Late one Saturday night in the spring of 1999 I was editing the latest issue of my college paper. As usual, the radio was set on Orlando's WSHE 100.3 FM. I was fanatical in my devotion to the station, primarily because I'd never before found one that so perfectly matched my taste. Plus, it had cool DJs and often sponsored great concerts and events. Sure, they overplayed songs and had too many ads, but what station doesn't?

Around 11:30 that night, REM's "It's the End of the World as We Know It" came on. I didn't catch the hint. Next up was a song I'd never heard before on that station. Then another. Then the death knell: a station ID, identifying it as "the new Cool 100."

I fiddled with the dial. Maybe the signal was gone and we were picking up another station. Or maybe they were promoting a new station temporarily on SHE's band. Something. But hours later, there was no change. I called the station. The person who answered the phone confirmed my fear: They'd switched formats. Gone were the Barenaked Ladies and Sarah McLachlan; in were groups I couldn't even name if I tried. No notice. Nothing. Everything I'd grown to love, DJs and all, was gone. SHE was dead.

SHE may have been just a radio station, that didn't mean WSHE's demise was any less of a surprise or any less wrenching for me. The station's Web site soon offered an explanation: "We are sorry that you are disappointed with the format change on WSHE. The low ratings on SHE forced us to make a change to a format that has a larger listener base." The Orlando Business Journal gave the details: SHE was 14th in the market, pulling in $3.5 million a year. Another station had recently changed formats. Its previous, now-abandoned oldies format had kept it in the Top 10, and it had twice SHE's revenue. So SHE's parent company, Clear Channel Communications, which owns 900 radio stations in the country, leapt at the opportunity to switch to oldies and grab some of those now-floating listeners -- and the ad dollars they brought in.

Of the 22 markets that Radio-Info.com tracks, the site lists at least 10 changes in format since September. Elsewhere, Radio & Records Online reported on Nov. 20 that three different stations had changed formats the previous Thursday and Friday alone. Radio stations come and go now; this is a nationwide reality. And the changes are all over the board: jazz to modern rock, news to all '80s, oldies to alternative. But one thing's for sure -- their reasons all sound familiar. Radio-Info provides detailed descriptions about the format changes they list (and they definitely miss some, including WSHE's), and low ratings and holes in the market are frequently cited as rationale for the switch.

SHE itself was only 2 years old when it went under, and it had replaced Orlando institution WDIZ. Still, I was distraught and wrote about how pissed off I was. Later, grief took the form of reaching for that familiar preset button and finding nothing familiar. Finally, I reached the stage of acceptance and rationalization: Hey, at least I would hear more pop music.

But even now, a year and a half later, I'm still annoyed. My radio station was killed because its ratings were low. Yet everyone I knew listened to WSHE. It seemed like its events were packed and the advertisers fat. To me, that meant that whoever compiled those ratings had asked the wrong people. It seemed like the station format was killed because a handful of random people liked to listen to oldies and other formats instead of alternative/adult contemporary music. And that really irritated me.

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