January 31, 2008
The city of Richmond said in a letter yesterday to radio station managers that it is “getting pretty annoyed” with having to hear during every commercial break that 98.9 Liberty plays anything.
“I just don’t understand why you have to keep bragging that you have the best mix in town,” the metro area of roughly 1.2 million people wrote in a sharply-worded letter to the station, which has been broadcasting since September 2005. “One minute it’s Supertramp, the next you’ve got Nickelback and Matchbox 20. The artists alone speak to the fact that you have variety. We beg of you, for the love of God, enough with the gloating.”
Known to listeners as 98.9 Liberty, WWLB has gained a large following by playing an iPod Shuffle-like mix of pop and rock hits from the 70s, 80s, 90s and today. During commercial breaks and sometimes in between songs, the station most always explains to the audience, “98.9 Liberty: We play anything.” With the word “anything” usually accentuated or drawn out, the phrase is typically read by either a sly-sounding man or sung by a trio of female backup singers.
In his morning show today, local radio veteran Jeff Beck said Liberty is considering changing its popular-but-tiresome catchphrase, possibly substituting “anything” for “everything,” “the whole kit-n-caboodle” or “so many songs that, if laid end-to-end, would stretch from Richmond to Des Moines and halfway back, somewhere just outside of Louisville on Interstate 64.”
“We’ll be taking calls for your input on those alternatives in just a bit, but first, here’s a classic from .38 Special,” said Beck, who touted that you will never hear the same song on 98.9 twice within a week. “Not many stations can lay claim to that.”
The letter from the city was the second to Liberty in nearly three years.
In December 2006, Richmond requested in a two-sentence email for the station to stop declaring that it was “the all new 98.9 Liberty,” as it had been on the air for more than a year. The station dropped the phrase two weeks later in favor of “the now matured.”
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Local Girlfriend Cuts Boyfriend-Interest Rate To All-Time Low
Fan District resident and girlfriend Audrey Rankin said yesterday that she has dropped her boyfriend-interest rate by nearly 74 points in a move that is expected to help stimulate her partner's investment into their two-year relationship.
The couple, according to Rankin, has been on the decline for the past six months amid boyfriend Andrew Adams' ...
Keep playing anything, I listen to you all the time [exclusively]. If people don’t like the we play anything logo for you radio station. CHANGE THE STATION!
[...] And we swear, after two or three shows we will no longer call ourselves the “All New” Tobacco Avenue Radio, unlike some other stations we know. [...]
The City of Richmond are idiots if this is true.