Stop the music

The format change was one of the reasons former music director Abby Goldstein left KERA in October to take a job as promotions director at WXPN-FM, a public radio station in Philadelphia. Pointing to Boardman's arrival in 1992, Goldstein says the change at KERA had been discussed for the last few years, which Luchsinger doesn't deny.

Goldstein says Luchsinger always knew the change would come, and he actually gave Goldstein subtle hints she might want to leave: "Over the last year, Jeff would say, 'You need to know this,' and, 'We think this is going to happen sooner than later,' to give me a chance to do something about it.

"I didn't want to be a music director at a news station," Goldstein says. "We were running 15 hours of music programming a day, and it's not going to be like that anymore. And not to brag, but I think I'm better than that format."

One immediate impact of the switch in format is that a significant number of local musicians have lost a venue that gave them considerable exposure. Artists like Josh Alan, CafŽ Noir, Little Jack Melody and His Young Turks, Cowboys and Indians, and Colin Boyd depended upon the station to get heard and get people to their shows. Now, they'll eat static.

"They worry about how much money they make, and the programming is secondary, where it should be the other way around," says Cafe Noir's Norbert Gerl. "The switch in format is a concern, but you can't stop things like that. Still, how many more talk shows do we need? How much more talk radio can you stomach?"

Jeff Luchsinger insists this new format is what the audience wants--Freudian analysis of female penis envy, the weather in Oslo, and the preservation of salmon, judging from a sampling of Monday's talk-show topics. For years, KERA-FM has billed itself as "One of a Kind" radio. Now it has become more of the same--a radio station that can't keep its mouth shut.