CJAM, the college radio station out of the University of Windsor in Ontario just across the river from Detroit, has been one of my favorite stations ever since its inception in 1983. When other stations in the Detroit area were playing commercial-friendly music, CJAM was playing underground bands that ears like mine were begging for. I learned about so many punk, new wave, and Goth bands from that station. As I got older and tastes changed, CJAM became the only terrestrial radio source for bluegrass music in Detroit with the Sunday morning program “Daybreak in Dixie.”
As the years have gone by, it seems that this little oasis of a radio station has never really had great luck. When it started, CJAM would broadcast at a lowly 50 watts at 91.5 FM. If you had a really good antenna on your home radio, you were lucky to pick it up, dealing with fades and static. To hear it better, you had to get in your car and park somewhere along the Detroit River in a not-so-great neighborhood. In 1995, the station was boosted to 456 watts, so Detroit and immediate suburbs could get the station if the wind was right.
In 2009, the station was granted permission to transfer to 99.1 FM due to a station near Port Huron, MI was also using 91.5 FM. It was hard to pick up on a radio that used digital tuning because of competing Detroit stations at 98.7 FM and 99.5 FM forcing themselves over. Thank God for old analog-tuned radios and sensitive fingertips! Fortunately in 2014, CJAM was permitted to raise its power to 2,084 watts, so it could be heard at least 20 miles away from the riverbank.
Then, a few months ago, I noticed that tuning in the station was difficult again, and there was interference from another station. At first I thought that CJAM was forced to lower its power, but NO! It turns out that there was a new sports-talk station in the Detroit market (isn’t one enough?). “The ROAR” broadcasts on 93.5 FM AND 99.1 FM. The thing is, if you look at the broadcast map of these two stations, the smaller-powered 99.1 FM area is covered by 95% by the more powerful 93.5 FM. Why the complete overlap? Greed, most likely. The other sports-talk station here in Detroit is at 97.1, so while they are competing for that audience, they are stomping out those of us who would rather listen to music, especially styles that we cannot receive from commercial stations.
I never understood having sports-talk radio stations on the FM frequency. Does it really matter what the aural tone of the voice is if it is on AM radio? It’s talk, for God’s sake, not music. By the way, CJAM not only broadcasts underground alternative music, but also classical music and programs highlighting a number of ethnic groups. The local NPR station WDET used to offer a good variety, but as of the last decade or so has become a left-wing news-talk station with some free-form music programming during the weekend afternoons. I stopped donating the that station years ago, but I continue to support CJAM as much as I can.
Terrestrial radio lost a lot of its status and reliable reputation back before the turn of the millennium when they refused to listen to the consumer wants and needs. Satellite radio then became the alternative resource, but that turned lackluster within 10 years as the programming there began to mirror terrestrial commercial radio (I quit my subscription about 5 or 6 years ago). There are the internet radio alternatives like Pandora, but as soon as I learned that they were not paying proper royalties to artists while still broadcasting commercials, I turned my back on them as well.
I was raised on radio. In my pre-teens, I cherished my transistor pocket radio picking up the Top-40 AM stations during the day, like CKLW out of Windsor, then tuning in out-of-state stations at night. The underground and college stations were a must-hear in my teens and young adult days. Even as I have gotten older, the stations playing non-commercial programming like folk, bluegrass, Celtic, and classical music are for what I continually search. CJAM is still an oasis for me, especially “Daybreak in Dixie” as I relax and write on Sunday mornings as well as Saturday evening alternative music. These terrestrial stations keep disappearing, it seems, year by year. I pray that CJAM will be around for many more years. Check out its programming at www.cjam.ca/ .
Chew on it and comment.
Luegra 