks from the artists.
4) Expand the genres and sub-genres played. Here s how you get your country music in.
And metal. And everything else.
Basically, if you claim you stole all my records and are playing them, you better have stolen all of my records and are playing them!
Oh well, guess that s why there are college radio stations, Sirius/XM, ipods, and homebrew internet streams Hey, Leanna S.
Dishonest ? Illogical ?
Well, I ve been called illogical many times. Dishonest? Not many.
It s like a very old and accurate concept namely, that if there are two gas stations on the same 4-way corner, it s a lot healthier, economically, than if there were only one there. That fits our ideas about country. There isn t enough awareness about country in the Bay Area.
A San Francisco station if it does it well is certain to increase awareness and excitement. And we should all gain from that.
So .
dishonest? illogical?
Not sure I understand Rob s questions, especially the second thing about genre to the investors.
Anyhow, answering what I DO understand. You say KMAX was 23rd in the San Francisco book? And you wonder where KRTY was?
Well, despite the fact that the station s signal barely reaches the borders of Santa Clara County, it should be interesting to note that KRTY was 18th in the San Francisco 9=county book. That means the station ranked higher than KLLC, KITS, KMAX, KNEW, KFRC . all of which are S.
F. stations.
In the San Jose book, KRTY was sixth.
But, who cares?
Now, as for the new Wolf: we predict that they ll do well in the S.F.
ratings, especially if they put promotional weight into some of the eight counties other than Santa Clara. And, despite the suggestion that I m both illogical and dishonest we hope they DO do well. All you folks who miss Max: rush out and get yourself an XM receiver.
You ll have about a year of good listening before Captain Mel destroys the service.
And you country fans should get XM, too. The Cross Country channel alone knocks the pluperfect socks off of any FM country station you ll ever hear.
And they ll never call you at home the way KRTY calls me.
I have no interest in XM at all, other than as a currently-satisfied customer. That eletronic countdown led me to expect something at least somewhat fringe , perhaps weird old rock like Zappa and Warren Zevon.
The sheer bizzareness of the eletronic voice was entertaining in it s own way, with the little non-sequiter quips in between. it was like Dada-radio. Country is about as un-bizzare as you can get.
I have no idea why they used such a strange gimmick to lead into The Wolf . I don t picture country fans being too into something that sounds like Stephen Hawking narrating the Apocalypse, and the people who would like something like that probably aren t big into country for the most part.
A TRUE oldies station like the old KFRC.
That was one of the best oldies stations I ve ever heard, and it had maintained that format for years. Could get a little repetative, but a wider playlist was all that was needed. The destruction of KFRC still hurts and was what led me to listen to MAX, which had decent tunes about 60 percent of the time.
The other format that is needed here and elsewhere is a real Classic Rock station that plays albums and obscure songs by popular artists. The station that preceded The Bear on 95.7 was called The Drive, and it was a wonderful example of this.
I was heartbroken when I returned from vacation in 2003 and heard country pouring out of my radio the first time I turned it back on. I will admit I cheered when The Bear bit the dust, and I will hope that The Wolf follows in it s footsteps. SF is a city famous for rock and counterculture, and should play music reflecting that heritage.
If people really want their country here, let them go to satellite or iPod. I would not expect Topeka or Houston to have a station devoted to psychadelic rock or funkadelic music, if I lived there I would accept country as part of the local fabric and use the previously mentioned alternative music sources to get my rock on and my funk on. I was upset when The Bear went away but grew to liking MAX.
however when KFRC went away MAX was neccesary so now I m torn we need a oldies/rock station AND we need a country station too -so we got half a loaf
lets hope someone else changes back to a decent oldies format.
And by the way, this country is not white mans music, you moron its country-fied rock and roll. GOD!
MAKE IT STOP!!!
I don’t care about commercials, but I do care about quality. Whatever diseased mind thought that this would be an improvement to MAX needs to be torn out, tarred and feathered, and catapulted back to whatever backwater, podunk, inbred cattle ranch it hitchhiked from. Let me make it crystal clear:
THE WOLF MUST BE SHOT AND LEFT TO DIE!
Fire whoever came up with this hideous concept – I can only pray that it’s some misguided prank. If we wanted an endless sea of country, we could find it on the internet or in the burning pits of hell. There was only one Max.
