Radio Station In Texas Fires 47 Workers So It Can Play Beyoncé 24/7
News92 FM, which was once a 24-hour news radio station in Houston, Texas, announced this week that it will now play nothing but Beyoncé, Beyoncé, and more Beyoncé. The new name of the station? B921. “B” as in Beyoncé.
As a result, 47 employees were given pink slips.
Radio One, the company that owns the station, is presumably just turning the station into “all Beyoncé, all the time” for the short term until it decides what it actually wants to do with the station. When station owners do something like this, it’s called “stunting.” Sometimes stations switch to only one artist. Sometimes they switch to playing a single song over and over again for a weekend or longer, just to draw attention to the station.
Before it got turned into Beyoncé central, News92 was ranked 26th in its market, and only garnered 0.9 percent of the potential audience, according to the Houston Chronicle. Admittedly, those ratings are low enough to make any owner rethink the business model.
The Beyoncé switch won’t bring in any new revenue to B921, however. There are to be no commercials played while B921 is in existence — only Beyoncé. And more Beyoncé.
Why Beyoncé? For starters, Beyoncé was born in Houston, Texas, in 1981, and that seems to be about as good a reason as any for the selection. Oh, and Beyoncé is also one of the most popular performing artists in the world today, so that might have had something to do with it.
Beyoncé fans were predictably head over heels about the new station.
*sets Beyoncé radio as every single preset on my radio*
— queen peyton (@peyton_chesser) October 10, 2014
If you guys didn’t know about the BEYONCE ONLY RADIO STATION OF HOUSTON IT IS fm91.2!!! You are welcome. RT to save a life.
— L Y S S A?? (@woahlyssa) October 10, 2014
Houston may not be cool and all but at least we have our own Beyonce radio station “Beyonce all day everyday, B92” — yung brandi (@GBIEBZY) October 10, 2014
The Beyoncé radio station (92.1) is the best thing that’s ever happened to me. — amanda (@anicole182) October 10, 2014
According to The Verge, Beyoncé has about 63 songs total in her catalogue off of five albums, which only adds up to about four hours. However, if you add in all the tracks she performed on with Destiny’s Child, as well as the other artist tracks she’s guested on, there might be enough music that you could get through an entire day without hearing a Beyoncé song more than once.
Maybe.
[Image via Us Weekly]
