Christmas is over, and Christmas music is over. KEZK has returned to regular programming, except “regular programming” no longer means its “soft rock” office music format of the last twenty years. Instead, their new moniker is “Fresh 102.5” to match New York’s WWFS-FM, “Fresh 102.7,” and other “Fresh” stations in Chicago and D.C., all Infinity/CBS-owned, and therefore, probably part of a nationwide imagery gimmick.
My guess is that the suits at Infinity/CBS reformatted KEZK for two main reasons: One, Bonneville’s WARH-FM (“106-5 The Arch”) went from being a joke to being #1 in the STL market on an Adult Hits format, and two, “Soft Rock 102.5” marketed itself as the “at-work” station for St. Louis, but with this recession chugging along, people aren’t at work to listen to “at work” radio, and they sure as hell don’t want to listen to “at work” radio while out of work as a constant reminder of such.
As it is, “Fresh 102.5” sounds a little like its former self, a little like Y-98 (KYKY-FM), and a little like The Arch. Interesting that Infinity/CBS is nudging KEZK into Y-98 territory, because Y-98 is also an Infinity/CBS station. My guess is that KYKY will have a new format some this year as well.
However, the on-air personalities remain the same, including this woman they call “Delilah” in the evenings, some nationally syndicated personality who is made to sound local. Like the title of this post suggests, I have proof that this economy hasn’t hit rock bottom, and this Delilah is the proof. In case you’ve never heard a wee little bit of her show, and I don’t recommend you do, her scam is that almost entirely white and (what sounds to be) middle to upper middle class people ranging from early middle to middle aged, mostly women, most of those probably soccer moms, with a minority representation of beta males for good measure, the kind of people who really haven’t had anything close to a quantifiable struggle or problem in their lives, pretend they have real problems, call Delilah up and tell her those non-problems, then she pretends to empathize, then fades out to play an Elton John song she and her pretend empathy dedicates to their pretend problems.
I know someone who used to like her show, until she made some snarky, ignorant remark about racial equality being true one night. In the same vein, I used to be a Laura Schlessinger fan, but right about the time that I would have given up on her anyway because her act got old, she lashed out at people opposed to interracial marriage, more virulently and with greater vocal anger than I ever heard her denounce anything before, and this was more than ten years ago. But I digress.
What makes me think this economy hasn’t hit rock bottom yet is that Delilah’s show is still on the air. It wouldn’t be if there weren’t enough overly prosperous people having to invent problems so that Delilah can pretend to empathize with them, fade to James Taylor. You’ll know the American Dream is officially dead when you no longer hear her on the radio. It’ll be around the time Stuff White People Like has its last post.
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