Bring him back or we’ll stampede. Ha! You re too kind.
I m a dog lover, but even I would like to see wolf steaks on some Bay Area menus tonight.
This blows. I LOVE old country.
I own the equivalent of a record store worth of the stuff on vinyl. What the Wolf is playing is NOT country! It is overproduced, corporate, lowest-common-denominator CRAP!
Train-wreck pop stars the likes of Britney Spears would cringe at at some of the lyrics.
By contrast, MAX was fabulous unpredictable, self-effacing, and a veritable musicology lesson for the children of the 70 s and 80 s.
Seriously whoever made this trade, may you be hunted down and eaten by a pack of angry MAX listeners.
It s the only fitting end to your testosterone driven, Rambo watching, gas-guzzling 4 4 owning lives! I am surprised to hear Wolf 95.3 again after 2 years absense.
I am a country music fan, I have listened about 500 country music radio( 2000 total in USA) because I have travelled around the country a lot, and ONLY radio station I listened is country music.www.bayareavisit.
com
I listened KRTY( San Jose), KFOG(Santa rosa) a lot too, sometimes I listened 93.3( Modesto) and 95.1(Sacramento) because I lived in east bay near berkeley, all those signals were weak.
The change is for GOOD!!!
!!
1.
I used to enjoy Max-fm when it was new. It brought back the music I enjoyed in my childhood and teen times, but in about a year I, with sadness, realized that (read 2.)
2.
Kinda Rocky but Actually Poppy songs of 70s, 80s, 90s sound so borring today, plus (read 3.)
3. I don t understand how one can tolerate the primitive whatever we feel like repeated after almost every song.
As a result, I stopped listening to them after a year or so of their existence.
Never felt liking coutry music! but, strange enough found myself on:
March 2, 2007, - 95.
7 fm;
To all the people who are claiming that there are plenty of rock stations, so get over it I say NO, I m not getting over it because my kind of roc is no longer on the air to any real extent.
There is almost NO airplay of rock before the 1970 s, and what is played is a more in the vein of AC/DC or Metallica or Aerosmith than it is Rock and Roll . Almost no Stones.
Almost no Elton John (save for his softest stuff on stations like KOIT) No Elvis, no Doobie Brothers, hell, NO BEATLES. The only place that plays anything in the vein is KISS FM, and that s limited mostly to African-American artists. I am very glad the Temptations and Marvin Gaye are still on the air, but Motown and classic R B are just part of the picture.
Yes, I am sure a lot of you feel like these artists have been overplayed and belong to an older generation. I ll have you know that I was not even born yet when most of the artists I mentioned were at their heights of popularity. Oldies and Rock n Roll that predates hair metal are not just of interest to retirees.
I doubt anything on terrestrial radio around here will ever replace KFRC, but it would be nice to have a station that didn t think the world began in 1978. I m even a little bit sorry to hear that The Wolf suffers from this same flaw, for the sake of the old-school country fans. Sounds like even they don t have what they want on the air now.
To Ray, who said If it ain t country, it ain t music. You, sir, need to get out more. I listened a bit today to The Wolf, and while I appreciate that country has a place on the radio that was lacking in the Bay (from what I see on these posts), your quote is nothing short of the pure embodiment of idiocy, wrapped up in a clever-seeming sound byte that is clearly and obviously worthless.
Country music came from the same roots as Blue, Jazz and Rock n Roll - hell, even Hip Hop. They re all part of the same beast and they all deserved to be played and people can choose to listen to them or not. I m sad to see Max go because they represented an underplayed minority: the songs of last year and the last decade and the two before that.
Today s rock stations are top 40 based, and almost exclusively that. You can play them for a day before they start the cycle over. From what some listeners have said, The Wolf is starting out the same way, just with country music.
And, I hate to offend, but most country sounds the same to me, and the only thing worse than the same 40 songs played over and over is playing only one kind.
Get me something unique and eclectic like Max and I ll shut up. Until then, The Wolf is on my S List.
Thank you for finally having enough guts to get country radio back to the Bay Area!
For those of you who are a little perturbed about your station going off the air Im sorry truly I am.
But try being a country music lover who has had 5 stations taken away from your listening pleasure and had nothing to listen to for the past 3 years All of you music fans have how many other stations to listen to still?
