When Hemisphere Broadcasting took over Boston's WBCN in the 1970s, and laid off numerous station employees, the remaining staff struck. Disc jockey Charles Laquidara, for instance, played a loop of Superman by The Kinks, who had come out in support of the strike, for his entire show. The corporation buckled.

Thirty years later, as CBS prepares to close the storied "Rock of Boston" for good, no such theatrics are in the cards. DJ's now do what they are told. As Tom Petty put it, "There goes the last DJ/Who plays what he wants to play." One WBCN personality, Adam12, ocassionally jokes about how he's restricted from playing songs he'd like to play (I once heard him talk about what would happen to him if he dared stray from the approved music and play The Who's I Can See For Miles). But that's about as rebellious as it gets at the Crock of Boston these days. It's Pearl Jam, then Weezer, then Rage Against the Machine, then AC/DC. Then repeat.

But it wasn't always so. When the classical music Boston Concert Network (get it--WBCN) flipped to rock more than forty years ago, Peter Wolf, later of J. Geils Band fame, spun records there (Where, but from his days as a disc jockey, do you think Peter Wolf could rap so quickly about Wooba Gooba with the Green Teeth?). Before finding pop-culture stardom as one of the original MTV VJs, J.J. Jackson became a staple at WBCN. WBCN is where Carter Alan first exposed America to U2.

Now it broadcasts the New England Patriots. It plays host to talk shows that are occasionally interrupted by music. It operates on a playlist. Like the bands it features, WBCN is past its sell date. Perhaps that's just the nature of stations that market themselves as "underground." When WBCN launched in 1968 with Cream's "I Feel Free," they were cutting edge. When WBCN played the same song ten years later, they could hardly claim the "underground" label. Yesterday's cool is tomorrow's boring bomb. An adventuresome station became stale to retain their initial audience. They had an identity crisis, not knowing whether to continue playing the songs that made them famous or to live up to their reputation as the station that pushed the musical envelope. This confusion resulted in a part classic rock/part cutting edge format in the 1980s. I listened and loved it. Then, the station, which had regularly graced Rolling Stone's year-end "best of" list, embraced Limp Bizkit, Korn, and Lincoln Park in the late 1990s, completely obliterating the identity it once had. Now it's a hard rock station the plays the odd tune by U2 and Coldplay. When you first heard a band on WBCN in its heyday, you knew the band was about to break. When you first hear a band on WBCN now, you know they've already jumped the shark. A station that once shaped musical interests now follows them.

If you're not from Boston, you might be asking yourself why you are reading a post about a radio station you've never listened to. Yet, this same scenario has probably played out in your town, too. A station catering to a local audience gets bought by a corporate behemoth. It subsequently guts the on-air talent, imposes playlists, and perhaps even pipes in hosts who can't even pronounce the names of surrounding communities. It's impersonal, distant, and sounds like everything else. Like chain restaurants and strip malls, radio by remote makes your town more like every other town. It not only operates under the assumption that Boston is Indianapolis is Orlando is Denver, but it helps bring that assumption closer to reality. The cookie cutter makes for good cookies but bad radio.

As Bono put it in 1993, "Without 'BCN, we'd all be f#!*ed." But the real WBCN went off the air years ago. Yesterday's announcement that the station bearing those call letters would cease broadcasting in August was just a delayed reaction to reality.

The record companies killed AOR for trying to give away too much of their property for free. And then they tried to totally program tastes in the nadir of popular music with Brittany Spears and boy bands and the like.

I have heard that downloading started to happen when people wanted to hear something besides pre-programmed mega-marketted crap, and it got to the point that Led Zep IV or House of the Holy were some of the biggest sellers to teenage boys--because everybody is starting to realize whose fingerprints are on the dagger that killed popular music. You can hear nearly everything that was awesome at some point of time on YouTube. Like this one.

In new cars, an ipod (attachable by a thin cord that jacks right into the stereo) has replaced the radio. At home, anything and everything can be found on youtube. In addition, there are cool sites like www.pandora.com that allow you to customize your radio for the small price of a commercial every 10 songs. Radio is dying and will soon be dead. Killed by technological evolution.

Just let me say this about that - BCN, like many progressive stations, simply ran out of good music and were forced to play the 'oldies' that were once the cutting edge.

Not to be an old music snob, but today's offerings are hollow compared to the complexity of yesteryear's.

Carter Alan is not walking through that door, Ken Shelton is not walking through that door and Tank won't be walking through the door...because his is morbidly obese. Adios 'BCN.

Welcome to the free, fair, and efficient American economic model.

What, You don't advocate a bail out for BCN?

What Charles actually did in '79 was to have an all-request show during which listeners requested the Kinks Superman and Herbie Mann's totally different Superman back-to-back for the entire program. Funniest day of radio I ever enjoyed....