I first hinted at my disappointment in a certain station almost 3 months ago. I felt it unnecessary to mention the name of the station back then but after what transpired this morning, I just have to be as upfront about this as I can. That 3-month old entry was about 2 things:

1. Before I left at NU, we came up with the Stairway to 7 as our daily countdown because we wanted something that focused on the number 7 since, well, we are NU107, and high recall was an important factor. I suggested the name, and that snowballed into all us jocks conceptualizing the plug for the countdown being a countdown of sorts itself: "7 songs, 6 days a week, at 5 in the afternoon, made just 4 U, 3 ways 2 vote on the 1 station that knows how to count...". Then I think sometime early this year, JAM re-packaged their countdown and made it JAM SE7ENS. Now if your station is JAM 88.3, wouldn't it make more sense to have a countdown of 8 songs? Wouldn't that tie into your station's indentity more? Maybe you could call it the Crazy 8 or something? I guess since they don't really have an identity yet, they thought they could just "borrow" something from a station that clearly does.

2.They even changed their playlist to include music that they originally seemed so hell-bent on never playing: music that they deemed "too loud". In a way, I like that they chose to step out of their box by taking this risk in programming.

Late last year and before all this happened, I moved to JAM 88.3 from NU because I was led to believe that I would be offered a higher salary because in this dog-eat-dog world, we're always looking for a bigger, better deal. I stayed with them for a few months (3 if I'm not mistaken), all of which were unpaid since the station manager stressed that I was still on trainee status and the approval to put me on the payroll hadn't been forwarded to him yet. While I did make friends (and reconnect with old acquaintances) during my stay there, anyone who read my LJ at that time knows how out of place I felt. There were all these restrictions that I felt were placed upon me and my desire to leave was exacerbated(yay! i got to use this word. finally) by one of the DJ's casual comments about the station manager not being comfortable with homosexuals. I felt that I was being discouraged from expressing my true self, and that it was required of me to "package myself properly". It was all these factors that led to my leaving the station and accepting the job at Summit last December.

But radio is something that I just couldn't bring myself to abandon altogether. It's the place where I feel I am most effective, and feel the most sense of purpose...especially at NU. I've always felt that we put the music before anything else. We respect artistic integrity while balancing the need to protect the equity of the station as a marketable brand. It is a business, after all. And a business that is doing well.

We don't brag about it on the air. We've never felt the need to make it our be all and end all, but according to the Nielsen ratings, our station is the #7 station in the country. It's a position we've managed to maintain since the last quarter of 2006 despite the fact that we're technically considered a "niche" station. We've stayed where we are in the collective consciousness of listeners without having to resort to gimmickry or on-air tabloid gossip. Most importantly, we've held our ground without having to attack any other station. In our minds, we just don't consider anyone competition because we don't position ourselves against anyone. We've never felt the need to, really. And we never will.

So it's just really sad that I woke up to a phone call from Trish describing what happened during her slot this morning (yup! I'm back in the evening for what I call the 6-9 explosion...of great tunes:p). An NU listener alerted Trish through the textline that DJs from JAM were doing an on-air promo right outside our station. The promo was for tickets to some JAM event. What's worse it that the mechanics allegedly required listeners who were driving by to honk their horns to get the attention of the JAM jock, and then answer the following question: "Why do you listen to JAM instead of NU?".

If there's any truth to this, I'm not even mad about it. I just feel sorry for them. I think it's tragic and pathetic that they consider us so big a threat that they have to "stealthily" invade our turf and try to make it seem like no one listens (or should listen) to us. The numbers say it all. We are where we are not because we go out of our way to try to bring anyone else down, but because we're unafraid to elevate people's musical tastes by giving them music that no one else takes a chance on. Before JAM reformatted to include songs from our playlist, they never would've played the music that they do now. When you think of rock bands that have crossed over to popular consciousness like Sandwich and Urbandub, or even The Killers and Fall Out Boy, no one was giving them airplay until NU did. And we've never overtly claimed credit for playing them before anyone else thought they were cool. Because we're about getting the music out there. We're about giving people a fresh sound, and telling them that they're free to choose what they want to make the soundtrack of their every waking moment. Don't hate us if we're their choice.

This is about professionalism. What was done today paints a negative picture of their station especially since we've never attacked their station in any way. Not once. Still, Trish was right to say on the air how ugly desperation can manifest itself.

*I've decided not to lock this entry so to all my friends at JAM who may stumble across this post by some twist of googling, it's nothing personal. Just as I'm sure what you did today was nothing personal as well.