!
I have to pay for my listening pleasure! stop your whining and change the station!
Thank you to the Wolf! My alarm clock has been tuned to 95.7 for the last two years.
This morning I woke up to the wolf and was surprisingly irritated by the noise coming out of my radio. Sadly I realized that I had accidentally supported The Wolf for a whole 5 seconds, it ll never happen again.
I wonder how long it ll take your co-workers to get annoyed with you if you start playing country in the office.
Why couldn t the country station taken any of the other numerous available broadcast channels like 93.5 or something unused? Besides if country hasn t lasted in the bay area before can someone please give me a reason why it will now?
It has now been about 4 days with our new Country station and the more I listen, the better it gets! Lots of variety and I am sure once the dust has been settled, or is it the Wolf settling into his den? ha.
.ha They ll have even more of a variety, including some of the older country stars.
We ve been without a local country station for several years and finally having one, locally in the bay area, is fantastic.
To many times we have been lost in the shuffle, just as you fans of MAX are now and we know how it feels. But I am sure it is all about $$$$$ and contracts. Nothing lasts forever.
This new country format could go Bye-bye too but until then, us country fans are gonna enjoy it!
Thanks again to THE WOLF!!
! Now how about Buddy Baron on your Morning radio show??
???
Well, I m happy to have country back in the Bay Area. Living in the East Bay left us nothing but maybe a Sac station on a good day. I was sad to see the Bear go, but as a music lover Max fit the bill and was fun to listen too even if it did make me feel old!
I m open to all music, but this new strain of country music, as said above is nothing but country twang set to pop instruments. It isn t true country, but it ll do, if and ONLY if they play the Dixie Chicks!!
!!
I will not listen to a station that takes away my right to listen to who I want because the suits don t agree.
FIVE GRAMMYS people!!!
! 5!!
!!!
Someone take the bullit for me and let me know if the DC s are on the playlist.
If not, I ll wait till they get advitisers and do my own type of Northern Hospitatility boycott!
No Dixie Chicks?
they can kiss my ass!
If they do play them, I ll give it a try. I actually liked listening to KMax.
The mix was nice.
I listened to the first couple songs on the new Wolf, but they sounded like jingoistic, solipsistic, bad rehashes of classics. I thought there d be stuff like Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, or at least Randy Travis, but it was more like crockabilly, not Country.
I felt that it appealed to the vegetable in me and I don t want to feed that!
So long Max! You inspired me at first and appealed to the best in me, but then split town like a deadbeat dad.
Wherever you are, I hope you re feeling like crap. As a lifelong resident of this NoCal Area, I ve heard changes to MANY great stations that changed with my life and tastes. I thought it d be a cold day in hell before KFRC left honestly.
KYUU turned to K101, X100 came and went, even FREE FM was a nice change of pace on the dial until John London s Inferno and Darian O Toole were fired. What I missed most was a country station on the FM dial in my home area. I ve emailed people who were PISSED that the Bear left and informed them of the new format today when I found it last night.
We wrote. We protested, and it fell on deaf ears just like these comments will.
I listen to every genre you can THINK of.
Sadly the two genres I agree are lacking around here is a TRUE hard rock/old rock station and country station. I must admit Max had it s niche for embarrassing 70 s 80 s music that you shamelessly belt out loud when no one s looking, but country keeps coming back. Why?
Because NOT only white people listen to country. We re not all rednecks with 4 4 s, and I resent that stereotype.
To look at me you d think I was a hiphop rap type listener.
I m not. Brown people love country too! I remember KNEW on the AM dial growing up on OLD country b/c that s the closest thing you got to island music when you move to this country.
Thank you Kenny for putting 2 and 2 together! It s about time someone figured it out. My parents settled for it and it s folkiness.
It s not countryesque rock n roll. It s caucasianized Latin music. Rock stemmed from the blues, get your facts straight.
I despise the popular formats that cater to the demographic of hiphoppers and latin populated majority, b/c we have HOW many of THOSE stations? Whereas we fight over our covetted ONE station? Why not complain to the oversaturated genre stations and have them change their format to a true hard rock venue unlike KFOG which is too soft for some of us to deal with at times.
