Random thoughts listening to the final day of programming on WABB…

While radio as a whole still has a long life ahead of it, the cutbacks and homogenization will make it much, much harder for any new station from having the emotional impact that a station like WABB has had on its audience. It is a local institution that will be going by the wayside never to return in its previous form.

The station is mainly focusing on music from the 90’s and early 2000’s before it had to make many of the financial cutbacks that most radio stations have made. Is this their way of saying that they know that the station and the industry was a shell of what it used to be? Or just playing off people’s nostalgia for the good ole’ days.

Update: It’s been brought to my attention the station has been slowly going back in time musically through its history. So scratch that previous thought.

WABB was a throwback. A standalone AM/FM combo operated by a local owner. Outside of WBEB Philadelphia, KKGO/KMZT Los Angeles, and a handful of others, they are few and far between. The loss of WABB is a big one to observers of the radio industry. It shall be missed, but instead of mourning it we need to find ways to instill the passion that Bernie Dittman’s station gave the audience in the station’s heyday back to every daypart on every station.