After laying off 47 employees this year, Houston’s first FM all-news radio station has announced that is to dedicate its entire playlist to Pop superstar Beyonce, becoming the first US station to be recognised as a Beyonce-devoted radio outlet.
Full story below…
News92, Houston’s first FM all-news radio station aired its last broadcast Wednesday, October 8, 2014… This difficult decision is a result of sustained poor ratings performance and significant financial losses over the past three years despite the substantial financial and human resources we invested.
The message above can be found on News92‘s official website today, announcing that the station was to shut its doors to the world after failing to keep its head above ratings water.
Then, in a move expected to tighten Beyonce’s grip on Urban music, the station revealed that is was to devote itself to promoting her music, playing her music all day everyday in a bid to attract the star’s ever-swelling fan base.
Billboard reports:
Radio One owns the station-formerly-known-as-News92. Yashima Azilove, who works for Radio One, discussed the station’s reincarnation as Beyonce radio with local news. “In looking to make a transition, we go back to what we know,” Azilove told ABC13. “We know urban radio. We’re in Houston, the combination seemed like a winning one.”
If the new station only plays Beyonce’s solo catalog, it will have five albums to choose from. Not including various bonus tracks, remixes, live versions or tracks from other artists featuring Beyonce, those records contain 63 songs, adding up to roughly 4 hours and 15 minutes of music. Of course, if the station is willing to dig into Beyonce’s work with Destiny’s Child, that will expand their pool of possible tunes to draw from — Destiny’s Child recorded 5 albums (if you count their Christmas album), containing 67 songs and around 4.5 hours of music.