Do we need to fight when there are many of these OTHER types of stations that could give some bandwidth to OUR faves and guilty pleasures?
I listen to all the stations on the dial when I m bored with one genre I switch b/c I m schizophrenic like that. I also watch two or three shows at once flipping between commercials, hate me.
I stopped listening to the Max after giving it numerous tries over the years. After the Bear left and Adam Corolla took over FREE FM, I gave up on the radio altogether and delved deeply into my collection and the net for music. Now this is a happy return to the radio for me.
It no coincidence that it s with country s return not to mention that John London will be back in the Bay on the AM dial too come 3/15.
It s nice to have a happy poppy country station again. Let s not make the same mistake we always do and forget to put some homages to old music on there too.
That was the Max s fault too, WIDEN the playlists some to b-sides and less popular songs by the same artists. Every station suffers these insufferable repetition probs, and it will never end. I worked for one as an intern for a minute and graduated to dj.
Thank goodness for college radio, and member supported stations!
I always hear about XM and Sirius, but now I m hearing about their decline now too? Except you re paying for it instead of getting it free?
What s that about? Yet you keep telling us to switch to satellite? Go online and subscribe to a net station for free, and stream to your heart s content.
Guess that doesn t help you on the move, but still satellite s not always reliable depending on your reception and hardware. This is more painful than when KSAN went Country.
MAX was the only decent radio station in the morning since all of the other stations have DJ s blathering on, trying to impress me, and failing miserably.
The format and the programming for MAX was excellent.
I listened to MAX more than any other station. The Mattress Discounter jingle still rings in my brain.
What do you get when you play Country Music backwards?
You get your job back, you get your girl back, you get your truck back,
I don t mind Country, I m just not going to listen to it.
Hope to hear my daughter on this station soon.
check out to hear real country music. 95.7 should check it out!
!!!
Here album is West Coast Country Girl and it is so nice to have country back in the bay area on our west coast!
I was shocked around 2 years ago when I was listening to my favourite country station in the morning (THE BEAR) and then by the afternoon I was surprised by MAX.
Then I was surprised again (positively) this March 1st with THE WOLF!
Sorry folks. But we need a country music station with strong signal in the Bay Area. Hope they bring back JT to be the radio jockey again.
This is great, I have wanted to buy a new device for the car for a long time, something with better sound, and mp3 capability. Now my wife said I could. Since the only radio station that played anything that you could actually listen to in the bay area is gone, I get a new in dash mp3 player.
Country music one or two words looped over and over again to the same beat song after song. Most of it spoken, not sung . Just will never get it .
So long RADIO, time to move up to something that actually plays music, not bad commercials, not that constant chatter, actually this may be a good thing.
Bad I guess for the people that try and sell ads on country music stations, but then again I generally don t need a new tractor, or a horse shit remover at all.
Bye MAX FM, probably the best radio station I have listened to since some time about 1985.
I visited the bay area last year (Nov) and liked MAX so much once I got back I listened to it online occasionaly.
I am from Texas so you d figure I ve listened to some country music here and there -although certainly not my favorite genre.
Someone mentioned that listening to country music backwards and you would get your job, girl and truck back lol.
.good one.
Like everywhere, people have different tastes and there will be some (a few less in the bay area) that will like country and this radio station but certainly not as many as those that listed to MAX, I mean it s obvious, call it geographical, cultural, whatever, facts and numbers.
The bay area is not a country music city. Period.
I get a kick in reading people s opinion and how they get easily offended.
Those that put patriotic and racist comments are those same people who give country a bad name. But the same goes the other way, if you don t like it just turn the dial look for something else. The Max was a truly GREAT station.
Wonderful format.
Now they change to Country which I could listen to but prefer to do so while chewing on tinfoil and rubbing a cheese grater on my head.
There is no substitute for the MAX.
I would spit on all of you radio executives were not my mouth so full of caviar! The discourse should not center on the quality of country music. It should center on the ability of the public to affect heartless, tin-suited automatons who infest our lives without invitation and take away the choices we thought we had.
If I wanted Country, I wouldn t have been listening to MAX, which was varied, inventive and provided another option for Bay Area radio listeners who don t want to cough up for satellite.
Go to the mattresses, Clemenza. Brawl in the streets.
Make the Wolf whine until choice returns.
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