Suzy and I were having a conversation in the car last night about WHFS. I believe it is a scam, and a great one at that. Here's the scratch list of why I think so.

1. The HFS market was cut off completely to give El Zol radio the 99.1 spot and a TON of media attention.

2. Within two weeks, HFS DJs were playing on 105.7 at night and on the weekends. Suzy was suspicious about this point, and said that without the mornings they wouldn't have their target teenage demographic, which is how she learned about and loved HFS. I asked her if in the last 30 minutes we had been listening to 105.7 in the car if she had heard anything that a teenager would like. The mid-twenties to early thirties crowd is now their meal ticket.

3. They are now 24 hour simulcasting on AOL Radio. I think that everybody except for the lower income ethnic market stations and talk radio want to be on Internet radio. It's cheaper, the demographics are more readily available and you know every listener had to have at least enough disposable income to be on the computer and a high speed connection. Everybody wants to move to the Internet format, they just need a good excuse.

4. El Zol will be changing the callsign of 99.1 to WZLL, pending FCC approval. This frees up (gasp!) WHFS to move to another frequency on the dial. My bet is that 105.7 does an administrative filing real soon now.

5. HFS immediately went from their sellout suck-format to the quasi-freeform and request line that their target demographic remembers from the good old days. They immedately started calling themselves the "Legendary HFS." People like me who were listening to NPR and C-SPAN Radio tuned in to check it out again and started hearing their favorite songs. But they're not around in the mornings so I can still listen to NPR on my morning commute, and HFS in the evening while we cook dinner.

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