Life Is a Rock (but Y107 Can Still Roll You)
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The only pop station in Chicago that indiscriminately plays music by whites and blacks side by side is a silly, calculated, artificial, and wholly pleasurable new operation that went on the air just after the new year. The station’s call letters are WYSY, it goes under the nom de radio of Y107.9, and its shtick is to play hits from the 70s and only hits from the 70s. There are those who will quail in the face of such a broadcast threat, and not entirely without reason: Y107 (let’s drop the .9) doesn’t shy away from the decade’s rough spots, from “Nights in White Satin” to “I Really Want to See You Tonight.” But what gives the station its punch are the high points: the 70s were the decade of Al Green, and the Spinners, and Donna Summer, remember. The hits of these classic soul artists are mixed in with hard-rock gems from Elton John (“Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting”) or the Doobies (“Long Train Runnin’”); pop nirvana by everyone from Badfinger to Hall and Oates to Fleetwood Mac; dollops of cool disco; and this or that bit of weirdness (“Taxi,” “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”). While the station may be downplaying the new-wave end of the decade (I haven’t heard “Heart of Glass” or “My Best Friend’s Girl” yet), it’s delighting connoisseurs with extended dance mixes on the Saturday Night Dance Party and otherwise goes out of its way to do justice to the time (by programming the scorching, seven-minute version of “Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” for example).
Why is it, I asked Disney, that Y107 is the only station in Chicago–including ‘CKG–to program color-blind? “It’s certainly not by design,” he says. “Chicago is such a big market. You get niched out so far you have to go in and hyperserve a particular demographic or psychographic.” That may be true, but it’s also a euphemism for the fact that radio research says white radio listeners generally don’t want to hear black music. Ironically enough, when Cox investigated audience reception for the format in Chicago, the researchers found something odd. “We really can’t take that much credit–the listeners screened for it,” says Disney: “Black product tested very strong here.” Cox’s Tampa 70s station is very rock-oriented, Disney says; but in Chicago the soul and R & B stuff–even the dreaded disco–got the thumbs up. “There’s a real emotional kick to it,” Disney says. “The letters and phone calls we get are tremendous.” Indeed, after playing a song like Thelma Houston’s apocalyptically libidinous “Don’t Leave Me This Way,” jocks will come back on the air to say so-and-so just called from such-and-such a suburb raving about how great the song was. Whether it’s made up or not, you believe it–because you were about to call to say the same thing yourself.
Schmitsville
