From the New York Daily News: "Oldies radio is dead in New York City.

"After more than three decades as the top oldies station in the country, WCBS-FM (101.1 FM)abruptly scrapped its format yesterday for a concept called Jack...

"The station had been home to some of the most famous names of New York radio, including Cousin Bruce Morrow, Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy, many of whom shifted from WABC-AM when it went from music to talk...

"'This is the largest, the biggest abandonment of a loyal market segment in the history of New York radio,' said listener Howard Bailen, of Manhasset, L.I. 'I tuned in and heard a song you'd never hear on CBS. It's the last thing New York needs.'

"But officials at Infinity Broadcasting, which owns the station, said the new format was right for New York. 'We did a lot of market research and found a hole in the market that wasn't being served by any other station,' said Chad Brown, CBS' vice president and general manager...

"Oldies fans will be left to satellite or Internet radio; www.wcbsfm.com still will offer oldies programming."

Read this entire column in the New York Daily News here.


Infinity makes similar move in Chicago
From the Chicago Sun-Times: "Chicago's favorite oldies station vanished from the airwaves Friday to make room for the radio fad of the moment known as 'Jack FM.'

"WJMK-FM (104.3), home of 'The Greatest Hits of the '60s and '70s' and Radio Hall of Famer Dick Biondi for 21 years, abruptly switched to the announcer-free music format of 'Jack FM' and the slogan 'Playing What We Want' at 4 p.m. Friday.

"Biondi and his cohorts -- Fred Winston, Greg Brown and Paul Perry -- will continue to be heard online only at: www.wjmk.com...

"Dismissed by some critics as a novelty, 'Jack FM' began as an eclectic hybrid of pop and rock on a Canadian Internet radio station in 2000. Soon after that, the name and concept were licensed for over-the-air stations in the United States and Canada."

Read this entire Chicago Sun-Times story online here.

From New Media Age (UK): "Chrysalis Radio next week launches the first stage in a strategy that will see listeners able to buy full-track music downloads of songs heard on-air via their phone.

"Chrysalis station Galaxy is launching an on-air promotion, in association with Motorola, to find its listeners' top five all-time favourite tracks, voted for by SMS. The top five will then be made available as full-track mobile downloads...

"Initially, the portal -- which will be launched with an Ibiza promotion this summer -- will provide full-track downloads in association with record labels around specific artist promotions. However... the company is 'not far off' from being able to expand this to the holy grail of letting customers text in to download to their mobile, or online, the full-track of songs heard on-air."

Read this entire article at NMA.co.uk here.

"Did AOL get the short end of the stick?.."

On the shocking WCBS-FM switchover, a number of questions remain unanswered.

First, did the deejays get notice? Cousin Brucie was on 'WABC Rewound' the
previous weekend, mentioned the Jack format, but said nothing about the switchover.

The WCBS-FM Internet stream keeps the old format alive at wcbsfm.com. No
personalities, no ads, with jingles. Where is this planning to go? Will they develop it as a 2nd station? Will any deejays be brought back?

And did AOL get the short end of the stick with the recent arrangement to carry WCBS-FM... only now that format is gone back to wcbsfm.com.

Also, at 8th place in the winter ratings, why didn't Infinity port the entire station to different call letters in town?

"Stream ripping may still be protected under fair use..."

Dear Kurt:

Is recording Internet radio broadcasts a non-infringing use of the copyrighted works therein? This appears to be the new conundrum of U.S. copyright law.

It's hard to dispute the long sacred practice of "time shifting broadcast programming" as evidenced by the Sony Betamax case (which permitted recording a television show for later home viewing on the grounds that the transmission was made available under license to the public). And the subsequent decision by the Supreme Court in the Diamond Rio case to uphold space-shifting (transferring recordings through a computer hard drive onto a portable digital media device) only further ratified the consumer's right to copy purchased music recordings for personal, noncommercial purposes from one medium directly onto another.

But do these same fair use doctrines still apply in a day-and-age of all digital media in which the recording industry has a greater stake? And what are the exact implications of archiving time-shifted programs and otherwise modifying them (including breaking them into individual segments) for later viewing?

Unfortunately, the jury is still out when it comes to these issues, in particular their implications with respect to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The DMCA already has provisions restricting digital broadcast services on the Internet from facilitating the recording of their own transmissions by end-users. However, it is important to note that these prohibitions do not to apply to computer software products independent of the same Webcasting service, even if such applications (and the end-users themselves) purposefully enable the recordings to be made -- with the specific exception that they do not circumvent copy control measures and that they do not engage in otherwise contributory infringement with regards to the copyrighted works.

Perhaps the Audio Home Recording Act, if properly amended, could prove to be the ideal solution to this and other copyright concerns that now plague consumers. By adapting the AHRA to effectively tax the makers of computer-based digital audio recording software and hardware -- rather than consistently thwarting end-users themselves from making personal, noncommercial use of music to which they have fair use rights -- then it would be possible to achieve a more satisfactory balance between the rights of copyright holders and consumers. Such an amendment would not only serve to better justify time-shifting and space-shifting practices in light of the DMCA, it would help to further (rather than stifle) technological innovation while also providing for adequate compensation through royalties to the music industry in exchange for waiving claims of copyright infringement against consumers for the use of such new media technologies.