Switching Channels: The Many Formats of 100.7

Today I turned on the radio and checked my favorite station, Movin' 100.7, which plays the hip hop and R&B hits of yesterday and today and heard the 80's hit "Somebody's Knocking." I thought, "I don't remember this being a dance song..."

That's because it never was. It was a country song. For the fifth time in ten years, 100.7 had done a program switcheroo.

Now, I have been begging God to shine his light on South Georgia with a classic country station for years, ever since I worked at one briefly in Abbeville, SC in the late 90s. It was that brief and surreal stint at one of my legion of jobs that began my love affair with classic country, which our station manager called "original country." He also called taking us out for a Mexican dinner and regaling us with tales of partying with June Carter Cash, not to mention his ex-wife who was a hoarder of cloth, "paying us," but that's okay. Nobody was listening to our station, but my friend Jen and I had fun working there.

I lost the job, but I kept my love of classic country. Nothing soothes my soul like a good Buck Owens/Don Rich duet. Jen stayed in the radio business a few more years and lost a few more jobs, and it became apparent that working in radio was about selling advertising and getting fired.

So it doesn't surprise me, rather somewhat amuses me, that 100.7 has changed formats five times in the last ten years.

When the station first came on the air, at least to my knowledge, it was known as "The Arrow," WROO. It was where my closest friend and neighbor and I got our classic rock education. It was (and in memory, still is) so superior to Rock 105 as to compare apples to oranges that have carved into smoking accessories. It had no morning show idiots like Lex and Terry, and it played psychedelic and hippie and southern rock rather than hair metal and cock rock.

I can remember Dave Barry writing a column in the 80s about the proliferation of TV ads selling collections of 60s music and the quote that one day we would all be saying, "remember remembering the 60s in the 80s?" Well, it came true, at least for me. Some of my best memories of adolescence are of me and my best friend, at our first job, sitting around the guard shack at the local pool listening to the Arrow. And when I returned to my hometown for a six month sentence in '96 to attend massage therapy school, I still had The Arrow to keep me company on my long commutes to Jacksonville and back.

So I am somewhat attached to the number 100.7 on my FM dial, to say the least. And when I moved home in 2000, ostensibly for the last time, I immediately switched it on in the car only to find that the Arrow had missed it's last target and morphed into a classic soul station.

I didn't mind, although I still felt nostalgia. Hell, even my friends from Athens remembered The Arrow from all the times they visited me in '96. My loser boyfriend of 2000 would sarcastically say, "I've been waiting for them to play this song" no matter what came on the classic soul playlist, because to him it was limited. I didn't care. I loved "Kiss and Say Goodbye" every time I heard it.

What was incendiary, though, was the day in 2002 I drove to my favorite spot to walk in downtown St. Marys, got out of the car, walked three miles, got back in the car, and 100.7 was now "smooth jazz." The station changed formats that quickly, and it was as if the former station had never been there. We have always been at war with Oceania. I never experienced anything as musically jarring before or since.

Now, while I love Nina Simone and Miles Davis et all more than life itself, "smooth jazz" does not approach the plane of existence usually known as jazz. It's more like something you listen to while drinking white wine and singing John Tesh songs in the shower you take before going on a blind date with a guy who wears black socks with shorts and still thinks it's funny to say, "can you say (fill in the blank)? I knew you could!" several times an hour.

So it came as a surprise to me (although it shouldn't have) when I was channel surfing while delivering pizza the seventh time I moved back to Camden County and accidentally came across my old security blanket 100.7, now Movin' and playing hip hop and R&B hits. And any station that plays "My Pony" by Ginuwine on a regular basis is my friend, although it is a guilty pleasure and since 2006 nobody has wanted to ride in the car with me to hear the hip hop hits of the 90s. In fact, my then fiance now husband hated Movin' so much because it reminded him of a store in which he worked that played only that station that he would make a new cd (and who makes cds anymore) EVERY TIME we went on a trip, even to Fernandina, just to keep from hearing Movin.' But I loved it. Especially when I worked in Brunswick and had to get up at 5 AM to get to work. It got me, well, movin.

Today I have my wish for a classic country station, but here's the rub. I no longer have a guilty pleasure, because I don't really buy much into guilt even of the aging hipster variety anymore, unless you count my guilt over liking to watch COPS. And I know not to get to accustomed to it, unless God is a classic country guy too, because in two years 100.7 will be playing the polka hits of yesterday, today and tomorrow. Like listening to 60s rock in the 80s, I'll enjoy it while it lasts.