Music

24-hour news radio station switches format to 24-hour Beyoncé radio station

by Mark Teo

As traditional-media types know, it’s hard to monetize the news. We can only imagine that a 24-hour all-news station, like Houston’s News92, would have a hard time staying competitive—and, after citing poor ratings and heavy financial losses, the Texan radio station slashed 47 workers. Ouch.

But amidst austerity and plummeting ratings, News92 thinks they have the solution: Drop their 24-hour news coverage in favour of playing Beyoncé songs. All day. Every day.

“This difficult decision is a result of sustained poor ratings performance and significant financial losses over the past three years despite the substantial financial and human resources we invested,” the station said in a statement. “Unfortunately, the market hasn’t shown a sustainable appetite for news radio, but each of you motivated us daily to produce a high-quality news program. Together, we made history.”

Indeed, there’s no “sustainable appetite” for high-priced journalism. But there’s a sustainable appetite for Queen Bey, and there’ll be plenty of songs for the station to choose from: According to the station’s owner, Radio One, they’ll be playing songs spanning her entire career, from Destiny’s Child, to her solo work, to her duets with Jay Z.

So, why, exactly, did they choose Beyoncé in particular? “We want folks to tune in,” Yashima Azilove told CNN.

There’s two way to look at News92’s decision: On one hand, we’d love an all Beyoncé radio station. On the other hand, there’s a nefarious undercurrent to it all—it’s an undeniable bummer that Radio One has deemed journalism too expensive. Radio One, according to CNN, touts themselves as “urban radio specialists,” and called the moved to all Bey-radio the shift the market wanted. That’s pretty cynical, if you ask us.

But at the same time… We’d totally tune in.